7. ‘It Is Myself I Seen in Her’

Despite the excellent efforts of recent scholars such as Gerardine Meaney, Cathy Leeney, and Úna Kealy, criticism of Teresa Deevy is still at a relatively early stage, yet her work is as deserving of detailed attention, and as open to arguments over endings and intentions, as that of James Joyce. In this essay I take Joyce’s short story ‘Eveline’ (1904) and J. M. Synge’s Playboy of the Western World (1907) as jumping-off points for a discussion of Deevy’s dynamic one-act play The King of Spain’s Daughter (1935) in order to explore the dreams of leaving entertained by women in the literature and drama of the period and the obstacles in their paths. Deevy’s work has been compared with that of Synge before, of course, but less so Joyce, and Joyce criticism arguably offers richer ways of thinking about the complexities of Deevy’s drama, and in particular the representation of women. Closer to home, for Deevy, Signe Toksvig’s essay, ‘Why Girls Leave Ireland’ (1929), provides a bridge into Deevy’s world, as Toksvig was a contemporary and correspondent of the dramatist, and she has fascinating things to say about the predicament of the likes of Annie Kinsella, the protagonist of The King of Spain’s Daughter, in a play where sisterhood and solidarity strive with solitude and subservience.