Mary Hayden’s name was well known to earlier generations for A Short History of the Irish People, her widely-read Irish history textbook used in Irish schools and colleges for 50 years.
She was the first holder of the Chair of Modern Irish History in University College Dublin, and one of the first women professors in Ireland. As a veteran of the struggle by women for admission to the university, the origins of her feminism were rooted in her striving to escape from the conventional life expected of a young middle-class woman in late 19th-century Dublin.
Hayden’s life is significant and her achievements are worth recording as an illustration of one woman’s experiences in late Victorian and early 20th-century Ireland. The diaries which Hayden kept for about 25 years are a fascinating introduction to her early life, her hopes, achievements and disappointments. And it was not all earnest. Sometimes adventurous in her girlhood, the young adult toured Palestine on horseback and swam off ships in the Mediterranean.
The young Hayden found the conventions of middle-class life to be increasingly unacceptable, so she flouted them in small and then in greater ways as she began to apply her critical faculties to the anomalies of life for a woman
Irish society was patriarchal; women were considered to be subordinate to men in rights, roles, responsibilities and opportunities. The young Hayden found the conventions of middle-class life to be increasingly unacceptable, so she flouted them in small and then in greater ways as she began to apply her critical faculties to the anomalies of life for a woman.
In time she would come to the conclusion of many in the developing women’s movement that for equality to happen women needed education, remunerative employment and the right to vote, whereby they could influence changes in the law. Economic independence was central to Victorian feminism and Hayden commented that few women “understand the pride of making money for themselves”.
Probably the best-known women in early 20th-century Irish history are Maud Gonne, Constance Markievicz and Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, who were all Hayden’s contemporaries. They came from varied backgrounds, but all four had been reared in comfort.
In adulthood, Hayden was very different from the other three in not being involved in republican nationalist organisations and not sharing their republican aspirations, which may perhaps explain the neglect of her somewhat different life story. At the same time she was a lifelong friend of Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, another veteran of the university struggle, and was closely associated with her in a succession of campaigns for women’s rights.
Hayden’s wide circle of friends and acquaintances included Isabella Mulvany and Alice Oldham of Alexandra College, the Quaker protagonists of women’s rights Anna and Thomas Haslam, Agnes O’Farrelly, Patrick Pearse, George Sigerson and his daughter Hester, WB Yeats, Fr Tom Finlay, Douglas Hyde and Eoin MacNeill.
Towards the end of the 19th century, Hayden became interested in the issue of female suffrage. She was prominently involved in the suffrage campaign, addressing meetings organised by many suffrage associations and she wrote for the Irish Citizen newspaper. But she did not agree with militant activity, being a suffragist rather than a suffragette. Similarly, though enjoying a long and warm friendship with Pearse, whom she had met in the Gaelic League, she did not approve of the 1916 Rising.
Hayden’s interest in the Celtic Revival, the Gaelic League and the Irish language, and increasingly in Irish history, made her a constitutional nationalist. She agreed with the Treaty settlement, but became increasingly critical of what she, and other feminists, perceived as discriminatory regulations and legislation against women, affecting citizenship, jury service, employment prospects, culminating in the protests against women’s status in the 1937 Constitution.
Hayden’s working life was spent in teaching. She held her professorship for 27 years. Though she had no training and little experience of original research in the modern sense, in her time she was regarded as a significant scholar, who had surmounted the 19th-century obstacles to women’s higher education.
Hayden had frequently stressed the importance of woman’s role in domestic life and in rearing children; but for herself she did not make time for these roles, which led to her expressing occasional regret in her later life. Though she would not have known the terms career woman or professional woman, that is what she became, a recognised figure in public life.
An account of Hayden’s life is a graphic record of the changes affecting women between the mid-points of the 19th and 20th centuries. Her example provided a credible model for the next generation. She consistently promoted the belief that equal citizenship for women implied an autonomous role for them in a society of equal participants. She hoped that the significance of woman’s role, both public and private, would be acknowledged. As a feminist, Hayden had become, and remained, patiently optimistic.
Her life story and life's work is fascinating, and she deserves her place among the names of those who helped develop the early Irish state.
Mary Hayden: Irish Historian and Feminist 1862-1942 by Joyce Padbury is published by Arlen House, at €25. Distributed by Argosy and internationally by Syracuse University Press
