The Banshees: A Literary History of Irish American Women (47 page)

fi nally begun to attend college. But rather than tying up the plot with a neat

bow, Callahan returns to the feminist practice of writing beyond the ending

(duPlessis 1985). April’s fate is in her own hands; she will decide whether to

spend it with Oliver or to continue independently.

The latter part of the fi rst decade marked the return of errant feminists

as well. Nora Hammond, heroine of Mary McGarry Morris’s
The Last Secret

(2009), is the typical superwoman: she volunteers, works for the family news-

paper with her husband, Ken, and keeps track of their teenagers. While Nora

feels overworked, she senses that Ken is too, for he is rarely home—until he

admits he’s having an affair with her best friend. Although Nora is angry, she

is determined to hold her family together regardless of Ken’s infi delities. But

ultimately, she allows a psychopath to beat her rival almost to death before

she snaps back to reality and kills the man with a shovel, “hitting him. Again

and again . . . sobbing with every blow after chopping blow” (Morris 2009,

264–65). Then she divorces her husband and starts law school.

On the lighter side is Caitlin Macy’s second book,
Spoiled
(2009), a

collection of short stories about rich young women in New York City. In

content and tone, we fi nd a twenty-fi rst-century equal to Mary McCarthy’s

renowned Irish satire, for Macy skewers the lives of the pampered rich. In

“Bait and Switch,” Elspeth is vacationing with her sister Louise in Europe.

“It was so nice, such a treat, in Europe, to ride Louise’s long coattails; intol-

erable to have to cope on one’s own, getting by, like any tourist, with foolish

smiles and an ingratiating overuse of the formal ‘you’ form” (Macy 2009,

17). In “The Secret Vote,” Alice feels no qualms about planning an abortion

after amniocentesis reveals her baby has Down syndrome. “If one wanted

to be honest, though, wasn’t it better to admit that there was no choice to

be made? Wasn’t it, not unlike the upcoming election, the case that you’d

always more or less known which way you would vote?” (45). Her attitude is

further conveyed in disparaging comments about her mother giving change

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

to the homeless: “Poor Maureen had never discovered that a new morality

had overtaken the old, and the former was all about maintaining personal

boundaries—talk to the hand, dump that addict friend, wash that problem

person out of your hair, and congratulate yourself afterward on your inner

growth” (50).

“Annabel’s Mother” recounts the plight of a little girl raised by her

nanny. After the narrator praises the nanny, “she seemed pleased by my

hypothetical support, but it suddenly struck me as a foolish—nay, a total

bullshit thing to have said—the kind of crap we privileged white mothers

were probably spewing all the time, because talk was so very cheap” (80).

Gossip is led by “Victoria and Marnie, best friends who lived at 48 West, and

whose children—each had a pair of twins—were always being paraded into

the park and then handed quickly off to the pair of specially trained twin

nannies who attended them” (72). Gossip varies with the seasons, “such as

the size of the husbands’ bonuses or where people summered, not that you

used that verb. And there was the year-round fodder, such as which park

mother coming back from postpartum lockup had found her six-month-old

calling the nanny ‘Mama’ and fi red the woman on the spot sans severance; or

who had had a shit fi t and threatened the big D when she found her husband

had supported her mother-in-law’s feeding Carleton a banana (he was only

allowed indigenous fruit)” (73).

This narrator quits the park after the humiliation of admitting that she

and her husband do not own a summer house. Subsequent stories feature

spoiled children, nasty actresses, and a jealous socialite who steals her house-

keeper’s beloved red coat—and then can’t decide where to hide it since the

woman cleans for her. In what may be a nod to Maureen Howard, “Bad

Ghost” tells the story of the neglected child of the famed novelist Margery

Flood (see chapter 4). Considering taking a job as the child’s nanny, Stacey

admits that “the idiocy of people amazed her. Or not the idiocy but the

shortsightedness—the guilelessness; the fact that they didn’t lead their lives

looking for an opening” (165).
Spoiled
underscores the difference between

feminist and post-feminist literature. Whereas post-feminism accepts duplic-

ity by failing to recognize it, feminism exposes and critiques the characters’

hypocrisy—and Irish American feminists satirize it.

