“A light in the path to us women of today” Constance Markievicz’s forgotten heroines of the past

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to study how Constance Markievicz used the stories of Irish heroines to advocate gender equality and encourage women to take an active part in the struggle for Irish independence as well as their own emancipation in the years leading up to the Easter Rising and its aftermath. Using articles, drawings, and caricatures by Markievicz, I wish to show how she addressed the issues of womanhood and nationhood and provided role models for a new generation of advanced nationalists including herself. Going against the representation of Ireland as a nation of fathers and sons only and recovering female efforts in the 1798 rising, she claimed the right for Irish women to become political actors and revolutionaries.