It is hardly insightful to point out that Irish women have repeatedly been relegated and underestimated in this country’s history. We are enthralled by the great man of history theory: that Michael Collins and Jim Larkin were singular figures, rerouting Ireland’s destiny, sole actors who would have thrived in any context. But what about the women? Were they not essential threads in the nation’s republican movement; the fight to liberalise the Catholic Church; the development of a cosmopolitan, modern and rich country?
Sure. It’s a banal truism everywhere – not just Ireland – that women have been written out of history books. When we think of the abstract expressionists of mid-century New York, Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko might spring to mind, but whose first instinct is to suggest Helen Frankenthaler? Her work is not lacking compared with her contemporaries – but like so many before her and so many after she has suffered from a crisis of recognition thanks to her gender.
An apparent solution to this dilemma is for Ireland to erect a national museum to women – where the country can showcase the women central to the country’s story, to provide them with the plinth that they have been so long denied. In fact, Minister for Culture Catherine Martin just last week announced Cabinet approval to appoint an advisory committee on the project.
But this is no victory for women. Of course they have been neglected for too long and of course it is high time we built more monuments in their honour – their role in history shouldn’t be forgotten, or worse, erased. But suggesting that the only means to properly commemorate Edna O’Brien and Sinéad O’Connor and Nano Nagle is through a special museum designed for their sex is to argue that their place in the canon is too small to elevate them to the same status as men. It is to imply that the men of Ireland cast an impenetrable shadow that consumes the contribution of women; perhaps even to say that none of these women loom large enough in history to deserve a plinth on O’Connell street.
If a woman’s contribution to the history and formation of this island is not big enough to stand alongside men, then perhaps it is not big enough to warrant a place in a museum at all
I am reminded of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, this year dedicated to Barbara Kingsolver. In 1991 the Booker shortlist featured no women; by 1995 emerged the first major attempt at a female-only literature category, the Orange Prize. At the time it was met with fierce criticism: AS Byatt would not let her work be entered, Auberon Waugh was a vocal detractor, Germaine Greer argued that we might as well have founded an award for writers with red hair. For what is a woman writer as distinct from an actual writer?
They have been proven right. For now, the rockstar male novelist’s star is waning; the past 10 years of the literary scene has been dominated by women. The Booker Prize shortlist last year was equally split across gender, the 20 best writers under 40 – as decided by Granta – contained just four men. Everyone can prattle off the millennial Irish novelists: Sally Rooney, Naoise Dolan, Megan Nolan. This ought to be proof enough alone that none of these women ever required a special category, that their work can stand on its two feet. That the shadow cast by male literary giants is, in fact, not impenetrable.
Of course some might suggest that Hilary Mantel couldn’t help but pale in comparison to Martin Amis. That Ernest Hemingway and Bret Easton-Ellis and Cormac McCarthy really would win out every time. But if this is the case, then the Women’s Prize for Fiction becomes nothing more than a consolation prize. A pat on the back for trying. When it comes to the museum we, then, have to confront an uncomfortable truth: If a woman’s contribution to the history and formation of this island is not big enough to stand alongside men, then perhaps it is not big enough to warrant a place in a museum at all. Not everyone can have statues erected in their honour.
This needn’t trouble us too much. Mary McAleese – the first Northern Irish president of Ireland, early adopter of LGBT advocacy, vocal and effective critic of the Catholic church and its sidelining of women, who oversaw the epochal shift in Anglo-Irish relations over Queen Elizabeth’s 2011 visit – does not require relegation to a women’s museum. Her presence in the history of Ireland is large enough. She is, of course, not alone in this.
The story of this country should be told in a proper Museum of Ireland, not through the gender of those on the barricades, in the Áras, or behind the scenes, but through their character, motivation and impact.
If the mission is to remind people of women’s centrality to Ireland, then the dedicated women’s museum reinforces the opposite: that women will always exist in a separate realm to Ireland’s main story, relegated to a B plot, destined to little more than a supporting cast role. McAleese, Mary Robinson and Sinéad O’Connor would not wilt in the presence of men. So put them side by side, not sequestered away – since hasn’t that been the problem all along?