The legal strategies of female litigants in late medieval Ireland: myths and modern assumptions

Nationalist movements in early twentieth-century Ireland harnessed myths of female power and independence under medieval Irish law to glorify pre-Norman Ireland and contrast women’s position in it with that under the supposedly more repressive legal structures imposed by the English. The idea of relatively unfettered female independence in Gaelic Ireland, particularly in matters of family relationships, divorce and abortion, also appealed to historians influenced by the feminist movements of the 1970s and 1980s. The notion that women had an unusually liberated position in medieval Irish society, especially in comparison to society in the English colony in Ireland, has been challenged, but nevertheless persists in the popular imagination and in historical writing. This paper interrogates several of the assumptions that underlie the historiography of the last century; that independence of action was ipso facto positive for female litigants; that the greater availability of divorce in Gaelic areas was likewise beneficial for women; that the aims of modern feminist movements can be read back into medieval societies to assess how positive they were for the women living in them; even that medieval women saw themselves as individuals in the way that modern historians understand. It does so by looking at the legal strategies of female litigants in late medieval Ireland and determining the circumstances under which they resorted to particular courts or jurisdictions, how they framed their pleas, whether they sought to plead alone or with male assistance, and assessing which legal options these women thought were most beneficial for their case.