The Banshees: A Literary History of Irish American Women (14 page)

marriage could last (Bourke 2004, 179–80).

The fi nal Derdon story takes place after Rose has died. Its title, “The

Drowned Man” (1963), suggests a poignant picture of regret, yet Hubert

believes he cannot mourn because he feels their marriage was a sham. But

looking around Rose’s room, he begins to cry: “The tears did not run down

his face and away. They poured all over him and stayed on him and encased

him, and when he tried to stop crying, because he was afraid he might

smother in them, imprisoned in them, they poured out all the more and

there seemed to be no end to them” (
Springs
, 210). Bourke posits that this

anguish in the midst of ambivalence parallels Brennan’s feelings at the death

of her mother, Una, in 1958. But “The Drowned Man” was not published

until 1963, and in the intervening years something else happened: in 1959,

Brennan divorced. Even though no one thought the marriage would last, its

waning days clearly impacted her. “Maeve was certainly heartsick at the time.

With her mother dead, her marriage to St. Clair McKelway sinking ever

deeper into debt, and her own writing in diffi culty, she was clearly feeling

diminished” (Bourke 2004, 209). This accumulation of negative events may

well have contributed to those endless tears.

Similar relationships provided impetus for the women’s movement. The

National Organization for Women, founded in 1966, was “dedicated to the

proposition that women, fi rst and foremost, are human beings.” NOW’s

Barr Ebest 1st pages.indd 60

Barr Ebest 1st pages.indd 60

7/3/2013 4:10:28 PM

7/3/2013 4:10:28 PM

1 9 6 0 S : T H E R I S E O F F E M I N I S M | 6 1

liberal feminist stance also affi rmed that “women’s work,” that is, mother-

hood and housework, was indeed work. At the same time, NOW hoped

both to “socialize domestic labor” and “remove the naturalized association

of women with the home” (Whelehan 1995, 34–35)—a theme Elizabeth

Cullinan explores in “The Time of Adam” (1960). During the summer, the

mothers take the children to the beach while the fathers work in the city.

When they arrive en masse on Friday night, they are treated like gods—the

wives wait on them and the children, who adore them, are allowed to stay

up late until their mothers whisk them off to bed (Cullinan 1960). As “The

Reunion” (1961) and “The Nightingale” (1961) detail, these gender roles

are no different at home. With “The Power of Prayer” (1961) this theme

grows darker, for the father not only works in the city but also neglects his

family, staying out all night to drink and gamble while his wife and daughter

postpone dinner in the hope that he will eventually arrive.

In her memoir and novels Maureen Howard details these effects on the

formation of one’s personal identity. Describing her inbred attitudes about

marriage in
Facts of Life
, she writes, “Girls were made to marry and mar-

riage was my only serious pursuit. My education and career were sham inten-

tions. . . . The endless dalliance of girls’ waiting for a man, for the man, was

my heritage. . . . My bridal picture tells too much: I am absolutely fi erce, set

in my purpose, impatient with the bouffant dress and illusion veil, the hate-

ful lace mitts—all chosen by my parents” (1975, 73). Still, as a third-genera-

tion Irish American woman, marriage did not occur until after Howard had

graduated from Smith and worked for a few years. In this regard
Facts of Life

refl ects the lives of women in
The Feminine Mystique
: after marriage, reality,

not to mention boredom, sets in. Envying the relative freedom of another

wife who teaches dance, Howard realizes she is not locked into domestic-

ity; she can refuse to spend her days making elaborate dinners or passing

her time shopping (Howard 1975, 76). This unsentimental exploration is a

recurrent trope in Howard’s body of work, as well as that of her Irish Ameri-

can contemporaries as they delve into the impact of family history. In fact,

her fi rst novel,
Not a Word about Nightingales
(1960), suggests the results of

a failure to do so. Not so with Howard and her cohorts.

