Stories of the Great Famine: “The Hungry Death” as an inspiration for The Countess Cathleen

Facultad de Filosofía y Letras Grado en Estudios Ingleses Stories of the Great Famine: “The Hungry Death” as an inspiration for The Countess Cathleen Patricia Arribas González Tutora: María José Carrera de la Red Departamento de Filología Inglesa Curso: 2023-2024 Abstract The Great Irish Famine (1845-1848) resulted in the loss of twenty-five percent of the Irish population. Thus, the Famine meant a significant trauma for Ireland, which is reflected in the literature covering this historical period. Many literary works focused on themes such as starvation, death, and sacrifice. There are two works by Rosa Mulholland and by William Butler Yeats which deal with the most recurrent themes of Famine literature but also present a connection between them. This is because William Butler Yeats illustrates in his play similar literary motifs previously captured in Mulholland’s story. This dissertation carries out a comparative analysis to show how Rosa Mulholland’s “The Hungry Death” may have inspired William Butler Yeats to write The Countess Cathleen without it being a literary adaptation. Key words: Famine, Rosa Mulholland, William Butler Yeats, Sacrifice, Mother Figure. La Hambruna Irlandesa (1845-1848) significó la pérdida del veinticinco por ciento de la población irlandesa. Por eso, la hambruna supuso un gran trauma para Irlanda, que se refleja en la literatura que abarca este periodo histórico. Muchas obras literarias se centraron en temas como el hambre, la muerte y el sacrificio. Hay dos obras de Rosa Mulholland y de William Butler Yeats que, además de abarcar los temas más recurrentes de la literatura de la hambruna, presentan una conexión entre ellas. Esto se debe a que William Butler Yeats refleja en su obra motivos literarios similares a los plasmados anteriormente en la obra de Mulholland. Esta tesis lleva a cabo un análisis comparativo para reflejar cómo “The Hungry Death” de Rosa Mulholland pudo haber inspirado a William Butler Yeats para escribir The Countess Cathleen sin tratarse de una adaptación literaria. Palabras clave: Hambruna, Rosa Mulholland, William Butler Yeats, Sacrificio, Figura Materna. Table of contents Introduction……………………………………………………………………………...1 1. The Great Irish Famine 1845-1848………….……………………………………..3 1.1 Historical Context and Legacy after the Famine.…………………………….........3 1.1.1. Political Crisis of the Corn Laws……………………….……...…..………3 1.1.2. Kitchens, ‘Soupers’, and Workhouses………………………….………….4 1.1.3. Migration and Revolts……………………………………………………..6 1.2. Literary Impact after the Famine………………………………………...…...…8 2. Rosa Mulholland’s “The Hungry Death” and William Butler Yeats’s The Countess Cathleen………………………………………………………………...………….13 2.1 The Social Elite as a Helping Presence…………………………….……………..15 2.2 Sacrifice and Mother Figure….…………………………………………………..17 2.3 Nature and Homes…..……………………………………………………………20 Conclusions…………………………………………………………………………….25 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………27 1 Introduction The Great Irish Famine, which took place between 1845 and 1848, had a great impact on Irish literature. Within the literary legacy which it brought we find writers like Rosa Mulholland, author of the short story “The Hungry Death”, first published in Charles Dickens’s All the Year Round: A Weekly Journal in 1880, and William Butler Yeats, author of the play The Countess Cathleen (1892), among many others. Although both works are different —Yeats’s ‘spirituality’ stands in contrast with Mulholland’s Gothicism— both works present a close relationship due to the dominant and similar details which they share. Thus, Rosa Mulholland’s “The Hungry Death” may have been a great source of inspiration for William Butler Yeats to write The Countess Cathleen a year after he published Rosa Mulholland’s short story in his Representative Irish Tales (1891). The great literary impact that the Great Irish Famine entailed also led to the subsequent study of both the historical event and the literary production that emerged from it. For instance, works like Literature and the Irish Famine 1845-1919 by Melissa Fegan (2002) or “Irish Hunger Strikes and the Cult of Self-Sacrifice” written by George Sweeney for the Journal of Contemporary History (1993) discuss the impact of the Great Irish Famine on Irish literature and the way in which the works handle themes such as sacrifice. In this B.A. Thesis I will focus on the Famine literary motifs which Yeats’s play and Mulholland’s story share. Thus, through the comparative analysis I will carry out, my intention is