Gender Roles After The Potato Famine

Literature often distinguishes the roles of men and women, defining appropriate behavior within the context of the culture in which it is written. Throughout the changes of society these roles continually transform in accordance with the modernization of traditions. The devastation of the Potato Famine of 1845 brought numerous changes, including political uprisings, social unrest, and economic decline. The catastrophic effects forced many Irish men and women to abandon their previous lifestyles and gender specific behaviors for survival purposes. Asenath Nicholson’s and Henry Mayhew’s articles concerning the social and cultural effects of the famine display the differences in pre-famine and post-famine masculine and feminine behavior.

Gender roles are still very much a part of many present-day cultures, varying in strictness and severity of the societal expectations. During pre-famine times in Ireland appropriate behavior varied slightly depending on class. Those raised in the upper class echelon were expected to preserve the gallant gentlemanly and ladylike behavior of their ancestors while those in the lower classes were less poised and pretentious. These lower class people,

Nicholson recounts a story of the hungry woman who killed their starving dog in hopes that her children could survive a little longer. Incidents such as this helped bring to light the harshness of the famine to the well-to-do upper class who “had never realized that four millions of people were subsisting entirely on the potatoe” (Nicholson, 223).

Desperate times called for desperate measures, and the impoverished and dispossessed learned the skills of fruit trading and begging in order to survive for themselves and their families. Irish women and children staked their claim on the fruit trading business because they were “unable to do anything else to eke out the means of their husbands” (Mayhew, 105). Although prior to the famine these street women relied on the economic stability of their husbands and families, the inconsistency of the poor street life forced the women to depend on themselves for what little financial support they could gain. In fact, ”women tended to he more resilient than men to the effects of the Famine” (Kinnealy 8). Often these women had children to feed so the incentive to continue the strife was much greater than husbands who had abandoned their wives, were single, or widowed.

“the walking skeleton becomes in a state of inanity…he was tall, his eyes prominent, his skin shriveled, his manner cringing and childlike…” (Nicholson, 224). Here, the first image of man is reduced to a child, unable to comprehend and survive for himself. If the ability to comprehend was stil

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