Origins and Legacies of Irish Prudery: Sexuality and Social Control in Modern Ireland

The history of Irish sexuality remains a relatively hidden, secretive area. In recent years some light has been cast into the abyss (Inglis 1998b; McAvoy 1999; McLoughlin 1994; Meany 1991; Walshe 1997; O'Carroll and Collins 1995). Most of the recent grand histories, however, have avoided dealing with sex and sexuality directly and have focused instead on such issues as censorship, the multi-faceted role of the Catholic church, fertility control, and, more recently, the sex-abuse scandals involving the Catholic church.¹ It is as if the old Catholic-church strategy of not referring directly to sex and sexuality—for fear that it might offend or undermine the innocent—still guides what historians research and write about.

The lack of research into the history of Irish sexuality is puzzling, although it corresponds to a general lack of interest in sexuality in Irish academia. It may be that the dominance of Catholic-church personnel in such key areas as philosophy, psychology, and sociology dampened any budding interest in the subject. But this does not explain the lack of interest among cultural historians. There is still a huge lacuna when it comes to understanding the sexual nature of the Irish. This is peculiar, given that anthropologists, ethnographers, and other commentators on Ireland have long pointed out how the Irish were so repressed sexually (Humphreys 1966; Messenger 1969; Brody 1973; Scheper-Hughes 2001). It is also peculiar because, when it comes to a demographic profile, the Irish show definite signs of being sexually unique. For most of the last century they had (in comparison with other Western societies) the lowest levels of marriage and, correspondingly, the highest levels of bachelors and spinsters. On the other hand, Ireland had the highest birth rate or, more precisely, the highest level of marital fertility (see Inglis 1998b:34–38). This meant that those who did get married tended, in comparison with married women in other Western societies, to have a large number of children. The creation of such a sexual regime is not arbitrary or haphazard. There were forces in Irish society which created and maintained such a regime. The Catholic church and (through clerical influence) the state were major players in creating this regime. Nevertheless, the locus classicus for the key components of the chastity, virginity, and modesty as well as the piety and sobriety that had taken firm hold of most Irish people was the home with its parents (mostly mothers) and the schools with their teachers. It may well be that while the Irish are obviously unique when it comes to sexuality, the reason why this subject has been ignored by historians is that there is an absence of revealing historical records and archives. But it may equally well be that there was little will to find a way of revealing the secrets of Irish sexuality. It is as if the sense of shame and embarrassment about sex—talking and writing about sexual practices, feelings, and emotions—reached so deeply into the psyches of Irish academics, and particularly historians, that they were unable to raise, let alone deal, with such issues.

Despite the absence of any detailed history of Irish sexuality, it seems safe to argue that there have been dramatic shifts in sexual practices, values, beliefs, and attitudes in the last two hundred years. In the first part of this article I try to show how the sexuality that came to be embodied in Ireland in the nineteenth century was similar to that of the middle classes in Victorian Britain. What was different, however, was how long this Victorian regime lasted and how deeply it seeped into the minds and bodies of the Irish. Another difference was the absence, not just in the nineteenth century but also throughout most of the twentieth, of resistant discourses and subaltern voices.

The central argument of this article is that while sexual desire and pleasure are obviously rooted in the body and soul of the individual, they are also central to social order and social control. As we seek to understand the character...