to evidence that Yeats may have been inspired by Mulholland’s “The Hungry Death” to write The Countess Cathleen. For this purpose, my objectives are to perform a historical and literary contextualization of both works and to establish a relationship between them. My final objective is to compare a series of literary motifs which, being present in differing plots, are presented in a similar manner in both works. This dissertation will be divided into two chapters. The first one, “Great Irish Famine: Historical Context”, along with the section “Literary Impact after the Famine” serves to provide both the historical context and the literary context which encompasses the two works. This chapter covers the historical period of the Great Irish Famine during 1845 and 1848 along with its social and literary impact. The second chapter, “Rosa Mulholland’s “The Hungry Death” and William Butler Yeats’s The Countess Cathleen” 2 introduces the reader to the authors William Butler Yeats and Rosa Mulholland in preparation for the subsequent analysis. Therefore, the second chapter establishes the connection between both works by conducting a comparative analysis which covers the literary motifs that both works deal with. Three main themes are discussed, dealing with topics such as the involvement of the social elite during the Famine in both works, the sacrifice made by wealthy women, and nature along with homes descriptions in order to recreate a realistic scenery resembling those existing during the Great Irish Famine. 3 1 The Great Irish Famine 1845-1848 1.1. Historical Context and Legacy of the Famine The Great Irish Famine took place in Ireland between 1845 and 1848. This period meant a before and after in Irish history since it was a devastating event. The famine emerges after the importation of a blighting fungus which destroyed the potato crop, the main food of the Irish. In addition, the political and social tensions of the time aggravated the already inhumane situation, especially for those whose dependence on the potato crop was vital for their survival. The beginning of this new and devastating era is placed in August 1845 due to “the appearance of a blight, Phytophthora infestans, which within months had destroyed three-quarters of that year’s yield.” (Larkin 87). Unfortunately, despair not only continued but increased as the following years saw no improvement but a deterioration of the situation. “The numbers starving to death began to mount alarmingly in the autumn of 1846.” (Ó’Gráda 34). In addition to that, many people did not have a coffin or a dignified burial. Besides death, the Famine also meant a massive migration. Thus, “within the space of six years, Ireland’s population fell by 25 per cent, making the Irish famine one of the most lethal in modern history.” (Kinealy 186). 1.1.1. Political crisis of the Corn Laws During the onset of the Great Irish Famine crisis, the British government formed the Irish Relief Commission with the intention of addressing the Famine crisis through relief measures. At the same time, the 1846 repeal of the Corn Laws meant a very heated political debate in Parliament which completely overshadowed the matter of the Famine crisis. The Corn Laws were intended to protect and support British producers by hardening import measures. The debate existed because the Conservative Party was opposed to any changes regarding the market trade and the opposition was willing to intervene. The Liberal Party believed that accepting the importation of foreign grain would be beneficial for the whole nation because of high food prices, especially that of 10 number of poets including James Clarence Mangan, Richard D’Alton Williams, Thomas D’Arcy McGee, and Jane Francesca Elgee. Among the famous poems written for The Nation we can find poems such Jane Francesca Elgee (Lady Wilde)’s “France in ’93: A Lesson from Foreign History”. Through foreign examples of revolutions, she intends to show how violence and the uprising is the way to achieve the victory: Hark! the onward heavy tread – Hark! the voices rude – “Tis the famished cry for Bread From an armed multitude. They come! They come! Not with meek submission's hum. Bloody trophy they have won, Ghastly glares it in the sun - Gory head on lifted pike. Ha! they weep not now, but strike! (Morash 225) Lady Wilde’s “The Enigma” also tried to convince society “that the only solution was revolution.” (Wright 447). In the same line, Thomas D’Arcy McGee “hoped their poetry would be the means of inspiring and uprising.” (447). It is true that the literature of the Famine provides great polemics and political