Two similar women, two VERY DIFFERENT ERAS: just how different was life in 1916 COMPARED TO TODAY?
The woman
Gretta Farren is 28 years old, a university graduate with a job in the civil service. She was engaged to Tom, who she met at UCD, but he was killed in the early months of the war. She lives at home, in Rathmines, with her brothers and sisters. Her father is a high-earning Catholic barrister. Gretta is attractive and gregarious with a wide circle of friends. She was distraught at the death of Tom but knows she can’t mourn forever. She is lucky, and unusual, in having a job, but it doesn’t support her and the only way to have a home of her own is to get married. The Irish marriage rate is low and it’s only got worse since the war. There are fewer men around, beyond the very young, the very old, the very pacifist and the very nationalist. She hopes the war will end soon; meantime she knows she is having a much better time than her mother did as a young unmarried woman.
Her politics
Gretta supports the Irish Parliamentary Party and Home Rule like her parents but shows her independence by her defiant, if largely passive, support for women’s suffrage. She feels this gives her a certain radical chic, but she keeps off the subject in mixed company; she doesn’t like to be thought strident. She distances herself from the militant suffragettes – “obviously starting that fire in the Theatre Royal was disgraceful – someone could’ve been killed!” – and is all about petitioning and letter-writing (though she doesn’t much get round to either). She approved when the Irish Women’s Suffrage Federation suspended propaganda to organise constructive relief work at the start of the war, and was outraged by the poster in the radical Irish Citizen: “Votes for women now! Damn your war”, but after Tom was killed she found this phrase returning to haunt her. After the Rising, her views will follow the mainstream: initial condemnation and disparagement turning to sympathy and radicalisation. When women finally gain the vote in 1918 she is able to avail of it – being by then over 30 – and she will vote for Sinn Féin unlike her father who will stick with his own forlorn defiance to the Irish Parliamentary Party.
Her work
Gretta was avant garde in going to UCD to study literature and modern languages, and showed initiative six months after Tom died in joining the civil service, where she works in the local government board. This makes her unusual among her friends who, if they work at all, tend to be teachers. Shortage of men means more opportunities for women in the civil service, but the work is largely clerical, and it’s an occupation rather than a career. Gretta earns £65 a year, which is half what her male colleagues on the lowest rung earn, and not enough to live on. To put it in perspective, her father earns £900, while a manager at Eason’s earns £400. Her religion is a hindrance to promotion, though not as significant a hindrance as her gender, and if she marries she will have to leave work immediately. Her parents are happy that she has a respectable occupation but everyone is waiting, and hoping, for her to get married. She is too level-headed and ultimately too conventional not to, and in 1919 she will become engaged to a friend of Tom’s with whom there was always a little frisson. The marriage will be happy. She will have six children and far less domestic help than her mother; and she will look back on the war years as her most free and independent.
Her social life
As a member of the well-off Catholic professional classes, Gretta was brought up in a swirl of tennis, musical soirées, theatre, the Botanical Gardens, and concerts in the Gaiety and the round room of the Rotunda. Going to college in Earlsfort Terrace broadened her outlook and her circle – she attends improving lectures and occasionally goes to plays in the Abbey, though her support for Celtic revivalism is, at best, tepid. She prefers matinées in the Theatre Royal and loves the new upmarket picture houses. She meets friends at Bewley’s Oriental Café on Westmoreland Street or at Woolworth’s on Grafton Street, which has the novelty of a self-service cafeteria. She reads novels – George Moore and Somerville and Ross, and thrillers like The Thirty-Nine Steps, and takes guilty pleasure in the crime pages of The Irish Independent. In the summer, she swims at Seapoint, or sometimes goes to the heated baths at Clontarf. She dutifully helps out on charity committees in support of the war effort.
