The Countess Cathleen
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Countess Cathleen (1899) by William Butler Yeats is a short play set ahistorically, but recognisibly during the famine of the 1840s. The idealistic Countess of the title sells her soul to the devil to ensure her tenants will not have to sell their own to buy food. After her death, she is redeemed by an angel as her motives were altruistic and ascends to Heaven.
The play provoked controversy over the blasphemous attitudes it apparently supported from F.H.O'Donnell and other critics including Maurice Joy.
Critic Susan Cannon Harris suggests these objections are based more on the depiction of the usurpation of the "male" space of martyr by a female figure than any insult to Catholicism in her 2002 book "Gender and Modern Irish Drama".