debates and that may be one of the reasons why it is sometimes difficult to associate this type of literature with the concept art. However, there were also novelists such as William Carleton and short story writer Mrs. Horae who along with “many others reacted by writing about the tragedy in media res.” (Fegan 2). Particularly, in William Carleton’s The Squander of Castle Squander (1852) there is a horrifying scene dealing with death and dogs turned into beasts eating almost unburied corpses: […] were engaged in huddling into the earth miserable shells of coffins, burying them at a depth of not more than ten or twelve inches int the ground; and one horrific remnant of humanity, whose nearly black feature retained the frightful and spasmodic contortions of cholera, was in the act of being thrown, coffinless and half-naked, into what was rather a shallow trench, than a grave! Round about, and in this awful cemetery, were numbers of gaunt and starving dogs, whose skeleton bodies and fearful howlings indicated the ravenous fury with which they awaited an opportunity to drag the unfortunate dead from their shallow graves and glut themselves upon their bodies. (139) Both Carleton and Hoare tried to make English readers aware of how serious the Famine issue was. But differing from the previous poets, they conducted it with a different tone. For instance, Carleton’s tale of Irish Famine “The Black Prophet” was dedicated to Lord 11 John Russell. Carleton’s intention was to make him be aware of the situation Ireland was going through from a respectful position, as he states, “this is an Irish Book, my Lord, to which I would respectfully solicit your Lordship’s attention.” (Carleton 1847, iii). But even though he himself calls his tale a “TALE OF IRISH FAMINE” (iii), the plot of the tale deals with an unsolved murder and a love affair. Regarding Mrs. Hoare, Shamrock Leaves; or Tales and Sketches of Ireland (1851) is a collection of tales and sketches that “originally appeared in various periodicals” (Hoare 5). In the same line as Carleton, she intended to awaken British society, arguing that she trusted “the British Public will not utterly despise these few wild ‘Shamrock Leaves’, gathered with a loving hand from the famine-stricken fields of my native country.” (5). In the twentieth century there are many other writers that used the Irish Famine as “either central or a potent image or metaphor” (Wright 445), such as Tom Murphy’s Famine (1968), William Trevor’s “The News from Ireland” (1986) or John Banville’s Birchwood (1973). We continue to find works on this matter in the twenty-first century, such as Niall William’s The Fall of Light (2001), Nuala O’Faolain’s My Dream of You (2001), Melissa Fegan’s Literature and the Irish Famine, 1845-1919 (2002), Carol Birch’s The Naming of Eliza Quinn (2005) and many others that testify to Cusack and Goss statement of the Famine remaining pervasive in Irish literature. Another point worth mentioning is that in many works regarding the Famine there is a recurrent kind of scenario which represents the famine focusing on death after a sacrifice. This is usually pictured as “a character —often the protagonist, usually of a higher class— [who] enters a cabin to find starving or diseased victims, usually nameless.” (Wright 449). This was made with the intention of convincing the reader about the dreadful consequences the Famine brought with it. Women, especially those who were also mothers, had a relevant role within this kind of representations. This was because introducing the role of a suffering mother in these scenarios provided the author with the ability not only to get the reader’s attention but also to reach the reader’s conscience. Showing the desperation and the sacrifices of mothers for their children was something nobody could read without experiencing any kind of feeling. Wright collects some fragments of different works that attest this, such as William Gorman Will’s The Love that Kills (1867), where “a dying mother attempts to suckle her dead baby.” (449). She was almost dying, but she looked for the strength she probably did not even have to try to save 12 her baby rather than herself. Sacrifice is something which will be very present in many works since that was the reality of the Irish society. Many had to sacrifice themselves in order to try, not necessarily successfully, to save somebody else. This is why the Famine also brought a feeling of union and nationalism within Irish society. Another recurrent image in these works was that of skeletons which did not necessarily belong to a corpse. “Some were living