‘At Least We Can Lock the Door’: Radical Domesticity in the Writing of Bernadette Devlin and Nell Mccafferty

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between life-writing, domestic space and cultural memory , discussing Bernadette Devlin’s 1969 memoir The Price of My Soul, and Nell McCafferty’s 1988 book Peggy Deery, an account of the life of the Derry-woman of the title. I draw on the work of memory studies scholars including Astrid Erll (2011. Memory in Culture. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan) on literature and the ‘canon’ of cultural memory and examine how such memory in Ireland has been informed by sentimentalized visions of women’s experiences in the home. These versions are challenged by Devlin and McCafferty’s feminist life-writing project; the home here is an explicitly political space, and I explore how it is described as such, drawing on the work of feminist theorist Silvia Federici (2012. Wages Against Housework. In: Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle. Oakland: PM Press, pp. 15–22) and critic Susan Fraiman (2017. Extreme Domesticity: A View from the Margins. New York: Columbia University Press).

Keywords:

• the Troubles
• Northern Ireland
• memory
• Bernadette Devlin
• Nell McCafferty
• domestic space
• life writing
• feminism

Notes on contributor

Eli Davies is a writer and researcher based in Belfast. She recently completed an interdisciplinary PhD at Ulster University which explored women’s personal and cultural memories of the home during Troubles, using literary sources and qualitative interviews. She has published widely for both academic and general audiences, and is the co-editor of Under My Thumb: Songs That Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them, an anthology of women’s music writing published by Repeater.

Notes

1 See, for example, Belfast Feminist Network statement https://www.facebook.com/notes/belfast-feminist-network/dup-fosters-more-misogyny-but-not-how-arlene-tells-it/766037800210808 and Bridie Pearson-Jones’ 2018 Independent feature ‘17 Quotes from DUP Politicians That Are Actually Real’ published after the Conservative government in 2017 https://www.indy100.com/article/dup-theresa-may-tory-deal-alliance-minority-government-quotes-arlene-foster-lgbt-abortion-religion-7783241

2 She now goes by Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, but for the purposes of this article I refer to her as ‘Devlin’ when discussing her memoir and the events related to it, as the persona of ‘Bernadette Devlin’ was, I argue, crucial both to her self-presentation and the media’s treatment of her .

3 For more detailed explorations of the rhetorical and symbolic functions of women partners in such contexts see Callaci (2020) and Trimble (2018).

4 A striking example of this in Northern Ireland is the ubiquitous ‘Love Across the Divide’ trope, explored in a recent BBC online video series, see https://canvas-story.bbcrewind.co.uk/loveacrossthedivide/

5 ‘Girl from the bog’ here refers to a journalistic cliche adopted to refer to people from the countryside in Ireland.

6 For a striking example of this see McCafferty’s article ‘The Peace People at War’ in her collection Goodnight Sisters (1987).

7 The Burren is an area in County Clare in the west of Ireland, known as a site of natural and geological interest and for the wide variety of plants and animals found there.