SOURCE: "The Female Gaze: Asenath Nicholson's Famine Narrative," in "Fearful Realities": New Perspectives on the Famine, edited by Chris Morash and Richard Hayes, Irish Academic Press, 1996, pp. 119-30.

In the following essay, Kelleher re-examines the eyewitness account of the Famine by Asenath Nicholson, an American teacher who traveled to Ireland during the Famine in order to "personally investigate the condition of the poor" and to distribute Bibles. Kelleher analyzes Nicholson's writings from a feminine viewpoint, as defined by modern feminist film theory, and demonstrates the differences between Nicholson's accounts and contemporary male observations of the Famine and its victims.

An Excerpt from Gerald Keegan's Diary, Dated May 27th, 1847, in Which He Describes the Sufferings and Indignities He and His Fellow Emigrants Endured While Escaping the Famine:

. . . I have told, in my own simple way, the story of how the poor and the dispossessed and the patriots are being...