skeletons, tottering with diseases and weakness. Some looked like scarecrows, dressed up in rags, and moved by some inward machinery.” (quoted in Wright, 454). This is why the image of frightened and psychologically affected people fighting for food was the other side of the coin. William Gorman Will’s The Love that Kills (1867) shows both sides since, as Melissa Fegan has noticed, “a previously devoted father drags his daughter outside the cabin to die so that he can eat their remaining food in peace.” (234). Having to live such extreme situations turned many of them into wild people without being aware of the atrocities they could be able to do in order not to see themselves as the skeletons they were constantly seeing. From what has been presented, it may be clear that the subject of the Famine was a great trauma for those who lived through it and a great suffering for those who put those memories on paper. During the Famine and the years that followed, Famine literature spans a wide variety of literary genres, which, according to Fegan, include “histories, autobiographies and biographies, travel narratives, letters, diaries, journalism […] alongside novels, poems, short stories, and plays.” (3). Thus “the impression that very little has been written about the Famine, or that it had very little impact on the country’s literature, is clearly misguided and needs to be revised.” (Fegan 2). 13 2 Rosa Mulholland’s “The Hungry Death” and William Butler Yeats’s The Countess Cathleen Within the many works on the Great Irish Famine which depict a scenario covered with death and sacrifice, there are some that personify those themes throughout the image of a woman. Moreover, as it was mentioned previously, it was regular to present the protagonist as a high-class character in contrast to the starving people. In what follows, these details will be reflected in two works that, although apparently contrasting, share many elements. The Countess Cathleen written by William Butler Yeats and “The Hungry Death” written by Rosa Mulholland present a high-class woman who fits the most frequent illustrations in the literature of the Famine, but also share a similar pattern among them. I contend that a relationship between both works may exist. William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) was born in Dublin and became an Anglo-Irish poet who was raised between London, Sligo and Dublin. Yeats believed literature and arts should be employed to preserve Irish politics, so he founded the Irish National Literary Society. The purpose of this society was to bring out a cultural renaissance of Irish literature and to build a school of Irish poetry based on Irish myth and history. Nowadays, the Society still exists in London, and that society was the embryo of the movement known as the Irish Literary Revival (1892-1922). This movement did not only deal with literature, but with other social issues. In fact, the main purpose of Yeats was to keep alive Irish literature, culture, tradition, and beliefs after the grim historical events Ireland had gone through. Another important contribution to Irish literature by Yeats is the foundation of the Irish Literary Theatre (1899) along with Lady Gregory. The Gaelic world had no dramatic tradition and any theatrical performance that had taken place in Ireland so far was English. Therefore, both Yeats and Lady Gregory considered to introduce drama into Irish literature. The Irish Literary Theatre intended to represent the deeper thoughts and emotions of Ireland through Irish plays, and although there were no authors, no actors, and no audiences, they themselves undertook the writing of poetic and imaginative plays with valid Irish material. Besides, this theatre became an additional resource for authors 14 writing poetic-legendary, socio-political and psychological drama, which were much more meaningful in an Irish context than many comedies previously written by expatriates. The first play performed by Yeats in the Irish Literary Theatre was The Countess Cathleen in 1899. This play resorts to Irish folklore to depict a high-class woman, Cathleen, who ends up selling her soul to some demons in exchange for money during a famine. The image of Cathleen sacrificing herself to save Irish peasants during a famine has a very deep background since Cathleen represents what would be the ideal Irish aristocrat but also a symbol of the nation. Besides, the tradition of representing Ireland as a woman, initiated in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century with the Irish poet Aodhagán Ó Rathaille’s Aisling poems, is something Cathleen