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T H E N E W M I L L E N N I U M | 2 2 3

For many people, 9/11 marked the end of an era. Gains in women’s

rights were either ignored—with the hope of abolishing women from the

workplace—or readily accepted as complete. This mindset clearly affected

the literature of the decade. Many younger writers accepted the status quo,

churning out formulaic novels for entertainment and fi nancial gain. While

some second-wave feminists retreated into the safety of marriage, family,

or the church, others remained true to their beliefs. This decade also saw

the rise of third-wave Irish American feminists. Their novels reveal young

women’s battles with sexism, sexual abuse, depression, addiction, and low

self-esteem, as well as the very obvious need to avoid complacency. In sum,

these novels continue to refl ect feminist literary history.

Contrary to assertions that apart from the works of Elizabeth Cullinan

and Alice McDermott, Irish American literature “remains enshrouded and

unrevealed” (Quinn 2006, 684), these novels continue to refl ect, if not

effect, change. They have revealed the sainted matriarch as human—lov-

ing, detached, hyper-religious, hypocritical, long-suffering, manipulative,

secretive, triumphant, resentful, frustrated, lonely, and homicidal when

necessary. In so doing, they created an abundance of realistic, unforget-

table characters: Mrs. Holztman, Mrs. Keeley, Mrs. Devlin, and Flannery

O’Connor’s many controlling mothers. At the same time, these writers

opened the bedroom doors to remind us that women have needs, that their

desires can sometimes overcome society’s strictures as well as their common

sense. Who can forget Meg Sergant, Frankie Addams, Isabel Moore, Mary

Agnes Keeley, Frannie Thorstin, and Eileen Myles, or their third-wave

counterparts: Kylie, Kellsey, and Kellsey; Astrid, Juli, and Thisbe; Rennie,

Cherry, and Amy? Irish American women have also created heroic fi gures

like Marianne Mulvaney, who overcomes rape and abandonment and for-

gives her family, and Nora Hammond, who kills her rival and makes a new

life. These women are survivors.

Despite some aberrations after 9/11, Irish American women writers have

carried on their duties as banshees. Loud and strong, Maggie Flood, Nell

Plat, and Eileen Finney defend women’s independence. Angry and aggres-

sive, their authors have scolded the government for its oxymoronic reifi cation

and mistreatment of mothers, faulted the church for its prejudice against

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

women, and indicted society for its failure to heed the plight of depressed

housewives, pregnant teens, abandoned daughters, and abused wives.

Mary Gordon has noted that “the Irish have managed to do these things

no one else could do. . . . The English told them they couldn’t learn to read,

and they produced some of the best literature in the English language. Their

church wasn’t supposed to exist, and it became the strongest Catholic church

in the world. A whole population is wiped out by famine, and they come here

with no skills, no money, no family, and prosper beyond anyone’s expecta-

tions” (quoted in Dezell 2001, 72).

While this statement applies to both males and females, it is particularly

true of Irish American women writers. These women ignored traditional

Irish feelings of humility and self-deprecation as well as the belief that they

and their stories were not important enough to record (Dezell 2001). In

addition to carrying on traditional Irish American themes and traits—reli-

gion, satire, alienation, ethnic doubleness, and stylistic experimentation—

they drew on autobiographical experiences to make them true to life. Then

they threw in a feminist twist, subverting the traditional by adding sexual-

ity and sexual preference and raising consciousness through discussions of

women’s health, domestic violence, and self-mutilation. In doing so, they

expanded the boundaries of Irish American literature by 50 percent: they

included the women.

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Works Cited

•

Index

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Works Cited

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Almeida, Linda Dowling. 2006. “Irish America, 1940–2000.” In Lee and Casey,

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. 2001.
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ana Univ. Press.

Andermahr, Sonya. 2000. “‘A Person Positions Herself on Quicksand’: The Post-

modern Politics of Identity and Location in Sarah Schulman’s
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Mahoney, Who Was under the Infl uence of the Protestants about a Year, and

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Months
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Anthony, Katherine. 1914.
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Bagnel, Joan. 1974.
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Banning, Margaret Culkin. 1976.
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2 2 7

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