| dc.description.abstract | This thesis examines the representation of Irish domestic servants in Anglo-American culture over the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The perceived difficulties of managing domestic help were a prominent feature of popular discourse in both the United States and England, shaping the narratives of novels, plays and memoirs along with countless articles in the print media. Central to many such sources were the challenges seen to be posed by unruly Irish servants. Often caricatured as ‘Bridget’ or ‘Biddy’, Irish domestic workers occupied a tension-ridden position in the middle-class cultural imaginary, embodying and reflecting a multitude of conflicting fears and desires. Similar tropes appeared in writings and conversations about them on either side of the Atlantic, with issues of race, class and gender framing interconnected cultures of satire and complaint. Irish female immigrants nevertheless remained an important source of labour for English and American housekeepers well into the twentieth century, in no small part due to the increasing aversion of native-born white women to service. This study investigates how understandings of working-class Irish womanhood developed in line with shifting social and economic conditions, highlighting the overlaps and differences between discursive formations as they evolved in each of the two countries. However, it also attempts to account for the endurance of specific cultural stereotypes as the Irish moved away from domestic service.
There are six thematic chapters to the thesis, each of which follow a roughly chronological format. The initial focus is on bourgeois understandings of domestic workers. Chapter 1 considers the proliferation of Irish servant jokes in the Anglo-American press, arguing that such humour reflected the anxieties of employers reliant on external help to maintain household order. Chapter 2 looks at how Irish female immigrants figured in debates around Irish nationalism, discussing how the figure of the working-class woman came to serve a variety of political functions. Chapter 3 surveys the management of Irish servants in English and American households. I argue that domestic authority in both countries was driven by an imperial logic, in the sense that employers sought to control foreign-seeming servants while also keeping them at bay. Chapter 4 focuses on the sexual representation of Irish immigrant maids, exploring concerns about the effects of working-class sexuality on family life. Chapter 5 turns to the social and cultural agency exercised by servants, especially with regard to everyday acts of defiance. Chapter 6 examines contemporary diasporic writings on the working-class Irish female experience, highlighting how narratives of pain and marginalisation undermine romantic notions of immigrant assimilation. The resentment underlying semi-autobiographical works by third-generations writers, in particular, speaks to the persistence of trauma and exclusion as shaping influences on Irish diasporic identity. | en |