restates. Rosa Mulholland (1841-1921) was born in Belfast and the Great Irish Famine broke out when she was just four years old and, consequently, she witnessed the devastating consequences of this historic period. Nevertheless, Rosa Mulholland was able to enjoy an education within a wealthy home and family since she was “the second daughter of a doctor whose family had become prosperous from textile manufacture.” (Dalby 1). This was probably a relevant factor for her to develop her career as a writer, even though she began signing her works “under the pseudonym Ruth Murray.” (Dalby 1). Afterwards, “in the late nineteenth century Rosa Mulholland achieved great popularity and acclaim for her many novels […], several of which chronicled the lives of the Irish poor.” (Dalby 1). Her great ability to reflect the daily life of its society, including its needs, anxieties, emotions, etc., made her a relevant writer who caught the interest of recognized writers such as Charles Dickens. It may be that having been born in such a harsh period as the Great Irish Hunger was a condition for the fact that “most of Rosa Mulholland’s latter novels and short stories were set in rural Ireland, and many achieved a wide readership in the pages of Irish Monthly.” (Dalby 3), which was an important Irish Catholic magazine founded in Dublin. Furthermore, “her writing was encouraged by Charles Dickens, who published her stories in his Household Work and All the Year Round.” (Cahill 167), but some other artists also expressed interest in her work, among whom we find William Butler Yeats. Within the many Irish tales collected in Yeats’s Representative Irish Tales (1891) appears the short 15 story of Rosa Mulholland “The Hungry Death”, a gothic story dealing with the Great Famine, which may have had a great impact for Yeats to write The Countess Cathleen. As we have previously seen, many works have been written that had famine as their main theme. However, there are several reasons why it could be interpreted that Yeats may have taken Rosa Mulholland’s short story as an inspiration. According to Richard Dalby, “The Hungry Death” was written by Rosa Mulholland for All the Year Round on July 1, 1880. This short story is “a graphic macabre tale set on a remote Irish island during the 1840s famine.” (3). Some years after, William Butler Yeats publishes his very well-known Representative Irish Tales (1891) where he collects Mulholland’s story among other tales, and only one year later he publishes The Countess Cathleen (1892). Even so, although Mulholland’s work may have been a source of inspiration for Yeats, his work is not a literary adaptation of Mulholland’s story. Both authors deal in their works on the one hand with poverty and famine and on the other with the sacrifice of a high-class woman. However, the plot is not similar. In Mulholland’s dark and gothic tale, the development of a love triangle has a great weight and coexists with starvation and despair. Yeats in contrast does not exploit romance in his work, but he does provide spirituality along with fantasy scenes. He focuses on Irish folklore as well as the sacrifice of the high-class woman, also in response to starvation and despair. It is in the descriptions of the landscape and social situation, along with the sacrifice of two high-class women that Yeats’s nods to Mulholland’s work can be found. 2.1. The Social Elite as a Helping Presence The first scene of Yeats’s play may be one of the most famous and well-known when talking about The Countess Cathleen. This scene describes a humble home in which there has been an argument probably generated by the tensions caused by hunger. Mary’s husband had gone in search of food but returned empty-handed after spending a long time away, and Seamus ends up cursing the rich before Cathleen, the high-class woman and main character of the play, arrives. Meanwhile, the Countess Cathleen has been wandering around town trying to cover the needs of those who needed it most, but she ran out of supplies. 