The Myth of The Strong Irish Immigrant Servant Woman : An Analysis of Novels by Sadlier, McElgun and Atwood

Master's Thesis from the year 2006 in the subject English - Literature, Works, grade: 80, Leiden University (Leiden University), course: English language and culture, language: English, abstract: In this MA thesis I aim to look especially at one specific group of Irish immigrants from the many that took the crossing, namely nineteenth-century young Irish women who found work as servants in the New World. These girls and women encountered many hardships. As explained in the previous section, they were dislocated, and thus vulnerable to abuse and loneliness. Of course, there are many ways in which this segment of Irish immigrants can be analyzed. It can be done by looking at historic documents, photographs or the occasional letters which were written. Yet, the way in which I shall analyze this group is through the use of three novels that deal with the Irish immigrant servant girl as a protagonist. The novels studied will be two novels from the latter half of the nineteenth century and one contemporary novel, which will give very diverse perspectives. The modern novel is looking back on an era and thus manages to put the immigration of the Famine and post Famine generation into a modern perspective while the novels written in the latter half of the nineteenth century present the view of the writers and people back then. The novels that will be used for this study are Mary Anne Madden Sadlier's novel Bessy Conway; or, the Irish girl in America (1862), John McElgun's Annie Reilly: The Fortunes of an Irish Girl in New York (1873) and Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace (1996).