Her responsibilities
Her parents employ the full complement of domestic servants (who earn about £12 a year) and the only job Gretta has to help out with is shopping, from food emporia where everything is charged to account and delivered. At Findlaters or Leverett & Frye, or William & Woods in Great Britain Street, or Andrew’s on Dame Street, she buys the staples – packaged tea (Mazawattee or Lipton’s), biscuits (Jacob’s or imported Peak Frean and McVities), cocoa (Fry’s), ginger ale (Cantrell & Cochrane), jam, fruit, lobster parts, calves tongues and grated Parmesan. Since the war the price of everything has gone up and Gretta has a conscience about Dublin’s poor; she disagreed with her parents over the Lock Out. Her father occasionally takes the family to Jammet’s where the chef, Michel Jammet, used to work in the Viceregal Lodge, but Gretta’s engagement lunch was there and she doesn’t feel quite ready to return. She consumes alarming quantities of meat, butter, and jam but to no visible effect – her corseted waist remains 23 inches.
Her wardrobe
Gretta welcomes the freer, simpler styles and looser corsets, of the 1910s, and is in favour of the sporty “Gibson Girl” look coming from America, but she’s still an Edwardian which means she dresses in layers: long knickers, a chemise and corset or stays, over this a petticoat, then a dress, or a blouse and skirt, ending with a coat or mantle and a hat. The blouse alone has tucks, embroidery, appliqué, lace, faggoting, pleats, and trimming. It’s all very constricting and expensive, but it can look magnificent. Gretta has her dressmaker run up a “harem skirt”; she brazens out her mother’s put-down – “You look like a circus clown” – but that skirt doesn’t get many outings. Her father is comfortably off but he can’t afford the outfits in Arnotts, Brown Thomas, or Switzers. Instead she collects magazine pictures and has her dressmaker run up the designs. She splashes out on feathers for her hats, kid gloves and fur wraps from Barnardo & Sons. She saves on make-up and on handbags, which are not a big thing since well-off women don’t carry money.
Bridget Hourican
The woman
At 34, Fiona Keane is asked almost daily by her mother when she plans on marrying Eamonn, her boyfriend of six years. The problem is, while Fiona is certainly worried about her diminishing egg supply, like many millennials, she’s not entirely sold on the institution of marriage. At the moment, she’s more interested in travelling frequently and possibly freezing her eggs than walking down the aisle. And Eamonn isn’t pushed either. The couple, who met at Electric Picnic, live together in a terraced house in Portobello which they picked up for a steal in 2012 with a little help from Fiona’s parents (although their mortgage is still eye-watering by national standards). Fiona is a graphic designer at a Dublin 2 advertising agency while Eamonn is a freelance web developer who spends more time on his start-up concept than pitching to new clients.
Her politics
Until last summer, Fiona’s interest in politics was limited to voting for whomever her father suggested, but the equal marriage referendum awoke something in her that reaffirmed her faith in democracy. In this year of commemoration, she’s still trying to get her head around the heroes of 1916: she knows Pearse was the main man but her appetite for information about Constance Markievicz is insatiable. What an icon! Fiona was bored by last month’s election, and is more concerned with her reproductive rights than who is and isn’t paying water charges. She channelled her inner revolutionary though, and asked any canvassers straight out where exactly they stood on repealing the eighth amendment – that twelve Irish women travel to the UK every single day for an abortion enrages her. However, living in Ireland does have its benefits in the grand scheme of things, especially when she considers the ever-present terror threat and what happened in Paris last November – she had only been there two weeks previously on an impromptu mini-break. The refugee crisis weighs heavily on her mind and she is hoping that we can find some way to accommodate more displaced Syrians – images from Calais and Lesvos continue
to haunt her.
