Lady Gregory's Ireland: an Alternative Narrative of Ireland in the Early Twentieth Century.

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Lady Gregory's Ireland: An Alternative Narrative of Ireland in the Early Twentieth Century. From a young age Gregory realised that there was a split between the sexes in her home, boys were treated with positive discrimination. Gregory writes in “Seventy Years” that her mother “did not consider book learning as of any great benefit to girls... Religion and courtesy and holding themselves straight, these were to her mind the three things needful... She was less indulgent to the girls than to the boys” (Gregory, 36). Gregory was invisible in her childhood, her mother favoured her brothers and they received the education she desired. In her later years, she acted as a type of anthropologist, spending time with the true Irish housewife, she listens to their stories, folklore and myths and she uses these stories to write plays such as “Graina” and” The Gaol Gate”. Dawn Duncan claims that Gregory uses strong female characters in such plays to highlight the patterns of the female journey. The women in Gregory plays often are modelled on goddess of Celtic Ireland (133). The figures such as Grania are strong and who dominated the supernatural worlds of Ireland. Characters such as “Marys Cahel and Mary Cushin” in “The Gaol Gate” highlight how Gregory put them central stage, these are the two main characters and it is their story and their journey being told (Gregory, 359-362). This essay will focus on the alternative narrative in Gregory’s plays, “Graina” and “The Gaol Gate”. The essay will explore how Lady Gregory changed how women were perceived in Ireland. The symbol of Ireland was of a woman, weak and irrational but Gregory changed this perception, she gave women a voice and a stage for which their journeys could be told. Critics such as Dawn Duncan, Lucy MacDiarmid and Maureen Waters agree that Gregory brought plays to the normal people of Ireland. She used their

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