Autobiography of an Exile: Analyzing the Reproduction of Subjugation Found in Sean O’Casey’s Dublin Trilogy

Sean O’Casey’s Dublin Trilogy travels through the Irish revolutionary period and
explores how this environment created a revolutionary Dublin where armed militants
struggled to overthrow the authority and privileges of their British oppressors. Seeking to
remove the colonial authority that had oppressed the Dublin population for so long, these
revolutionaries fought, killed, and died in their quest for an independent Ireland. In this
struggle, groups of armed men can be seen employing tactics that would only lead to the
continued oppression of other sections of the Irish population. By connecting the Dublin
Trilogy to his autobiographies, in which he highlights the importance of family as a
supportive unit for the Dublin poor, I propose that O’Casey, in the Dublin Trilogy, warns
that these ideological reproductions would eventually lead to the continued subjugation
of Irish women and other members of the Irish population outside of the masculinist,
militant identity supporting the Irish independence struggle.