Having grown up before Vatican II, Elizabeth Cullinan’s protagonists

mirror the mindset of many Irish American young women during that

Barr Ebest 1st pages.indd 61

Barr Ebest 1st pages.indd 61

7/3/2013 4:10:28 PM

7/3/2013 4:10:28 PM

62 | T H E B A N S H E E S

period, torn between their fi rst-generation parents’ expectations of mar-

riage and the desire to gain an individual identity and independent lifestyle.

Indeed, Cullinan’s female personae refl ect these confl icted desires (Murphy

1979, 14). The child of second-generation, lower-middle-class immigrants,

Cullinan grew up under the close watch of her mother. This relationship, in

conjunction with her mother’s repudiation of their Irish roots, led to a strug-

gle for identity evident in her young female characters (McInerney 2008,

98). In an attempt to break these bonds, Cullinan moved to Ireland in 1960.

The settings in
The Time of Adam
recall her three-year stay as well as her

diffi culty moving between “tradition and modernism” (Casey and Rhodes

2006, 656). In “A Sunday Like the Others” (1967), Cullinan’s persona,

Frances Hayes, is involved with the overbearing Michael Callan. After he

blames her for their missing lunch with a prominent director, she fi nds herself

apologizing. “Then, furious with herself, she tried to take back the apology.”

Yet she also tries to fulfi ll the woman’s role, “a conviction of [Michael’s]—

that a woman should be able to come up with something decent to eat no

matter what ingredients or what equipment she was given.” Rather than

complain or refuse, each time she visits she tries and fails: “She could feel his

disapproval as he took the plates.” Later, still pondering his missed luncheon

and potential career opportunity, Michael muses, “We would have got nice

and drunk . . . and then we would have come back here and been nice and

close,” to which she quickly responds, “I don’t get drunk. . . . And we’re

never close” (26). Cullinan’s heroines reveal the mindset of many young

women during this period, torn between traditional expectations of mar-

riage and family and the desire to establish their independence and carve out

their own identities.

Shattering the Green Ceiling

Irish American women writers chose work and independence. By the 1960s,

Flannery O’Connor had published short stories in
The Sewanee Review
,

Mademoiselle
,
The Partisan Review
,
Kenyon Review
, and
Harper’s
; received four O. Henry Awards; and published two novels,
Wise Blood
and
The Violent

Bear It Away
, plus her fi rst collection of short stories,
A Good Man Is Hard

to Find
. She had also begun lecturing and publishing book reviews. In rec-

ognition of her work, she received an honorary doctor of letters from Notre

Barr Ebest 1st pages.indd 62

Barr Ebest 1st pages.indd 62

7/3/2013 4:10:28 PM

7/3/2013 4:10:28 PM

1 9 6 0 S : T H E R I S E O F F E M I N I S M | 6 3

Dame in 1962 (Getz 1980). In 1960, Maureen Howard emerged from the

shadows of faculty wifedom to publish
Not a Word about Nightingales
, fol-

lowed three years later by
Bridgeport Bus
. Elizabeth Cullinan, who worked

for William Maxwell at
The New Yorker
from 1955 to 1959, so honed her

craft that she was able to support herself as a freelance writer (McInerney

2008, 99). During this decade, Joyce Carol Oates published three novels, all

of which were nominated for the National Book Award; she also became the

second female professor hired at the University of Detroit (Showalter 2009,

430). Jean Kerr’s
Please Don’t Eat the Daisies
was a Broadway hit, while Mary

Cantwell, Kathleen Ford, and Ramona Stewart were turning out memoirs

and novels.2 That so many Irish American women were publishing is not

exceptional per se, since they enjoyed a long literary history; that they were

highly visible and successful members of the New York literati during the

sexist sixties is, however, notable—for women’s rights were not yet protected

under the law.

