Abstract

A cursory glance over church and state discourses in the Irish Free State reveals great concern with the sexual purity of Irish women. This paper explores the way in which such concern reveals a deep association between notions of sexual purity and Irish national identity, such that sexual immorality is seen as a foreign “contaminating” force in Irish society, and in many cases, nothing other than the effect of British influence on Irish society. By looking at the portrayal of sexual purity in ecclesiastical and state discourses and paying attention to their invocations of notions of “Irishness”, this paper argues that the clerical and governmental drive to regulate sexual behaviour was not merely a matter of conservative social norms operating on their own but was bound up inextricably with the drive to consolidate Irish national identity.

In March 1918, following the arrival of thousands of American soldiers into Cobh Harbour, Bishop Colohan reminded Irish girls to “remember and esteem the fair fame of Irish womanhood for purity” (Borgonovo, 2012, p. 103). Colohan was particularly worried that the hordes of Americans entering Cork via Queenstown would corrupt the local women, leading them to a life of sexual deviance. His fears were not entirely unfounded – a contemporary noted that “one could see bands of girls waiting for American sailors” (ibid., p. 95), and although the records are unclear, there was at the very least an increase in casual sex and/or prostitution in the area following the soldiers’ arrival (ibid., p. 90). While Colohan’s attitude towards casual sex is hardly surprising given his status as a Catholic bishop, we may want to look a little closer at his appeal to the “purity” of “Irish womanhood”. If it were Irish women who were flocking en masse to meet American soldiers, how is it that their behaviour, in the ideological constructions of early twentieth-century ecclesiastical discourse, was considered not “true” to the character of Irish women? How is it that there could be such a gap between Colohan’s idea of “Irish womanhood” and the actual behaviour of Irish women? To what extent did the construction of Irish national identity in ecclesiastical and political discourse in the early twentieth century rely on the assumption of a uniquely Irish sexual purity, particularly with respect to Irish women?

To answer these questions, I begin by looking at the ways in which ecclesiastical discourse constructed sexual crimes as a violation of a (public) moral superstructure rather than a violation of the rights of individual women. I then look at the language of contamination in both ecclesiastical and political discourses, drawing out the ways in which sexual purity is repeatedly associated with “Irishness” in opposition to the perceived sexual degeneracy of English society. Ultimately, I argue that notions of sexual purity and womanhood were just as important as notions of “Irishness” and national identity in such discourses.

Ecclesiastical Constructions of Purity and Deviance
In her analysis of sexual regulation and attitudes towards female sexuality in the 1920s and 30s, Maria Luddy (2007) suggests that the female body was understood as inherently immoral or unchaste in some way, such that it required regulation from a church or state body. She notes that,

“What was to emerge from the early 1920s was a belief […] that the real threat to chastity and sexual morality resided in the bodies of women. Thus moral regulation, by Church and State, attempted to impose, particularly on women, standards of idealised conduct that would return the nation to purity” (ibid., p. 80).

However, the words of Irish clergy referenced by Luddy herself support the idea that the female body was actually associated with sexual purity rather than immorality but that modern Irish women had “fallen” from this natural state due to the influence of modern culture. A 1926 sermon lamented that, “There was a time in Ireland when the prevailing type of woman was the sister of Mary Immaculate, but, unfortunately, in recent times there has been a kind of falling off” (ibid.). Later commentary from Luddy cites The Irish Independent (1925), which decried that “mothers who preferred the fashionable and crowded thoroughfare to their own quiet home” had abandoned their natural roles. Such attitudes established purity as a “natural” and pre-discursive quality of Irish womanhood — deviation from which marked moral failure rather than human variation. Even witnesses to the Carrigan Committee hearings in the early 1930s described adolescent sexuality as “in many cases violent” (Riordan, 2011, p. 438), constructing normal development as pathological. Within this logic, sexual deviance constituted an attack on the moral superstructure of Irish society rather than an offence against women themselves. The frequent use of the term “outrage” to describe sexual assault — whether in newspapers (Earner-Byrne, 2015) or official reports — framed rape as an offence against moral order. This moral framing is underscored by Mary M.’s 1920s letter to her archbishop, treating her own rape as a “secret outside the confessional” and pleading for prayers “for the purity of Our Irish Girls” (ibid., p. 88). Sexual violence thus became enfolded into discourses of sin and redemption, effacing victims’ suffering.