16 CATHLEEN. I gave for all and that was all I had. Look, my purse is empty. I have passed By starving men and women all this day, And they have had the rest; but take the purse, The silver clasps on’t may be worth a trifle. But if you’ll come to-morrow to my house You shall have twice the sum. (18) Cathleen is an aristocratic figure, yet she showed more interest in her people than in herself. She is a picture of the aristocracy that the Irish people needed and craved during the harsh process of the famine. However, when the Countess arrived at Seamus and Mary’s home, she had no more resources. This situation made Cathleen more aware of the reality that her people were suffering and the difficulty of covering all the need of the village. This famous scene from The Countess Cathleen bears some resemblance to one of the last scenes in “The Hungry Death” when Coll desperately begs Brigid for food in order to save his beloved Moya. Like Cathleen, Brigid, a high-class woman, devoted the last days of her life to feed her people. However, Brigid was hurt because she hated both Moya and Coll since she was in love with him: A knock came to the door which at first she could not hear for the howling of the wind; but when she heard and opened there was Coll standing before her. ‘Meal,’ he said faintly – ‘a little meal, for the love of Christ! Moya is dying.’ A spam of anguish and tenderness had crossed Brigid’s face at the first words; but at the mention of Moya her face darkened. ‘Why should I give to you or Moya?’ she said coldly. ‘There’s them that needs that help as much as ye.’ (339-340) Both situations are different, each according to the plot of each story. However, in both we find the high-class women who are feeding and taking care of their people who run out of resources, and not prioritizing themselves but feeding others, as can also be appreciated in these lines regarding Brigid: ‘But I cannot help everyone,’ she moaned; ‘I’m starving myself an’ there’s nothin’ but a han’ful o’ male at the bottom o’ the bag. After a while she got up, and carried the mess of porridge to the house for which she had intended it, and all that day she went about, doing what charity she could, and not tasting anything herself. (340) 17 The figure of an altruistic aristocracy was what the Irish people missed during one of the worst periods of their history. Moreover, it is curious how Yeats begins his play with a scene similar in concept to one of the final scenes of Mulholland, as if he intended to establish a connection. 2.2. Sacrifice and Mother Figure As it was mentioned before, sacrifice was quite present in the literature related to the famine. This sacrifice could appear in different forms, but in all cases, it showed situations of extreme despair. Therefore, the literature of the famine depicts how some people made the decision to sacrifice themselves to save someone else. Such a sacrifice also symbolizes a feeling of union and fighting in the face of adversity, since they were going through a common evil. This is also reflected in the other works belonging to the Irish Literary Revival which, according to George Sweeney, “helped to legitimize the sacrificial motif.” (423). The sacrifice of many throughout Irish history is understood as necessary so as to fight off the colonizer, generating this feeling of togetherness and nationalism. In fact, Irish society has carried over the concept of sacrifice from the old Gaelic tradition, taking the famous hero Cuchulain as an inspiration. “The exploits of this mythological chieftain, who […] sacrified his life to allow fellow warriors to escape capture and death, were retold, popularized and incorporated into the literary productions of poets and writers.” (Sweeney 423). Indeed, not all sacrifices were necessarily made only for a loved one; one can also find sacrifices to save the community itself, as is the case of The Countess Cathleen, where Cathleen sacrifices herself for all her people. On the other hand, we have also seen how, behind the sacrifice, many times there was the image of a protective mother figure. Therefore, in many scenes related to the sacrifice, a woman usually appeared sacrificing herself for her children. This fact is not only because a mother usually tends to do as much as she can for her children, which may also be the case, but the subtext of these scenes has more to do with the image of the woman than with the image of the mother as such. 18 Throughout the history of Ireland, the image of the woman has played a very relevant role in its literature. As previously mentioned, Aodhagán Ó Rathaille initiated a literary tradition by which Ireland was presented as a woman and as a mother-figure. This is because in many aisling poems Ireland was personified through the image of a woman lamenting the loss of either her beloved or her protector. “However, the use of the female image as a metaphor for Ireland is not confined to the aisling. From early Old Irish literature of the 8th century up to the modern era, depictions of Ireland as a woman extend.” (Apple 2). This tradition has been maintained within Irish literature for many centuries, as we will be able to see in our two works. In fact, another of