Word: robinsons
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Duffy's uncharacteristic jaunt into the world of Irish politics was fueled in small part by her own Irish extraction and in larger part by Robinson's impressive reputation. "Feminists I was interested in talked about how terrific Robinson was," she says. "Nothing in our talks changed that impression...
Senior writer Martha Duffy has had her share of reluctant interview subjects. Saul Bellow was grouchy; Robert Penn Warren was shy. This week's Profile subject -- Irish President Mary Robinson -- was a different kind of challenge for Duffy, who usually writes about artists and their craft. "Robinson was | more guarded than, say, a fashion designer or a choreographer," says Duffy. "At times it was a little puzzling since she has a marvelous record of accomplishment...
Duffy was particularly struck by Robinson's determined effort to bring together representatives of like-minded grassroots organizations from around Ireland -- and from Northern Ireland as well. "There's no mystery in this," says Duffy. "The more that ordinary people know of each other, the less hatred there will be." She also found time to appreciate the "very human pace" of Dublin...
When Mary Robinson was a young girl just out of convent school, her family sent her off to Paris for a year of finishing school. It was there, as an impressionable 17-year-old, that she came to an important realization about her native Ireland. Its historic insularity did not serve to protect its culture, but instead helped keep it in the shadow of the English. "A country like France had such a sense of itself that it could never be diluted," she recalls. "You don't homogenize a culture, you enrich it by diversity of contacts." Only by becoming...
...Robinson went on to become one of Ireland's foremost international lawyers and a politician known for her secular sophistication. Now as the nation's first woman President, she has become a symbol of its European aspirations, as reflected in its resounding vote of approval last week for the Maastricht treaty and integration into the new European Union. But most important, given the largely ceremonial nature of her office, she has become a symbol of what made that vote possible: Ireland's renewed self-confidence and national pride...