Girls, gender, Modern Ireland, education, teaching, learning
Images of the ‘ideal’ Irish girl and woman were mobilized through a range of dominant discourses in Ireland from 1831 to 1931: biological, educational, religious and political. Female education was firmly located within the domestic sphere. This paper critically explores the interwoven gender discourses in education that were fashioned within the ideological, religious and political context of the period and then moves on to analyze gender subjectivities and gender agency in performativity. Methodologically, it draws on uncharted archival sources such as national school books, teacher manuals, medical and religious discourse and published journal articles.