Ireland Social and political environment
During the XIX and XX century Ireland lived a strong social and political crisis caused among other elements by the intensification of its dependence of England caused by the end of its autonomy (resulting by the loss of its own parliament in the early nineteenth century); the existence of a single official Church, the Anglican Church, that had to be financed by the Irish catholics by paying a kind of tithe; a land property structure favorable to the English aristocracy, and a territorial fracture between the South and the North, in which the presence of British and Protestant settlers was concentrated.
Therefore, James Joyce is born and writes his works in a period in which Ireland was under British rule and the Irish society was engaged in a process of decolonization that undoubtedly marked many of it aspirations at the time. In addition to political domination there was also an Ireland’s self-oppression, marked by ultra-catholic values, of which it will be more difficult to free itself.
The so-called Irish Potato Famine (1845–1849) caused the loss of more than half of the population (about one million people died and about another million were forced to emigrate) and with them a significant part of the speakers of their native language (Irish or Gaelic) also practically disappeared. The peasants began a struggle to secure rights of possession and distribution of land. This agrarian movement became a political party towards the end of the XIX century (the Irish Parliamentary Party, commonly called the Irish Party or the Home Rule Party), that was directed by Charles Stewart Parnell that lead the fight of Ireland for reaching a higher share of self-governance ( the discussion between Dante, Stephen’s father and Mr Casey, during the Christmas dinner on Chapter I, about the attitude of the Irish Catholic Church against Parnell once that his relation with a married woman is known, reflects the highly controversy that existed in the hyper conservative Irish society with this issue since the church position supported and echoed the British position).
In this social framework, Nationalism had an extremely intense development in the Ireland of in the 19th and early 20th centuries that started from a long historical memory of grievances against the English. A fundamental part of this nationalism had an obvious religious factor, with the defense of the Catholic religion against Anglicanism. This self-affirmation process led to a a strong movement for the liberation from the Britain domination that precipitated the Easter Rising insurrection (1916). This independence movement culminated in the signing of the Irish Free State Act (6 of December of 1922).
