The Banshees: A Literary History of Irish American Women (17 page)

However, in her short story “An Attack of Hunger,” she makes a strong

point. Throughout, Rose and Hubert bicker, refl ecting spousal tensions gen-

erally unaired at the time in women’s fi ction. Rose glares at Hubert. He

watches her “with dislike and alarm,” shouting, “You shut up! . . . Do you

hear me? Shut up before I say something you won’t want to hear.” As the

fi ghting escalates, Hubert accuses Rose of driving their son John from home.

“He was sick of you and I’m sick of you, sick of your long face and your

moans and sighs—I wish you’d get out of the room, I wish you’d go, go on,

go away. . . . All I want is not to have to look at you anymore this evening”

(Brennan 1962, 26). Forcing herself out the door, Rose resists the urge to

beg his forgiveness. She considers borrowing money from her parish priest to

go to John, but realizes “he would disapprove. He would tell her to go back

Barr Ebest 1st pages.indd 74

Barr Ebest 1st pages.indd 74

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 | 7 5

to her husband,” the plight of many a married Catholic woman in the 1960s

(Dezell 2001, 105). And so she fulfi lls her only option: she returns home.

Irish American women’s critiques of the church can be attributed, in

part, to the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council. The core of the ensu-

ing document dealt with internal confl icts: structural issues regarding the

church’s hierarchical authority and more pragmatic issues dealing with the

duties, responsibilities, and lifestyles of men and women religious (Seidler

and Meyer 1989). Refl ecting the spirit of the 1960s, younger members dis-

puted the church’s authority to govern their behavior. In addition to chang-

ing from Latin to English masses, the Vatican Council dropped many of

its parochial demands and adopted a more ecumenical stance toward other

religions. As a result of these changes, and despite the shift to the suburbs,

70 to 85 percent of Irish Catholics regularly attended Mass (Dolan 2008,

284–85). More pertinent to the present study were women’s issues involving

“abortion, women’s rights, the role of women in the Church, and the ordi-

nation of women,” which could be further subdivided into issues related to

marriage, birth control, divorce, remarriage, and sexuality, and the rights of

women religious (Almeida 2006, 79–81).

With the advent of the birth-control pill in 1960, contraception became

a topic of discussion outside the bedroom. In fact, one positive outcome of

Vatican II had been Pope John XXIII’s decision to reconsider the ban on con-

traception and Paul VI’s convening the Papal Commission on Birth Control

in 1964. After hearing the fi ndings of the Catholic Family Movement, which

reported widespread dissatisfaction with the abstinence method, accounts

of its ineffectiveness, and serious demoralization among married partners,

a majority of the commission voted to overturn traditional church teaching

and allow the use of “medically approved method[s] of birth control within

marriage” (Ruether 2003, 6–7). Unfortunately, minority members were able

to dissuade the Pope, who went on to issue
Humana Vitae
, which reaffi rmed

the ban in 1968.4

4. Valerie Sayers’s fi rst novel,
Who Do You Love?
(1969), touches on this theme.

Following two days in the lives of the Irish Catholic Rooney family, the overriding

Barr Ebest 1st pages.indd 75

Barr Ebest 1st pages.indd 75

7/3/2013 4:10:29 PM

7/3/2013 4:10:29 PM

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

These events coincided with the 1968 publication of Mary Daly’s

groundbreaking work,
The Church and the Second Sex
. Written in the years

between Vatican II and
Humana Vitae
, Daly had viewed Vatican II as the

fi rst step toward a revitalized, more modern church, but with the emergence

of
Humana Vitae
, change was no longer in the air. After her work was pub-

lished, Daly was denied tenure at Boston College; however, in a striking

example of irony, Daly’s superiors reversed their decision after twenty-fi ve

hundred
male
students signed a petition in protest (Boston College did not

admit females until 1970). Known as one of the best feminist minds of the

twentieth century, Daly was neither an upstart nor an apostate. The daugh-

ter of Francis Xavier and Anna Catherine Daly, she was a cradle Catholic,

attending parochial schools as a child, earning her B.A. at St. Rose and an

M.A. at Catholic University (Lewis 2011). When Catholic University would

not allow her to study theology because she was a woman, she earned her

fi rst doctorate from St. Mary’s College/Notre Dame University in 1954 and

subsequent degrees in theology and philosophy from the University of Fri-

bourg in 1963 and 1965. The following year she was hired in the theology

department at Boston College (
Encyclopedia
2011).

The Church and the Second Sex
traces the history of misogyny in the

Catholic Church, taking care to point out that this could not occur or con-

tinue without secular approbation (Daly 1968, 8). To analyze the types of

discrimination, she adopts the paradigm established by de Beauvoir:

• Patterns of oppression and deception such as hostility to women’s

emancipation, promise of heavenly rewards, enforced passivity, the illusion

of equality, emphasis on service over intellectual efforts.

• Perpetuation of anti-female dogma such as the belief that women are

“naturally inferior” and encouragement to identify with the Virgin Mother

to assure purity and servility.

• Negative moral indoctrination through adherence to Greek and Jewish

beliefs that women were morally inferior, essentially sinful, played a minor role

in procreation, caused the expulsion from Eden, and essentially unclean—all

trauma concerns Mrs. Rooney’s fi fth pregnancy, an unforeseen consequence that

promises to upset the family’s already shaky fi nances.

Barr Ebest 1st pages.indd 76

Barr Ebest 1st pages.indd 76

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 | 7 7

of which supported bans on contraception and abortion—which in turn

maintained woman’s status as a slave to, if not a parasite on, man.

• Exclusion from the male hierarchy, which creates an inherent feeling

of inferiority.