the most relevant plays by Yeats (written with Lady Gregory), Cathleen Ni Houlihan (1902), also relies on the allegorical identification of Ireland with a woman. As we have seen in the previous scenes, both Brigid and Cathleen show total devotion to their people, symbolizing the protection and response longed by the suffering peasants. And it is no coincidence that both are women. Moreover, not only do they show a protective side towards their people, but in both stories they both end up sacrificing their lives to save them. In Brigid’s case, after first denying food to Coll, she ends up having a great remorse that does not let her sleep peacefully, because she knows that her attitude was due to spite. Finally, she decides to give him the last sustenance she has, knowing that it could mean the difference between dying or staying alive. With hardly any strength, Brigid goes in search of Coll to offer him the food she had previously denied him. The poor fellow had prayed so passionately, and was in so exalted a state, that he almost expected to see an angel of light upon the threshold bring the food he had so urgently asked for. […] Trembling, he opened the door; and there was Brigid, or her ghost. ‘Am I in time?’ gasped she, as she put the vessel of food in his hand. ‘Aye,’ said Coll, seizing it. In his transport of delight he would have gone on his knees and kissed her feet; but before he could speak, she was gone. (342) Apart from the sacrifice itself, the altruism of Brigid is also present since she did not expect anything in return, which fits with the previously mentioned image of the altruistic aristocracy. Indeed, Brigid ended up dying in place of Moya: Falling, fainting, dragging herself on again, she crept within the shelter of the walls. A little more effort, and she would be at His feet. […] Darkness, silence, 19 peace, settled down upon her. The storm raved around, the night came on, and when the morning broke, Brigid was dead. (342-343) The Great Irish Famine was a phenomenon that awakened in some people their most altruistic and protective side, creating that feeling of togetherness and brotherhood previously mentioned. It also awakened the darkest side of many others. But generally, mothers, as is reflected in many works of Irish famine literature, did not hesitate to make that sacrifice for their children. Therefore, the character of Brigid reflects that role of protective mother figure that has accompanied Irish literature for many centuries. Regarding Yeats’s play, during Cathleen’s encounter with demons posing as merchants, her greatest internal debate begins. Cathleen made her fortune available to the people and ordered shipments of food, but it was not enough. The famine was still present, and people were willing to sacrifice their souls at the request of these demons in exchange for money to get food. It was then that Cathleen finally realized that the sacrifice of her soul was necessary to prevent both the deaths due to the famine and the loss of people’s souls. Besides, she also negotiated to recover the souls already lost: CATHLEEN. The people starve, therefore the people go Thronging to you. I hear a cry come from them And it is in my ears by night and day, And I would have five hundred thousand crowns That I may feed them till the dearth go by. FIRST MERCHANT. It may be the soul’s worth it. CATHLEEN. There is more: The souls that you have bought must be set free. FIRST MERCHANT. We know of but one soul that’s worth the price. CATHLEEN. Being my own it seems a priceless thing. SECOND MERCHANT. You offer us – CATHLEEN. I offer my own soul. (91) In Yeats’s work it is also clearly reflected how a woman of high class works altruistically for the benefit of her people. Moreover, the protective mother-figure is appreciated in the kindness and purity Cathleen shows. After having decided to sacrifice her soul, she does not show any concern for herself, but is happy to finally save her people. CATHLEEN. Bend down your faces, Oona and Aleel; I gaze upon them as the swallow gazes Upon the nest under the eave, before She wander the loud waters. Do not weep 26 publishes The Countess Cathleen one year after publishing Mulholland’s story reinforces the hypothesis of this connection. This B.A. dissertation has successfully reached the anticipated results after having established a connection between two works apparently unrelated. Besides, this project provides a study of the literature of the Great Irish Famine, highlighting how the historical framework is crucial for writing many literary works. 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