The Countess Cathleen
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The Countess Cathleen (1892) by William Butler Yeats is a play set ahistorically in Ireland during a famine. The idealistic Countess of the title sells her soul to the devil so that she can save her tenants for starvation and from damnation for having sold their own souls. After her death, she is redeemed as her motives were altruistic and ascends to Heaven.
The play provoked controversy over the blasphemous attitudes it apparently supported from F. H. O'Donnell and other critics including Maurice Joy. Critic Susan Cannon Harris argued in her book Gender and Modern Irish Drama (2002) that these objections are based more on the depiction of the usurpation of the 'male' space of martyr by a female figure than on any perceived insult to Catholicism.
The play was dedicated to Maud Gonne, Yeats' lifelong love.
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