• The myth of transcendence through salvation—assuming one can

emulate the actions of St. Theresa of Avila. (Daly 1968, 15–25)

To demonstrate these forms of prejudice, Daly traces the history of the

church. To establish a record of contradiction if not hypocrisy, she compares

pro- and anti-woman passages from the Old and New Testaments, noting

that the church promoted the latter while illustrating that certain doctrinal

aspects, such as obedience, fi delity, and mutual respect have always been

applicable to males and females alike (Daly 1968, 33). Likewise, despite his-

torical views of Eve as inferior because of her sex, Daly points to passages in

Genesis confi rming that originally Adam and Eve were equals. Despite the

use of historical facts and direct quotations from the Bible, as well as recog-

nition of signs of change and offers of “modest proposals” toward a peaceful

coexistence, this work outraged the male hierarchy within and beyond the

church. But their anger was nothing compared to that of the laity—whose

ire was directed at Rome.

Following
Humana Vitae
, church attendance dropped from 65–70 to

50–55 percent by the 1970s (Dolan 2008, 285). Catholics began to question

the idea of papal infallibility and to follow only those doctrines they could

support. Whereas only 29 percent had supported the idea of female priests

before
Humana Vitae
, within a month of its decision that number rose to

31 percent, and to 66 percent by the 1980s (Dezell 2001, 175–76). But the

encyclical also had severe consequences: the number of priests and sisters

declined by a third, while the ranks of teaching sisters and seminarians fell

by 90 percent—a drop that in turn had serious consequences for parochial

schools (Shelley 2006, 601). With the loss of women religious, the Catholic

identity of these institutions faded away. After a record enrollment in 1964,

over 40 percent of the elementary and 27 percent of the high schools closed.

With these losses, the Irish American identity with and dominance of the

Catholic hierarchy also began to fade (Meagher 2005, 332).

Vatican II shook the foundations of observant Catholics. These feelings

are evident in Irish American women’s novels of the 1960s, which refl ect a

Barr Ebest 1st pages.indd 77

Barr Ebest 1st pages.indd 77

7/3/2013 4:10:29 PM

7/3/2013 4:10:29 PM

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

loss of innocence, certainty, and security, as well as feelings of dislocation,

emptiness, and rootlessness. Included beneath this rubric are the
Bildung-

sromane
of the 1960s. In Catholic fi ction, the death of a parent and the

child’s reaction generally parallel or stand as a metaphor for the “dissolution

of American Catholic culture.” Interestingly, “within the Catholic culture

. . . innocence survived longer than in most other groups of its size in the

United States”—at least through the 1950s—because the church answered

all questions and mapped out the way to heaven. This is evident in the senti-

mental novels written during that era such as Ramona Stewart’s
Casey
. Up to

this point, American Catholicism had been a “clearly identifi able paradigm”

(Gandolfo 1992, 1–3). But a new paradigm developed following Vatican

II and
Humane Vitae
. World War II certainly upset many people’s world-

view; however, the upward mobility experienced by Catholics, along with

the rest of the country, helped alleviate any sense of crisis. Yet this period

also marked the beginning of a shift from the unquestioning piety of the

“immigrant church” toward a period of growing intellectualism as children

of fi rst- and second-generation immigrants comprised the majority of Catho-

lic college students (Meagher 2005, 143).

A parallel development was the move of Catholic novels from sentimen-

tal to realistic. The former basically adhered to the Catholic belief that such

works should be didactic. Since the Civil War, American Catholic fi ction

had been characterized as “fi ction with a parochial purpose” in the tradi-

tion of Mary Ann Sadlier (although the aforementioned women clearly had

moved beyond that). However, the crisis instantiated by Vatican II resulted

in a different type of Catholic novel based on personal experience—even if

the church did not appreciate the shift. Traditional Catholics disapproved

of any novel that criticized the church; indeed, conservative clerics such as

Bishop Norbert Gaughan characterized such novelists as having “‘fouled the

Catholic nest.’” Conversely, if not hypocritically, male Catholic writers who

took issue with the church were rarely castigated (Gandolfo 1992, 18–20).

Caught in the middle, Irish American women writers began sharing

their stories. These 1960s novels were highly autobiographical as well as

thematically related, featuring guilt-ridden, sometimes brow-beaten women

trying to break out of suffocating social, cultural, religious, and political

paradigms. Although literary critics have traditionally criticized women’s

Barr Ebest 1st pages.indd 78

Barr Ebest 1st pages.indd 78

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 | 7 9

autobiography, dismissing it as “merely autobiographical—‘merely’ in the

sense of ‘uncreatively’ or even ‘unintelligently’” (Hite 1989, 121), for women

such fi ction was empowering. Indeed, “the autobiographical novel contin-

ues to remain a major literary form for oppressed groups, as a medium for

confronting problems of self and of cultural identity which fulfi lls important

needs” (Felski 1989, 78).

This defi nition was particularly appropriate for Irish American women at

midcentury. Trapped between their personal desires and the dictums of the

church, many felt isolated. Although some married women worked outside

the home, this was not yet an American staple (or necessity). In Catholic

parishes, working women were still anomalies. If they did work outside the

home, they had to contend with “overt prejudice, sexist remarks, sexual sug-

gestiveness, . . . —the whole gamut of sexual and gender discrimination

and second-class citizenship” (DuPlessis 1985, 101). Perhaps more so among

Irish American women than almost any other minority, this combination

yielded “oppressed groups” greatly in need of “confronting problems of self

and cultural identity” (Felski 1989, 78). Irish American novelist, memoirist,

and satirist Caryl Rivers explains the dilemma. Catholic girls “were expected