Dr Jacinta Wright was a noted authority on the 19th-century French writer George Sand and an enthusiastic Francophile. Her passion for French literature brought her to Paris and to Brown University in the US, before taking up a post as lecturer at Dublin City University.
Her outstanding early career at DCU was cut short when, after her cancer diagnosis, she stopped working in order to spend more time with her family, the centre of her life. Her evident fulfilment in her role as mother proved this was the right decision.
Despite her diagnosis, her curiosity and her thirst for stimulating discourse were undimmed. She jammed all she could into the last five years, spanning family travel, new experiences and skills, voracious reading and defying the depredations of her disease and the demands of regular treatment. From rock-climbing to book clubs and from the parish family Mass group to the upgrade of the school library, she threw herself into each activity.
Jacinta enjoyed an extraordinarily wide range of friends from different walks of life, as a result of her diverse interests and her appetite for friendship. She had a remarkable ability to listen and was always superb company.
Many of her friends met, some for the first time, in the days after her death, when she was waked at home in Mount Merrion. A packed church heard tributes to her in three languages – French, English and Irish – each tribute revealing, for the first time, a new aspect of Jacinta’s rich life to circles of friends and family.
Jacinta spent her early life in Wicklow town, where her father, Bill, was a Garda sergeant and her mother, Eithne, ran a guesthouse. A lifelong connection with France was ignited by a friendship that developed between her parents and a French family who stayed in their guesthouse. Jacinta was happy to spend summer holidays from Wicklow’s Dominican College with their friends in France.
Her flair for the language became evident during her teacher training at Carysfort. One lecturer later remarked that Jacinta had been the best student of French to have attended the college in 30 years. She came first in her MA class at UCD.
Faithful to a life plan drafted in her college years, Jacinta moved to Paris, where she taught at the American school Marymount, cementing both her relationships with France and with those whom she met there.
She applied herself to her PhD at Brown University with the same zeal, returning to Ireland with her doctorate four years later to take up a position at DCU. There, she proved an incisive and talented teacher and a valuable contributor to the faculty. In 2005, Jacinta was organiser of a major conference on the work of George Sand.
As a sometime panel guest of the fledgling Book Club in The Irish Times late in 2014, she exposed a new seam of her talent; that of an erudite and engaging broadcaster.
Jacinta’s engagement with the world and lack of self-pity in the face of serious illness was remarkable to all who witnessed it. She is survived by her husband Déaglán Ó Dónaill, her children Sadhbh and Garbhán, her mother Eithne, sister Imelda and brothers William, Colm and Gerard.
It is left to George Sand to supply an insight into Jacinta's life philosophy: "Il n'y a qu'un bonheur dans la vie, c'est d'aimer et d'être aimé."
