See no evil: Representations of suffering during the Great Irish Famine by Eibhlin Inglesby

This article will compare two artefacts that portray the events of An Gorta Mór (The Great Irish Famine) of 1845-1852.1 These comprise a journal written by Oxford students, Dufferin and Boyle, who journeyed to Skibbereen in West Cork in 1847, in their desire to have a personal experience of the reputed condition of the people, and a painting by a Cork Artist, Daniel Macdonald: An Irish Peasant Family Discovering the Blight of their Store (1847). Analysis of these artefacts will interrogate the reasons why the written word was ‘allowed’ to reveal truths that may have been censored in a visual image. Factors that will be considered as salient are ‘objective’ representations, intellectual motivation and intended audiences, alongside notions of aesthetic propriety. It will be argued that, although British Victorian society might have considered it acceptable for select audiences to be appraised of ‘unfortunate realities’, society in general needed to be protected and indeed encouraged in its desire to ‘see no evil’.