I hesitate to say that titillation could be alleged in the title of this book; or even that it is misleading, because that would not be true. However, while gender (the different roles attributed to women and men) is there in every essay, sexuality dwells in an ivory tower and is examined mostly through the euphemism of literature. The reader must wait until page 275 and a chapter by Carol Coulter to look it in the eye.
In Victorian times and in the early years of the century there were no behavioural or sociological studies of the Irish (indeed, no sociology), and in their absence literature and the theatre are convenient pointers to the mores of the time. But Arensberg and Kimball studied real people in the 1930s and their chapter on sex was remarkable for its period. Other researchers followed decade by decade.
Still, it is only in recent times that male homosexuality has been, if not studied, aired publicly in Ireland. In the first chapter, Adrian Frazier discloses the more or less unconsidered traces of homosexuality in Anglo-Irish literature, particularly in plays of Edward Martyn and William Butler Yeats, and in the novels of George Moore. Several contributors also examine the homosocial or male bonding situations that arise in so many, even modern, Irish plays.
Later on, Lucy McDiarmid analyses the changing attitudes to Roger Casement, and the role that rumour played in the way his homosexuality was regarded. In her essay, rumour is described as a corrective to official information in public life, and as an alternative line of communication opposed to those of "political correspondents, public relations agencies and government information services". Who was it said "History is a distillation of rumour"!
The frequent appearance of the peasant woman as a cultural icon, in early 20th-century theatre, notably Yeats's Cathleen Ni Houlihan as a figurative Ireland, looms large in gender analysis in this volume.
Casting Ireland as a woman is the theme of an essay by Elizabeth Butler Cullingford, who takes this gendering further. From Boucicault and Shaw to Brendan Behan, Brian Friel, Frank McGuinness and Neil Jordan (by way of Ryan's Daughter), the colonised Irish/Celt, she points out, is depicted as female or feminine and the English colonist as male. Nowadays feminist analysis drags into the light of day the subtext of dominance and dependence in the situation, which was probably unconscious or internalised in the mind of these authors.
The assertion that women's achievements are hidden from history is disputed by historian Mary E. Daly. The national contribution of women, she claims, is often recorded in books which lie on dusty shelves unread. Moreover, modern Irish history, she says, has a tendency to give primacy to political history, in which the achievements of women go unrecognised.
At last, almost at the end of the book, we come to a vindication of the title: the politics of sexuality. Carol Coulter's "Hello Divorce, Goodbye Daddy" is a refreshing and realistic account of the changing attitudes to sexual activity that finally led to the legalising of divorce in Ireland. More than the question of divorce was involved. Those who supported the call for divorce tended to hold a liberal view of sexuality, and they were opposed by conservatives preoccupied with its repression. The conflict is summed up in the confused outburst of one anti-divorce campaigner denouncing her opponents: "Go away, you wife-swapping sodomites."
Whether the essays live up to the promise of the title is of little consequence. They are all interesting studies in their own right, whether they are dissecting the plays of men or the poetry of women, or disinterring women's history. We can do with a lot more revisionism like this.
Ethna Viney is a writer and critic
