Petticoat Rebellion: The Anna Parnell Story

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Book Analysis Patricia Groves book Petticoat Rebellion: The Anna Parnell Story (2009) is persistent on the theme of resourcefulness and compassion during Anna Parnell 's willful battle with her brother Charles as she grew up to create the Ladies Land League and carefully managed the men 's Land League behind the scenes. From the beginning, Anna Parnell 's personality was essential to her mastered organizational abilities and was compassionate to every person she met. Groves ' narrative showed that Anna was always competing with her brothers and sisters, which allowed her to blossom into the most prominent member of the Parnell family. Early on, Anna thrived on pressure as she was keen on proving to everyone around her that she was just as …show more content…

The story is unlike other Land War books of its time as it shined a light on the actions of Anna Parnell and the women of Ireland who contributed to the Ladies Land League. Their reasoning for creating the group was to combat the increasing rent hikes by land lords in Ireland as they felt that the Irish parliament 's job was to keep the landlord 's income steady and in England they reduced rents with no problem. To tenants, this was reasonably unfair as they were the personal piggy banks of landlords. Without any help the tenants had little voice in the matter as landlords could willfully evict the tenants and jack up the rent price without batting an eye as a new tenant would happily move in and pay whatever the price was. By doing this, land lords spurred the Land Wars as tenants decided that they had the right to buy the lands they called home and believed they shouldn 't be required to pay such high rents, especially in the time of famines. The Land Wars message was to fight by withholding rent, boycotting tenants and landlords who took part in the scheme and passing legislation to change the laws without physical force. This was necessary as any revolution which killed or injured the opposing side would lose …show more content…

In one example, while Charles was in prison as a political prisoner the landlords were mercilessly evicting people, despite the no rent manifesto, which caused countless people to become homeless. So, Anna decided the best use of the money was to have prefabricated houses sent from Dublin to make sure no family went without shelter, but this went against Charles 's wishes as he deemed the donations as his political contributions to enact change at the legislative level. To top this off, the male prisoners had quality meals made by the governor 's kitchen while receiving a stipend every day. This occurred while the petticoats were out in the streets being verbally harassed by irritated tenants, landlords and had to work under extreme conditions while trying to stabilize both organizations while maintaining their sanity. The final nail in the coffin for the sibling bond between Anna and Charles happened after the Land Leaguers were released from prison. After their release, the men saw no use in funding the Ladies Land League as the land war was over once Charles signed the Treachery of Kilmainham and cut off funding to the Ladies Land League which caused Anna to shun her brother until the day he died. In the end, Charles decided to spite his sister and the Land League 's original message, which was to help tenants financially,