Emer Martin and multimodal family dysfunction: More Bread or I’ll Appear (1999)

ABSTRACT

Emer Martin’s More Bread or I’ll Appear (1999) revisits the discourse of the family in Ireland between the 1970s and the 1990s. This article contends that Martin intersects her work with family “issues” of the day so as to accommodate the representation of what can be termed as multimodal family dysfunction. She provides insights to the role of women, family and global female diaspora. This paper draws upon work by Diarmaid Ferriter, Alpha Connelly and the tenets of transnational feminism to account for the historical, ideological and sociocultural contexts of the time. For Martin, dysfunction is multimodal in the way in which the Irish family portrayed faces real “hidden issues” from different discourses. Her novel also focuses on the “wounds” that have been the effect of abuse, secrets, appearances, violence and lack of communication within the family. Another mode of Martin’s representation of dysfunction considers the transnational experiences of her female characters on the margins of an Ireland becoming global. Her novel invokes transnational perspectives so as to commit to dislodging nation-centric and family-centric visions of Ireland.

KEYWORDS:

• Multimodal dysfunction
• transnational feminism
• Irish families
• pre-Celtic Tiger
• transpatriarchy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. For a thorough application of transnational feminism to Emer Martin’s Baby Zero see Rosende-Pérez (2015).

2. Rosende-Pérez, “Bodies in Transit,” 5.

3. Grewal and Kaplan, “Postcolonial Studies.” Quoted in Rosende-Pérez, Aida. “Bodies in Transit,” 35.

4. Hearn, “Global/Transnational Gender/Sexual Scenarios,” 209.

5. Fernandes, Transnational Feminism, 13.

6. See note 2 above.

7. Morales-Ladrón et al., “Introduction: Home, Family and Dysfunction,” 6–7.

8. Grewal and Kaplan, “Introduction: Transnational,” 16.

9. For Shanahan and Quigley, Irish literature at the very beginning of the twentieth century already featured such cases and offered “the most compelling portraits of the impact of poverty, unemployment and alcoholism on domestic life and childhood experience.” They trace it down to James Joyce’s Dubliners, but the same could apply to Flann O’Brien’s fiction, and more importantly, John McGahern’s The Dark (1965) and The Barracks (1963). Shanahan and Quigley, “Joyce’s looking-glass,” 31.

10. Some salient volumes have recently approached dysfunction in Ireland and in particular changes in the notion of family. See Voices, Inherited Lines: Literary and Cultural Representations of the Irish Family, edited by Yvonne O’Keeffe and Claudia Reese (2013), Words of Crisis, Crisis of Words, edited by María Losada-Friend, Auxiliadora Pérez-Vides and Pilar Ron-Vaz (2016), Family and Dysfunction in Contemporary Irish Narrative and Film, edited by Marisol Morales-Ladrón (2016) and Ireland and Dysfunction. Critical Explorations in Literature and Film, edited by Asier Altuna-García de Salazar (2017).

11. Because of lack of space this article does not ponder on the ways a novel may be different from plays, poems or even short stories – many of the latter deal with dysfunction and family too – in treating these issues. In the case of Martin and More Bread or I’ll Appear, the novel proves more suitable as a genre, as she establishes a long time span in which to approach dysfunction in Ireland and changes in family configuration too.

12. See note 10 above for some of the main studies on recent examples of family and dysfunction in Irish writing.

13. Bachner, “The Art of Rupture,” 251.

14. Connelly, “The Law and Private Life,” 321.

15. For Roy Foster, to better understand what happened in Ireland during the last three decades of the twentieth century, any approach should encompass many different disciplines that would explain the whole discourse: history, sociology, economy, political science and cultural studies. Foster, Luck & the Irish, 1.

16. Kirn, “Escape from Ireland.”

17. Conrad, Locked in the Family Cell, 9.

18. Morales-Ladrón et al. offer a comprehensive critical approach to the phenomenon of the ideal and idyllic Irish family within the rhetoric of the nation as opposed to reality. Morales-Ladrón et al., “Introduction: Home, Family and Dysfunction,” 1–8.

19. Ferriter, Ambiguous Republic, 379.

20. Martin, “Teeth Shall be Provided,” Martin, “A Sacrificial Shoe,” Martin, “The Pooka at Five Happiness.” Martin’s 1998 “Teeth Shall be Provided” already introduces Aisling, the protagonist of More Bread or I’ll Appear. Martin approaches the concepts of mobility and transnationalism, as she makes Aisling wander in distant locations and various companions. Aisling needs to move in search for real concepts of home, family and nation. For Martin, the meaning of all these has been conditioned by patriarchy and ideology not only in Ireland but, also, elsewhere.

