Irish Sentimentality and White Racial Projects in the Civil War Novels of Mary Anne Sadlier and Mary L. Meaney

In their Civil War-era novels, Mary Anne Sadlier and Mary L. Meaney assert Irish whiteness on the one hand through tropes of Europeanness, civilization, Christianity, and freedom. They also contrast Irish white racial status with the inferior status of slaves and savages. On the other hand, both authors distance their characters from English and Anglo-American culture and from the Protestant models of womanhood expressed in American sentimental fiction. They do so by demonstrating their fidelity to Catholicism and Irish culture and, in Sadlier’s case, by suggesting the racial inferiority of Anglo-American women. This strategy of highlighting Irish white racial belonging on the one hand and questioning the racial and moral strength of Anglo-American and English Protestants is not as contradictory as it seems; in fact, it allows Catholic Irishwomen to emerge as the true role models for white womanhood, whether in America or a yet-to-be-established nationalist Ireland.