Her work
Originally from Dalkey, Fiona lived in Stoneybatter while studying at DCU, although her parents covered her rent and expenses for those four years. Following her degree, she travelled around Southeast Asia before settling in Sydney for two years. Her parents were devastated but understood the importance of seeing the world. Finding employment was tough when Fiona returned but, following a six-month unpaid internship, she finally managed to land her first junior graphic design job and put her degree to use. The agency is one of the biggest in the city, and her department is busy so her hours are often long, especially when she’s on deadline. This is a common problem for Fiona’s friends too, especially in law firms, where it’s normal to work 60 hours a week in order to be taken seriously. Still, the money is good now, although she’s acutely aware that many of her male colleagues are earning significantly more for doing the same job. She plans on bringing it up at her next review but isn’t hopeful – the gender pay gap in Ireland is almost 14 per cent. Luckily, her family has a place in Portugal so they get away on holiday at least twice a year, only having to pay for flights. Her one extravagance is a weekly cleaner from Hassle.com, which she refuses to give up even though these days her disposable income seems to all go on far flung hen weekends.
Her social life
Fiona hates the moniker Yuccie (Young Urban Creative) but a lot of her friends do seem to fit the bill. They try to do something cultural together at least once a week, whether it’s checking out a show at one of the smaller theatres, like the Project Arts Centre, seeing a foreign language film at the IFI or wandering through one of the galleries in town. At the weekends, she and Eamonn will usually go for brunch at the Fumbally or Sophie’s or invite friends over to chill out in their tiny but functional eat-in kitchen. They are always on the lookout for new restaurants to try but often return
to fancy old reliables, like the Saddle Room at The
Shelbourne or Chapter One if they have something to celebrate. On nights when she just can’t bear to leave the house, Fiona likes to curl up with her iPad and flick through Pinterest for interiors inspiration. She’s hoping that they can move to a larger house with a garden, maybe in Ranelagh, in the next couple of years. On Sundays, she rounds off the weekend with a hot yoga session at a local studio, figuring that it’s the easiest way to detox after an indulgent couple of days. Plus it gives her an excuse to wear her yoga pants all day long.
Her responsibilities
With Eamonn so dedicated to getting his start-up off the ground, Fiona has found herself bearing the brunt of the mortgage recently. He assures her there’s an angel investor just around the corner but she’s sceptical – is there really a market for an app that matches single people according to their pets? Eamonn does most of the cooking so Fiona takes on the shopping. She is passionate about supporting Irish producers so she has the bulk of it delivered by SuperValu (now that’s a handy app). Eamonn’s father has an organic vegetable garden in Monkstown so she’s always happy to pop out there
in her Mini Cooper to see what’s in season. Looking after the household budget is also Fiona’s domain. Between them, she and Eamonn spend a large chunk of it on takeaway coffee from 3FE and a divine chianti from Fallon & Byrne. Unbeknownst to Eamonn or her parents, Fiona has a maxed-out credit card that she can barely afford to pay the interest on. She’s considering selling some shoes on eBay to make it go away.
Her wardrobe
Fiona is trend-led but isn’t afraid to invest in classic, tailored pieces from Jil Sander and Helmut Lang either. Her workplace doesn’t have a dress code, so she likes to assert her creativity by mixing unexpected colours and fabrics, inspired by Alexa Chung, and statement jewellery has become her “thing”. If money were no object, she would splurge on JW Anderson, Gucci and Stella McCartney but she spends more time in Topshop than Brown Thomas. Simone Rocha’s new collection, inspired by Constance Markiewicz, has piqued her interest and she’s currently lusting after a khaki, military-inspired jacket. The weekly emails she receives from Net-A-Porter are depressing but she can’t seem to unsubscribe. Thankfully, vintage shopping isn’t expensive and she’s been known to queue outside Oxfam on George’s Street when something in the window catches her eye. At the moment, her favourite piece is a silk pyjama top from the 1970s, a gift from her mother who once sat on Mick Jagger’s knee and still talks about it. That, and her grandmother’s mink coat, are proof that good quality never goes out of style.
Sarah Breen
This article appeared in a previous issue, for more features like this, don’t miss our April issue, out Thursday April 7.
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