21. Champion and Scannell, Shenanigans, ix.

22. Altuna-García de Salazar, “From Escaping to Facing Dysfunction,” 314.

23. Martin, More Bread or I’ll Appear, 3.

24. Ibid., 5–6.

25. For Hilliard, the concept of “familism” best describes the period up to the 1970s, in which the institution of the family was identified with all these tenets. Hilliard, “Family,” 83.

26. Martin, More Bread or I’ll Appear, 4.

27. See note 16 above.

28. See Morales-Ladrón et al. for criticism about the need of counter-narratives in Irish writing that represent a contrast to the happy nuclear families in Ireland that were difficult to find during the first decades of the twentieth century. Morales-Ladrón et al., “Introduction: Home, Family and Dysfunction,” 6.

29. Martin, More Bread or I’ll Appear, 10.

30. Ibid., 32.

31. Ibid., 6.

32. Connelly, “The Law and Private Life,” 320.

33. Ibid.

34. For Diarmaid Ferriter, magazines such as Magill, came to rock readers in Ireland as it “charted new ground in investigative journalism.” The monthly magazine “was challenging, provocative, angry and frequently revealing, shedding light on many of the dark corners of Irish society.” Ferriter, What if? 27. One should also remember that the Catholic magazine Hibernia published some controversial editorials and articles on social and political issues. Reports on family and children were common in the 1970s in this magazine.

35. Barry and Wills, “The Republic of Ireland,” 1409.

36. Ibid., 1410.

37. Fitzpatrick, “Divorce and Separation,” 174. For Fitzpatrick, during the 1970s and 1980s “the efficient but rigid social organization of rural Ireland, and the marriage institution which belonged to it, [had] largely disintegrated.” Ibid.

38. Ibid., 195.

39. Martin, More Bread or I’ll Appear, 102.

40. Fitzpatrick, “Divorce and Separation,” 194.

41. Fitzpatrick, 196.

42. Mary Maher, columnist in The Irish Times also edited together with Kate Cruise O’Brien If Only: Short Stories of Love and Divorce by Irish Women Writers. Dublin: Poolbeg, 1997.

43. Ferriter, Ambiguous Republic, 371.

44. Coulter, “‘Hello Divorce, Goodbye Daddy’,” 275–288.

45. Martin, More Bread or I’ll Appear, 28.

46. Connelly, “The Law and Private Life,” 324.

47. Ibid.

48. For Diarmaid Ferriter, however, the 1980s pushed Irish feminists and their achievements regarding family, gender and abuse “back down.” Ferriter considers this to be a “backlash” in the debates on divorce, abortion, contraception and equality. He believes that the word ambiguity best characterises the changes and their consequences during the 1970s; as “this was not just true in relation to the status of women; it was relevant to a whole host of social, economic, cultural and political themes.” Ferriter, Ambiguous Republic, 679.

49. Barry and Wills, “The Republic of Ireland,” 1412.

50. Foster, Luck & the Irish, 4.

51. Barry and Wills, “The Republic of Ireland,” 1410.

52. Ferriter, Occasions of Sin, 451.

53. Ibid.

54. Moloney and Thompson, Irish Women Writers Speak Out, 198.

55. Holland, “Mary the Mother.”

56. See note 16 above.

57. Martin, More Bread or I’ll Appear, 6.

58. See note 16 above.

59. Martin, More Bread or I’ll Appear, 20.

60. Ferriter wonders what would have happened in Irish society if the amendment referendum had not taken place back in 1983. Ferriter traces the debates of the time and brings them to the debates at the beginning of the millennium in Ireland. Martin fictionalises many of these debates that brought about dysfunction with regard to the issues of female sexuality and abortion within the family cell. Ferriter, What if?.

61. Ferriter, Occasions of Sin, 330–332.

62. Ferriter, The Transformation of Ireland, 515.

63. Martin, More Bread or I’ll Appear, 53.

64. Ferriter, Occasions of Sin, 332.

65. Ibid., 331.

66. Rosende-Pérez, Aida. “Bodies in Transit,” 65.

67. Ibid., 4.

68. See note 16 above.

69. Fernandes, Transnational Feminism, 14.

70. See note 4 above.

71. Martin, More Bread or I’ll Appear, 86.

72. See note 16 above.

73. Hearn, “Global/Transnational Gender/Sexual Scenarios,” 214.

74. Martin, More Bread or I’ll Appear, 253.

75. Ibid., 256.

76. Ibid., 265.

77. Conrad, Locked in the Family Cell, 4.

78. Ibid., 524.

79. Ferriter, Occasions of Sin, 525.

80. Martin, More Bread or I’ll Appear, 266.

81. Hearn, “Global/Transnational Gender/Sexual Scenarios,” 210.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) under Grant (FFI2017-84619-P) AEI/FEDER, UE.