“‘We can’t do without Ulster, and she’ll find out the same about us some day!’: An All-Island View of Irish Women’s Partition Fiction.”
“We can’t do without Ulster, and she’ll find out the same about us some day!” So declares the protagonist of Edith Somerville’s Big House novel An Enthusiast (1921), which takes place at the height of the Irish War of Independence. Dr. Dawn Miranda Sherratt-Bado will discuss fiction by women who experienced the partitioning of Ireland, tracing how they chronicle this period of revolutionary history and envision alternate futures. Her talk covers well-known writers Elizabeth Bowen, Dorothy Macardle, and Edith Somerville, alongside lesser-known authors such as Donegal-born Margaret Barrington. Situating their work in relation to a wider nexus of institutional memory, including state commemorations and Irish Studies, Dawn Miranda seeks to advance our understanding of a contentious history. How does foregrounding women’s partition narratives shift or displace dominant metanarratives about the Irish Revolution? Her talk aims to foster gender-inclusive understanding of the history of partition through literature, and to consider how women’s partition fiction illuminates the potential for a “shared island”.