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“Nun, Married, Old Maid”: Kate O'brien's Fiction, Women and Irish

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“Nun, Married, Old Maid”: Kate O'brien's Fiction, Women and Irish “NUN, MARRIED, OLD MAID”: KATE O’BRIEN’S FICTION, WOMEN AND IRISH CATHOLICISM Sharon Tighe-Mooney, M.A. Thesis Submission in Fulfilment of the degree of PhD National University of Ireland Maynooth Department of English Submission Date: October 2009 Head of Department: Prof. Chris Morash Supervisor of Research: Dr. Moynagh Sullivan SUMMARY The settings of Kate O’Brien’s novels span late nineteenth early twentieth-century Ireland and are concerned with the lives of middle-class women. This thesis argues that O’Brien’s rendering of the interiority of the bourgeois family and the inner lives of middle-class women, reveals a site of the public discourse of Church and State. O’Brien’s representations of female characters are analysed through the framework of the Family, as well as the social, cultural and religious background of this period, focusing particularly on the influence of Catholicism on women’s roles as wives and mothers in Irish society. O’Brien provided a powerful dramatisation of the lives of women that were determined by the particular modes of femininity advocated by Irish society and Church teaching, as specified by Church writings, especially Papal encyclicals, on woman’s role in the family. Catholic Social Teaching edicts on women’s roles in the family were incorporated into the 1937 Irish Constitution, which in Article 41 especially, defined a woman’s role as that pertaining to “her life within the home” ( Bunreacht na hÉireann , Article 41.2.1). Chapter One sets the historical and ideological context in which the “struggles” of the characters subsequently analysed takes place. Chapter Two looks at instances of struggle in O’Brien’s work for some mother characters, who exemplify State and Church discourses of ideal womanhood, and those around them, while Chapter Three explores the instances of protest in the lives of ideologically-bound wives. Chapter Four focuses on the struggles of single women who are precariously positioned with regard to the family. The common theme shared by O’Brien’s female characters is their negotiation of personal desires and energies within and without the structures of the family unit. By focusing on the individual experience, O’Brien questioned ideological perspectives of middle-class women’s homogenised acceptance of their prescribed roles in the family and in society, and made the seemingly private, public, a space for ideological analysis and debate. TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements i Abbreviations ii Introduction 1 The Research Subject: “Nun, Married, Old Maid” Kate O’Brien Bibliography Review of Secondary Material on Kate O’Brien Reviews and Re-issues Seminar, Symposia and Sisterhood Anthologies and Histories Scholarly Articles and Books Conclusion: Kate O’Brien and Irish Writing Critical Methodology Thesis Layout Chapter One: Setting the Historical Frame 68 Introduction The Rise of the Irish Catholic Church Women, “Natural Law, Catholic Social Teaching and the 1937 Constitution The Consolidation of the “Ideal Role” of the Middle-Class Homemaker Mariolatry, Maternity and Marriage Church, State and Procreation Conclusion Chapter Two: Mother 123 Introduction Novels The 1937 Constitution, Neutrality and Irish Culture Una Costello: The Ideal Homemaker and Insular Mother Ireland Hannah Kernahan: “Smother Mother” and Neutral Mother Ireland Conclusion Chapter Three: Wife 175 Introduction Novels The Wedding Ceremony Caroline Lanigan: Religion versus Psychology Lilian Morrow: The Material Girl Molly Considine: The Embodiment of “Unchecked Fecundity” Conclusion Chapter Four: “To Struggle Free”: “Nun, Married, Old Maid” 228 Introduction Novels Vocation, Education and Spinsterhood Jo Kernahan: “Nun” Nell Mahoney: “Married” Agnes Mulqueen: “Old Maid” Conclusion Conclusion 294 Bibliography 301 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I want to begin by extending my thanks to Professor Margaret Kelleher (Director, An Foras Feasa ) whose lecture topic, “Women, History, Memory”, introduced me, as an undergraduate, to Kate O’Brien’s work. I am indebted to my supervisor, Dr. Moynagh Sullivan, for her continued optimism, confidence and guidance during a process that frequently resembles a turbulent voyage to an uncharted destination, as well as for the much appreciated hospitality provided whenever we met at her home. My grateful appreciation also goes to the following individuals who provided me with relevant material, and who imparted advice in person or by e-mail on particular aspects of the thesis: Clare Hannigan and Donough O’Brien (family of Kate O’Brien), Harry Casey (Executive Administrator of Commissions and Agencies, Irish Episcopal Conference), Mark Humphries (Professor of Ancient History, Swansea University), Aintzane Legarreta Mentxaka (UCD), Eamon Maher (Director, National Centre for Franco-Irish Studies, ITT), Kieran McGroarty (Acting Head of Department, Ancient Classics, NUIM), Pauline Purcell (Kate O’Brien Seminar attendee) and