The Banshees: A Literary History of Irish American Women (34 page)

ing, “Screenplays” relies on jump cuts in time and place, moving from pres-

ent and past and from “fantasy to reality” (Fanning 2001, 365).

The longest and most experimental section is “Double Entry”: “In the

beautiful concept of double entry bookkeeping, the debit and credit must

always agree; no inaccuracies or altered circumstances are permitted” (How-

ard 1992, 220). The debit side (left page) is full of poetry, quotations, pic-

tures, illustrations, cartoons, and historical tidbits; it is balanced on the credit

side (right page), with a narrative about present-day Bridgeport recounted

fi rst by James as he considers making a fi lm about a murder case involving

his father, and then by Catherine who encourages him. Overall, Howard

attempts to create “as full a picture as possible, historical and personal at

once, of the connectedness over time of a city and its people, of Bridgeport

and this novel’s characters and author” (Fanning 2001, 366). Bridgeport is

evoked as an archetypal city that, despite its fading glory, retains its “heart—

a term that includes a sense of ethnicity still present among third-generation

Irish Americans” (367).

Traditionally, Irish identity centered around “nationalism, Catholicism,

and either language (in Ireland) or Democratic Party politics (in the United

States)”—all of which were challenged in the second half of the century

(Almeida 2006, 556). Jacqueline Carey’s fi rst novel,
Good Gossip
(1992),

illustrates the role of language. This novel could just as easily be called
Good

Craic
, for it is full of Irish Americans who love to talk—about themselves

and about one another. The narrator, Rosemary, is friends with Susannah

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and Harry Tierney, Dee Kilmartin, Liz Quirk, and Eileen Finney, New

Yorkers in their early thirties, each of whom is allotted at least one chapter.

Given the resurgence of Irish popularity in the 1980s and 1990s in New

York City, Upstate New York, and along the eastern seaboard, this setting

is only logical (Dezell 2001, 60). Each chapter can stand alone, but taken

altogether the reader gets a sense of these characters’ interrelationships as

they talk about their lives and loves in a contemporary novel of manners.

Their stories convey the social scene as well as women’s fairly secure status

early in the decade.

Outraged that her boyfriend wants her to vacation with him, Eileen, a

playwright, exemplifi es these women’s independence: “‘You get set like that

with a guy, and happy, and you turn into one of those little wooden dolls,

one of those awful smiling nodding ones with springs for necks.’ She began

to bounce her head up and down in imitation. ‘You turn into a pea brain’”

(Carey 1992, 76). Eileen is happy being single. In fact, when she meets a man

who Rosemary describes as “just like you,” she replies, “Well, that’s not very

interesting, is it?” (132). These women are savvy in the ways of love. “We

were more amusing when we got off on a tangent about the unfair tech-

niques used by our own lovers: silence, feigned objectivity, reexamination of

long-forgiven sins, unfl attering comparisons to much-loved or much-hated

parents” (157). Eventually they marry, but on their own terms. Liz Quirk

agrees to marry after her fi ancé promises to keep a separate residence. Tina

Fleck marries a man ten years her junior. When Rosemary decides to marry,

she does not descend into romanticism: “Once upon a time I’d assumed

husbands and wives would know everything about each other. By the time

Anthony and I decided on a wedding date, I realized this was unrealistic. . . .

I knew, after all, how scary it was to pick out one person to marry; it was as

if you had to pick out only one self to match. And how can you be only one

person, when you have the whole world in your head?” (180). This postmod-

ern view of marriage capsulizes early 1990s attitudes among the younger

generation of Irish Americans, particularly the infl ux of New Irish, many of

whom were “younger and more sophisticated” than their forebears (Dezell

2001, 60).

Tess Gallagher’s short stories evoke a nontraditional sense of place for

Irish American writers: the Pacifi c Northwest. Her characters are similarly

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

nontraditional—eco-feminists—whose concerns about the rape of the envi-

ronment, exemplifi ed in stories of loggers, are intertwined with tales of male

dominance over women. The stories in
At the Owl Woman Saloon
(1997),

narrated by omniscient males and females, center around humanity versus

nature. But the pervasive message is dark: “Shelly had the all-encompassing

sensation that places of refuge were thinning out across the face of the planet.

Soon enough, if a human impulse fi xed its mark on a creature, it would be

found and destroyed” (91–92). But it is the humans who are lost, wounded,

or blind. Even darker is Beth Lordan’s
And Both Shall Row
(1998). In this

collection of short stories and a novella, Lordan treats the woes of men and

women almost equally. Like Howard, she develops her characters by drawing

on their memories to fl esh them out and move the plot along. Since all but

the novella had been previously published, it is easy to trace a growing pes-

simism as the decade progresses.

Jean McGarry’s
Home at Last
(1994) is no lighter. A young boy witnesses

his father’s suicide. Two girls lose their father to a heart attack. Wives cope

with disappointing husbands. Each story is different but the themes remain

the same—sadness, disappointment, and alienation.
Gallagher’s Travels

(1997) continues on this note. McGarry’s protagonist, Catherine Gallagher,

wants to leave home and make her way in the world. But wherever she works,

she encounters the same sexist attitudes exemplifi ed by “ever more trivial . . .

moronic assignments.” In this case, Catherine exhibits a sense of agency: she

simply quits her job and drives away. “It wasn’t a tragedy; it was just the end”

(McGarry 1997, 221–22).