Contamination in Ecclesiastical and Political Discourses
Because sexual immorality and sexual violence were conflated, victims were often treated as complicit. A Department of Justice memorandum claimed that “a child with a vivid imagination may actually live in his mind the situation as he invented it” (Smith, 2004, p. 224). Eoin O’Duffy attributed low prosecutions to evidentiary standards requiring multiple witnesses (ibid.). Women who reported abuse were thus compelled to defend their “moral character”. As Earner-Byrne notes, immorality was seen as “contagious” — even victims could be “contaminated”. This notion presupposed an innate purity of Irish womanhood.

Such language of contamination pervaded both Church and State. Archbishop Gilmartin’s 1926 remark that “the future of the country is bound up with the dignity and purity of the women of Ireland” (Ferriter, 2009, p. 100) and a 1927 Irish Times editorial warning that “the nation’s proudest heritage is slipping from its grasp” (ibid., p. 101) explicitly tied national identity to female chastity. This association long pre-dated the Free State: nineteenth-century nationalist newspapers cast English sodomy trials as proof of British degeneracy, while excusing Irish offenders as anomalies (Earls, 2019; Conrad, 2001). Likewise, prostitutes in Cork were often claimed to be “English women […] come over here within the past two years” (Borgonovo, 2012, p. 97). Sexual impurity was thus externalised as foreign contagion.

Fears of contamination intensified during the venereal disease crisis of the 1920s–30s. Dublin’s Monto district was labelled a “contaminating centre” (Howell, 2003, p. 325). Yet official inquiries revealed that infection was spread largely by “apparently decent girls” from “respectable classes” (Luddy, 2007, p. 86; Ferriter, 2009, p. 156). These so-called “amateurs” — neither prostitutes nor “fallen” mothers — confounded the purity myth. Nonetheless, the Church and State continued to attribute moral decay to external modern influences — cinema, cars, dancehalls — rather than to Irish society itself.

Immorality in Political Discourse: The Carrigan Report
The 1931 Carrigan Committee on the Criminal Law Amendment Acts exposed endemic sexual crime, contradicting the national image of moral exceptionalism. Commissioner O’Duffy reported that “an alarming amount of sexual crime” involved victims under 16 and that only 15 percent of cases led to prosecution (Smith, 2004, p. 223). The committee’s findings, describing the “moral condition of the country” as “gravely menaced” (Finnane, 2001, p. 523), were suppressed by church and cabinet alike. Officials feared “unsavoury” public discussion (Smith, 2004, p. 216) and damage to Ireland’s “reputation as a Christian country”. Even while acknowledging widespread abuse, the report deflected blame onto “modern abuses […] cinema, drama and literature” (Finnane, 2001, p. 525). By attributing corruption to British or modern influences, state and clergy preserved the fiction of innate Irish purity.

Discussion and Conclusion
The clerical and governmental obsession with the “purity” of Irish womanhood had little to do with real behaviour and everything to do with constructing a post-colonial moral identity. When confronted with evidence of immorality — venereal disease, sexual crime — authorities sought not reform but concealment and stricter moral regulation. The purity myth thus served as both ideological foundation and disciplinary tool of the Irish Free State, binding womanhood to national virtue. As Howell (2003, p. 341) concludes, “social purity […] was the indispensable adjunct to the Irish post-colonial state.” Despite its intensity, this moral apparatus proved more myth than mastery: the “fair fame” of Irish womanhood was, ultimately, a fiction.

Bibliography

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