To commemorate the centenary of Women’s suffrage in Ireland this year, we are bringing you a selection of profiles from female activists. These are women who campaigned for and shaped women’s rights in the early part of the 20th Century. They wrote and edited newspapers, campaigned and founded the Women’s Workers Union, but their greatest legacy is arguably winning the right to vote. This week, we look at the life of Maud Gonne, whose life was shaped by politics.

Maud Gonne might be most well-known to Irish school students as the object of much of W.B. Yeats’ poetry, yet she was also an active nationalist and campaigner for most of her life. More affluent than other women in this series, Gonne spent her early years travelling between France, England and Ireland, becoming fluent in French.

Born in 1866, she became a committed nationalist by the late 19th Century. Seen by many of her contemporaries as ‘the most beautiful woman in the world’, Gonne managed to wield influence over other male nationalists. Independently wealthy through family inheritance, Gonne had a measure of independence unknown to most other women of the time. She lived in her own apartment in Dublin City Centre, as well as keeping a residence in France.

Journalism 
Though refused entry to some nationalist organisations, such as the IRB, that did not stop Gonne getting involved in other nationalist politics. She retained right-wing politics, following her political and personal association with Lucien Millevoye, with whom she had two children.

Gonne-MacBride also became involved in journalism, inspired by the radical nationalist journal Shan Van Vocht, she formed her own publication L’Irlande Libre. This was to be distributed around Europe, to highlight the cause of Irish nationalism. Using some of her own funds, Gonne-MacBride also contributed to Arthur Griffith’s newspaper the United Irishman, which she also wrote for. She would also travel in the USA, to raise funds for the newspaper.

When Queen Victoria’s visit in 1900 was opposed by nationalists, Gonne organised a patriotic children’s picnic, to counter the one organised in celebration of the Queen. This eventually led to the formation of Inghinidhe na hÉireann, a women’s nationalist organisation. Remaining influential in nationalist circles, Gonne portrayed ‘Cathleen Ni Houlihan’ in Yeat’s play at the Abbey in 1902, at the height of literary nationalism.

Marriage and decline
She married John MacBride in 1903 and they had a son, Sean MacBride, in 1904. However, the marriage was unhappy and they eventually separated. The resulting scandal, as well as a desire to keep her son in France for fear that his father would not let her see him, meant Gonne was removed from Irish nationalist circles. Though she remained in contact with many of her contemporaries in Dublin, the nationalist organisations she had founded continued without her.

Following her husband’s death in 1916, Gonne returned more frequently to Ireland and became involved in some rallies and supporting prisoners during the Irish War of Independence (1919-21). While she continued friendships with other female nationalists, her life had become centred in Paris. Gonne’s failed marriage had impacted on her public standing and she no longer enjoyed the unusual freedom she had at the turn of the 20th Century. Spending the rest of her life between Ireland and France, Gonne died in 1953.

Click here to see the previous instalment in this series, about the life of Nora Connolly O’Brien.

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