From her origin in myth to her representation in song, poem, or story, the goddess has appeared in one avatar or another throughout Irish literature. Images require interpretation, and this postcolonial, feminist examination re-visions the goddess as a spinster Sean Bhean Bhocht, which contradicts the patriarchal version of all women as invisible, voiceless, and virtuous.

The works discussed are by writers both male and female, of native birth and diasporan. Their genres range from the ancient ballad, to the poetry of the Great Famine, to drama of the fin de siècle Irish Literary Revival, and to short fiction from the twentieth century. Each of the works is associated with some form of cultural controversy extant at the time of its creation. Although the span of time covered is extensive, the choice of literature is limited to works that respectively reconsider a fundamental aspect of Irish identity—artistic independence, religion, land, and language—as it is conceptualized by a non-traditional representation of woman, the spinster Sean Bhean Bhocht.

By revisiting such pagan images as the mythological Sean Bhean Bhocht and exploring her dual identity of Old Woman/Young Maid, writers contest the subjugation of Irish women by colonial and patriarchal Christian culture. Their representations of the Sean Bhean Bhoct emphasize that women need not be constrained to a sole symbolic role as Mother Ireland. Instead, with her as a guidepost, Irish women may challenge restrictive historical and political representations of them as passive and domestic or sacrificial and suffering, contributing to the nation solely through marriage and motherhood.

The results of my examination reveal that the Irish spinster, a woman who loves her country yet chooses to reproduce it with cultural creativity rather than by bearing its children, maintains a unique and invaluable role in Irish nationalism. She has proven herself to be a significant, unifying thread in the patchwork cloak of Irish history.