Despite the postwar propaganda sending women back to their homes,

when the 1960s began, almost half of all American women ages sixteen and

over were employed, although the majority were in poorly paid “women’s

jobs”—secretaries, sales clerks, nurses (Davis 1991, 59). In other words,

while many women were working, their jobs were neither well paid nor intel-

lectually challenging (Woods 2005, 376). Of course, it was hard for women

to advance without higher education. At the undergraduate level, advisors

discouraged female students from pursuing majors in traditionally male fi elds

and pushed them into “women’s” jobs such as nursing, teaching, or home

economics (Woods 2005, 364). At the graduate level, sexist practices were

evident in male-only admissions policies or miniscule quotas for females,

2. Those genres were rare in the 1960s. Ramona Stewart’s historical novel,

Casey
(1968), tells the story of Irish Americans living in the Five Points section of

New York, embellished on by Martin Scorsese in the movie,
Gangs of New York
.

Kathleen Ford’s
The Three-Cornered House
(1968) pre-dates the fantasy-romance

genre with characters such as Lieu Lieu, Sir Lien, Erin de Rocca, Semi Iskatov Dis-

ser, and Khar. At the opposite end of the spectrum, having established her literary

reputation, Mary McCarthy published two highly political works,
Vietnam
(1967)

and
Hanoi
(1968). Neither was very popular (Brightman 1992, 555).

Barr Ebest 1st pages.indd 63

Barr Ebest 1st pages.indd 63

7/3/2013 4:10:29 PM

7/3/2013 4:10:29 PM

64 | T H E B A N S H E E S

making it virtually impossible to be admitted into graduate schools of law,

medicine, engineering, architecture, or veterinary medicine (Brownmiller

1999, 2). Even then, the few admitted were not treated equitably. Without

exception, the contributors to
Changing Subjects
, a collection of personal

refl ections on the emergence of feminist literary criticism, describe the dis-

missive treatment by their male professors as well as the many ways in which

these men impeded their progress in the academy (Greene 1993). While

male graduate students were welcomed and mentored, females were discour-

aged or ignored. In the business world, married women who might have

been promoted were passed over on the grounds that they might become

pregnant or fi red when they conceived (Davis 1991, 59). Even with a job,

women were denied credit. Regardless of position, women were paid consid-

erably less than their male counterparts (Hartmann 1982).

Granted, there were some notable exceptions: among Irish American

women, Margaret Fogarty Rudkin sold her Pepperidge Farm Bakeries to

Campbell’s Soup for $28 million in 1960. Rachel Carson, who held a mas-

ter’s degree in zoology from Johns Hopkins and had worked at the U.S.

Bureau of Fisheries since the 1940s, fi nished her research at the National

Institute of Health and began writing
Silent Spring
(1962), which exposed

the environmental damage wreaked by pesticides and led to the eventual

foundation of the EPA (Lear 2008). Doris Kearns Goodwin, who earned a

doctorate from Harvard University, went to work as an assistant to Lyndon

Baines Johnson in 1967. After working for Douglas Aircraft as an engineer-

ing draftsman during World War II, Esther McCoy was refused admission

to pursue graduate course work in architecture thanks to the aforemen-

tioned quotas; nevertheless, she went on to research and critique California’s

“neglected architecture” in
Five California Architects
, establishing the basis

of modern California design and eventually publishing six books on the sub-

ject (Morgan 2011, 59–60). But not every woman was so accomplished.

An Irish American helped change the sexist status quo. John F. Ken-

nedy’s 1960 election was considered a victory for both Irish Americans and

Irish Catholics, most of whom belonged to both groups (Dolan 2008, 272).

Kennedy won in part because he directly addressed anti-Catholic prejudice,

a political and rhetorical ploy that helped win enough Protestant votes to

sway the election. Such cross-over votes were increasingly necessary. Across

Barr Ebest 1st pages.indd 64

Barr Ebest 1st pages.indd 64

7/3/2013 4:10:29 PM

7/3/2013 4:10:29 PM

1 9 6 0 S : T H E R I S E O F F E M I N I S M | 6 5

the country, Kennedy won 70 percent of the Irish Catholic votes, but in New

York he received only 60 percent from his fellow Irishmen. Ironically, despite