Susan Minot’s third novel,
Evening
(1998), is a fi ne example of fi n de siè-

cle narrative. As she lies in her deathbed, Ann Lord recalls meeting the love

of her life, Harris Arden, as well as her three subsequent husbands. These

memories are intermixed with the worried solicitousness of Ann’s adult chil-

dren, her friends, and her nurse, as well as jumbled stream-of-consciousness,

morphine-induced recollections. The gathering of the clan around the dying

matriarch is a familiar Irish American plot device reminiscent of Elizabeth

Cullinan’s
House of Gold
and Mary Gordon’s
The Other Side
. Although
her

children’s comments suggest Ann is similarly detached—“I think she’s got-

ten sweeter. . . . I wouldn’t go that far. . . . It’s just the drugs” (Minot 1998,

166)—her life does not revolve around religion. It revolves around men.

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A disjointed narrative,
Evening
is a bittersweet tale about love and

romance. Attending the wedding of her best friend, Ann meets Harris

Arden, who introduces her to the pleasures of the fl esh. When she learns

that Harris is engaged, Ann repeatedly vows to have no more to do with

him, but after a couple of kisses she changes her mind, believing everything

will turn out all right. Despite three marriages and even as she lays dying,

Ann holds on to his memory. She never outgrows her romanticized beliefs,

preferring to believe Harris would return to her if only he would change his

mind, when in actuality he was only toying with her. As he says after check-

ing on his pregnant fi ancée, “he remembered the weeping of the other one

[Ann] and how he could not reassure her. Well there was only so much a

person could do” (Minot 1998, 233). This novel serves as a cautionary tale:

women should not give in to their romantic versions of love, nor should they

believe that the men in their lives will remain true simply because of sexual

attraction. Indeed, when Minot’s fi rst novel,
Monkeys
, and her collection of

short stories,
Lust
, are viewed along this continuum, the message grows even

darker. Neither love nor lust is lasting; men will go on as they have because

they can, because women do not learn from their mistakes. Obviously, this

theme is more universal than Irish or Irish American.

In the decade following Bloody Sunday, the popularity of the Irish rose

to almost epidemic proportions in the United States, evidenced in part by

the Clinton administration’s diplomatic efforts culminating in the Good

Friday Agreement in 1998. At the same time, Irish Americans’ identity was

growing more diffuse. Starting in the 1980s, the infl ux of the New Irish

had diluted the melting pot, so to speak; this cohort, along with second-

and third-generation Irish Americans, was more interested in economics

than politics. Yet this interest itself caused a rift. Assimilated Irish Ameri-

cans were increasingly middle to upper middle class, having “distinguished

themselves in several arenas, including politics, the Catholic Church,

business, literature, education, entertainment, law, medicine, and sports”

(Almeida 2006, 560–62). They no longer lived in ethnic conclaves; they

had moved out of the cities into the suburbs. Although they were therefore

in a position to help the often-impoverished New Irish, they were not of a

mind to do so. Conversely, the New Irish came from a more advanced Ire-

land than the earlier immigrants; consequently, they felt no need to become

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“Irish American.” Rather, they saw themselves as commuters, not immi-

grants (Wall 1999, 563).

Valerie Sayers’
The Distance Between Us
(1994) offers a “history” of this

fl uctuating landscape. Moving from the 1960s through the late 1980s, this

novel is a bildungsroman depicting the lives of Irish Americans set within

their insular but gradually disintegrating communities, thanks in part to the

infl ux of drugs. On the other hand, Lisa Carey suggests the ambivalence

experienced by the New Irish in their new environments as well as the con-

tinued tradition of independent female Irish immigrants. Whether Carey is

alternating between characters or from present to past, this shifting point

of view helps reconcile misunderstandings and sad, mysterious deaths while

exploring feminist themes regarding identity and independence.

Carey’s fi rst novel,
The Mermaids Singing
(1998), interweaves the closely

related memories, stories, actions, and mindsets of three generations of Irish

and Irish American mothers and daughters—Cliona, Grace, and Grainne—

as they move between Ireland and America. Each woman rebels against her

mother; each generation is angrily independent, afraid of being her hus-

band’s prisoner yet waiting for him to save her. However, Grainne’s aunt

warns, “Waiting doesn’t always get you what you want. Sometimes, it’s the

waiting on a thing that causes it to pass you by . . . you’re best not depending

on the man to make the fi rst move” (Carey 1998, 199–201). As the novel

closes, Grainne reiterates this lesson, noting that in Ireland “the women

adore the men, but only pretend to depend on them” (257).

Louise Moffett, the heroine of Maureen Howard’s
A Lover’s Almanac

(1998), is no less independent. Angry when her carefree lover, Artie Free-

man, treats his proposal of marriage as a farce, Louise casts him out and

continues living alone in New York. Although the heartache affects Lou-

ise’s work as an artist, Artie is bereft. Howard contrasts this contemporary

love affair to the missed opportunities of Artie’s grandparents, Mae Boyle

O’Connor and her husband, Cyril, moving from Lou and Artie’s present

to their and their families’ pasts as Artie tries to learn who fathered him.

To illustrate the lovers’ pangs as they count the days apart and as “a dumb

way of saying what’s on [their] mind,” Howard intersperses illustrations and

tidbits from the
Farmer’s Almanac
; quotations from Virgil, St. Augustine,

Emerson, Donne, and Wallace Stevens; and Cyril’s journal entries and letters

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(84). For Louise, art underscores woman’s power to create the world. She