The ‘Wrongs’ of Women: Sex and Sexuality in Irish American Women's Writing

Abstract

A key trait distinguishing the writing of Irish American women from that of their male counterparts is a strong feminist bent often expressed in stories featuring sex and sexuality. In ignoring these characteristics, Irish studies scholars have disregarded a trait established by Irish women writers in oral traditions as early as 600 and in written English since 1685. Much of this material was categorized as the ‘Wrongs of Woman’, a phrase used to describe stories about physical and sexual abuse. These same themes can be traced in the writing of Irish American women since the late nineteenth century. By focusing on these ‘wrongs’, Irish American women have not only carried on the tradition begun by their foremothers; they have also battled patriarchal bonds on three fronts: religion, which created such bonds; society, which reinforced them; and politics, which tries to recreate and re-impose them. A complete understanding of Irish American writing therefore depends on recognizing and adding the contributions of these women to the definition of the literature. This essay defines that cohort, then provides a historically contextualized examination of their literary attempts to address the ‘wrongs’ of women inflicted by religion, society and politics from 1899 to the present. In so doing, this discussion demonstrates the role played by Irish American women writers in promoting, protecting and perpetuating the rights of women in the United States and around the world.

Keywords:

• Irish American women
• feminism
• rights and wrongs of women
• literature
• sex
• sexuality
• politics
• religion
• society
• Irish studies

Notes

1. Charles Fanning, The Irish Voice in America, Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1991, p. 359.

2. Fanning, The Irish Voice, p. 313.

3. Fanning, The Irish Voice, p. 3.

4. Sally Barr Ebest, The Banshees: A Literary History of Irish American Women Writers, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2013.

5. Fanning, The Irish Voice, p. 4.

6. Angela Bourke et al. (eds), The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, Volume IV: Irish Women's Writing and Traditions, New York: New York University Press, 2002, p. xxxv.

7. Siobhan Kilfeather, ‘Sexuality, 1685–2001’, in Bourke et al., The Field Day Anthology, pp. (757).

8. Kilfeather, ‘Sexuality, 1685–2001’, pp. 758–759.

9. Kate O'Flaherty Chopin is perhaps the best-known precursor of second-wave feminist novels, dealing with adultery in The Awakening (1899). In 1914, Margaret Higgins Sanger promoted birth control in The Woman Rebel, a message Margaret Culkin Banning echoed in Harper's and other magazines. During this same period, Dr Gertrude Kelly was arguing in Liberty that prostitution stemmed from women's inability to find gainful employment. By 1930, Kathleen Coyle was exploring married women's carnal duties in A Flock of Birds. Margaret Mitchell blew them all away with Scarlett O'Hara's exploits in Gone With the Wind (1937).

10. Patricia Lysaght, The Banshee: The Irish Death Messenger, 2nd edn, Boulder, CO: Roberts Rinehart, 1986, pp. 259–80.

11. Fanning, The Irish Voice, p. 359.

12. Autobiographical writers include Carson McCullers, Mary McCarthy, Dorothy Allison, Jennifer Finney Boylan, Erin McGraw and Joyce Carol Oates. Writers whose works qualify based on Irish images, names, folklore or customs include the previous list as well as Ann Patchett, Mary McGarry Morris, Lisa Carey, Stephanie Grant and Tess Callahan. A satirical and experimental style characterizes fiction by McGraw, Colleen Curran, Martha O'Connor, Blanche McCrary Boyd, Emer Martin and Jennifer Egan. Within the categories of past lives, public lives, private lives and stylized lives, Boylan focuses on her private life and McGraw's and Patchett's characters live very public lives, but Oates's and Egan's do so with stylistic verve.

13. Eamonn Wall, From the Sin-é Café to the Black Hills: Notes on the New Irish, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999, p. 37 (my emphasis).

14. Gerda Lerner, quoted in Mary Jo Weaver, New Catholic Women, New York: Harper and Row, 1985, pp. 5–15, is speaking of expanding history, but this applies equally to Irish American women's writing (p. 5).

15. Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality. (quoted in Mary A. Kassian, The Feminist Gospel, Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1992, p. 109).

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17. See Carol Brightman, Writing Dangerously, New York: Harcourt, 1992, p. 343.

18. Fanning, The Irish Voice, p. 4.

19. Mary McCarthy, The Company She Keeps, New York: Dell, 1942, p. 114.

20. Mary McCarthy, How I Grew, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986, pp. 156–7.

21. Stacy Donoghue, ‘The Reluctant Radical: The Irish-Catholic Element’, in Eve Swertka and Margo Viscusi (eds), Twenty-Four Ways of Looking at Mary McCarthy, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996, pp. 548–574.

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24. Kathleen Tobin, ‘Catholicism and the Contraceptive Debate’, in Sally Barr Ebest and Ron Ebest (eds), Reconciling Catholicism and Feminism? Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003, pp. 202–26.

25. Quoted in Tobin, ‘Catholicism’, p. 211.

26. The short stories of McCarthy's contemporary, second-generation immigrant Elizabeth Cullinan, also address women's roles and the impact of the church on their psyche, but she reserves a special place for priests. See ‘Voices of the Dead’ (1960), ‘The Reunion’ (1961) and ‘Only Human’ (1971).

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32. Gordon, Final Payments, p. 265.

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34. Del Rosso, Writing Catholic Women, p. 41.

35. Del Rosso, Writing Catholic Women, p. 42.

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57. See Vivian Mercier, The Irish Comic Tradition, New York: Oxford University Press, 1969; David Krause, The Profane Book of Irish Comedy, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982.

58. McCarthy, The Group, p. 61.

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60. Joyce Carol Oates, Letter to Susana Araujo, 29 July 2003.

61. Quoted in Elaine Showalter, A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx, New York: Knopf, 2009, p. 318.

62. Joyce Wadler, ‘Dark Work in a Sunny Spot’, New York Times, 21 June 2007, at www.nytimes.com/2007/06/21/garden/21moore.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.

63. This theme recurs in Tess Callahan's April and Oliver (2010). Repeatedly molested by her uncle, April endures a series of abusive boyfriends until she, too, forgives herself and regains agency.

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70. Gomez, ‘A Transgender Mom’.

71. Showalter, Sexual Anarchy, p. 7.

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74. Gayle Greene, ‘Looking at History’, in Gayle Greene and Coppélia Kahn (eds), Changing Subjects: The Making of Feminist Literary Criticism, New York: Routledge, 1993, pp. (200).

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76. Alice McDermott, That Night, New York: Random House/Dell, 1987, p. 173.

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80. Quoted in Brenda Daly, Lavish Self-Division: The Novels of Joyce Carol Oates, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1996, p. 192.

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