Eibhear Walshe (UCC). I would also like to extend my sincere thanks to my academic companions for their support and friendship along the way, especially Evelien Bracke, Marion Mullin, Deirdre Quinn and Bernadette Trehy. On a personal note, a lengthy period of study is not possible without tremendous support, which I have been fortuitous to receive throughout, and “thank you” seems inadequate to express my gratitude and appreciation for the continuous encouragement and practical support extended to me by my parents, Des and Josephine, my sisters, Cora, Maureen, Susan, Rachel, my brother, Jim, and the extended Tighe family. I also want to thank the extended Mooney family, my friends in Trim Choir, and the Brady family (Trim) for their much appreciated part in supporting me throughout the years of my studies. My especial thanks and love go to the best backup team ever: to Liam and Luke Mooney for everything they have done for me to support this endeavour, and for keeping it all in perspective. i ABBREVIATIONS A-R The Ante-Room Cloak Without My Cloak Critical Study Kate O’Brien: A Critical Study Flower The Flower of May FDA Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing Lavelle Mary Lavelle Literary Portrait Kate O’Brien: A Literary Portrait Music As Music and Splendour Nuns Nuns in Nineteenth-Century Ireland OPD Ordinary People Dancing: Essays on Kate O’Brien P.P. Presentation Parlour Pray Pray for the Wanderer Spain Farewell Spain Spices The Land of Spices Summer The Last of Summer Teresa Teresa of Avila Women Women of the House: Women’s Household Work in Ireland 1922-1961 Writing Life Kate O’Brien: A Writing Life ii iii INTRODUCTION 1 The Research Subject: “Nun, Married, Old Maid” In Kate O’Brien’s travelogue, Farewell Spain , she wrote about the artist El Greco: [T]he residue of all emotional experience tends in spirits large enough to be at last of natural and universal value, whatever the personal accidents of its accretion (O’Brien, Spain , 146). Whilst not all of O’Brien’s characters can be described as “large spirits” on the scale of an artist like El Greco, the “accretion” and “residue” of emotional experience drives the plots of most of O’Brien’s fiction. Any reading of O’Brien’s work must ask whether or not “universal value” can be derived from such close attention to emotional patterns or whether each is of an individual cast with little or no relevance to wider truths, and, in the case of this thesis, about Irish women’s lives. In a post-structuralist world, critics are sceptical of claims to universal value, and any attempt to see fiction as a version of history or “truth” must also fail. However, an argument can be made for reading the emotional “accretion” and “residue” of experience in O’Brien’s work as an aestheticisation of her disquiet with ideological perspectives that presumed middle-class women’s homogenised acceptance of prescribed roles. By homogenised is understood here a perspective that assumes that middle-class women had the same experiences, aspirations and access to resources. By focusing on individual experiences, O’Brien’s novels, as the literary critic Adele Dalsimer wrote in Kate O’Brien: A Critical Study , “quietly protest against the fates of middle-class Irish women who are sheltered, stifled, and forced into prescribed roles as wives, mothers, or spinsters” (Dalsimer, Critical Study , xv). The question I ask here is how this “protest” is manifested in O’Brien’s female characters, a query that underpins my analyses of a variety of women in O’Brien’s fiction. My title, “‘Nun, Married, Old Maid’: Kate O’Brien’s Fiction, Women and Irish Catholicism”, provides the framework used to explore O’Brien’s “quiet protest”. The predominant family model in O’Brien’s fiction is patriarchal and the development in the novels from ambivalence to antipathy is complicated by the tension between the security of being in a family, and the family as, more often than not, a stultifying place for women on account of the expected conformity to specific roles. 2 In her memoir Presentation Parlour , O’Brien admitted that she was “never much interested in political deviations and always concerned as to persons and their private decisions” (O’Brien, P.P. , 33). Here, I argue that in O’Brien’s fiction, these “private decisions” can be read primarily as consequences of personal dilemmas and the resolutions to these dilemmas are made under the influences of the social, cultural, political and religious mores of early twentieth-century Ireland. 1 In addition, the contexts of “private decisions” in O’Brien’s fiction frequently have wider implications, so I approach the novels as part of the social world that in Ireland included the religious sphere and the historical moment in which O’Brien’s texts are located. Thus, I look at how the texts engage with the religious and cultural context of their times, as artists respond to events and issues around them and their work in turn, is also constructed by social and political codes. Much critical attention of O’Brien has centered on whether she was a radical or conservative writer, or indeed, a popular writer of romantic fiction.
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