‘You’d be disgraced!’ Middle-Class Women and Respectability in Post-Famine Ireland

Abstract

This chapter explores the construction of class identity and respectability among Irish middle-class women, particularly those of the lower middle class, in the 120 years after the great famine of 1845–50. Such an exploration is fraught with difficulty, since the related concepts of class and respectability are notoriously difficult to define. Irish society was certainly status-conscious — class-based terminology being used increasingly from the 1870s onwards¹ — yet neither urbanisation nor industry was sufficiently developed to allow clear-cut economic stratification. This makes it very difficult to pinpoint the Irish middle-class boundaries, particularly at its lower reaches. Where did the working class end and the middle class begin? Was class determined by the nature of employment (paid or otherwise)? Did the criteria for class differ between country and town? Did the same class indicators apply to women as to men? And was the quest for respectability a concept that divided one class from another or provided a bridge between them?