ABSTRACT
Taking as its starting point the little-discussed experiences of many early modern Englishwomen in Ireland, this essay examines the experience of elite English girlhood in Ireland through the lens of the retrospective accounts of Mary Boyle (later Rich, Countess of Warwick) and Alice Wandesford (Thornton). Although Boyle and Wandesford present idealized versions of much of their Irish experience, their texts also reveal the fragility of this existence, ultimately reinforcing the importance of the patriarch’s physical presence in order for English girlhood to work on non-English soil.
