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Is the Mother Re-Visioned in Contemporary Irish Women’S Literary Fiction?

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Is the Mother Re-Visioned in Contemporary Irish Women’S Literary Fiction? IS THE MOTHER RE-VISIONED IN CONTEMPORARY IRISH WOMEN’S LITERARY FICTION? Bridget (Noeline) Hogan Doctoral Degree University of Limerick Supervisor: Dr. Sinéad McDermott Submitted to the University of Limerick, June 2013 BLANK Dedicated to my own family, and to my mother, who “neither drank nor smoked nor painted her face”. BLANK TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................... i DECLARATION ................................................................................................... ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................................................................. iii INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER ONE .................................................................................................. 24 Historical Background and Theoretical Framework .................................. 24 Introduction .................................................................................................. 24 Section One: Constructing the Mother in Modern Ireland ........................... 25 Eighteenth Century Ireland ‘Mother Ireland’ .................................. 26 Nineteenth Century The Modern Catholic Mother .......................... 27 1880s to 1920s.................................................................................. 31 1920s – 1960s ................................................................................... 33 1960s to 2000 ................................................................................... 42 The Protestant Tradition ................................................................... 51 Section Two: Literary Foremothers: Reproducing the Dead Mother .......... 54 Section Three: Maternal Subjectivity ........................................................... 74 Maternal Subjectivity in the Irish Context ....................................... 87 CHAPTER TWO ................................................................................................. 97 Maternal Lies, Secrets and Silences in Clare Boylan’s Room for a Single Lady, and Mary Morrissy’s Mother of Pearl ................................................ 97 Introduction .................................................................................................. 97 Part One Room for a Single Lady ............................................................... 102 Mothers and ‘Social Struggle’ ....................................................... 102 Mother and Artist ........................................................................... 115 Part Two Mother of Pearl .......................................................................... 126 Maternal Desire .............................................................................. 126 Maternal Ambivalence ................................................................... 138 Conclusion.................................................................................................. 150 CHAPTER THREE ........................................................................................... 152 Choosing the Unlived Life in Deirdre Madden’s One by One in the Darkness and Jennifer Johnston’s Two Moons ......................................... 152 Introduction ................................................................................................ 152 Part One One by One in the Darkness ....................................................... 156 Introduction .................................................................................... 156 Choosing a Narrative ...................................................................... 160 Charlie’s Wife: The ‘One’ and the ‘Other’ .................................... 165 Mothers, Daughters, and Maternal Thinking ................................. 171 Part Two Two Moons ................................................................................. 185 Introduction .................................................................................... 185 The Final Phase Mimi’s story ........................................................ 190 Waxing or Waning: Grace’s Story ................................................. 209 Conclusion.................................................................................................. 219 CHAPTER FOUR ............................................................................................. 222 Migrant Mothers in Kate O’Riordan’s The Memory Stones and Lia Mills’s Nothing Simple .............................................................................................. 222 Introduction ................................................................................................ 222 Part One The Memory Stones ..................................................................... 226 Reasons for Travel ......................................................................... 226 Entering the Legend ....................................................................... 241 Part Two Nothing Simple ........................................................................... 260 Reasons for Travel ......................................................................... 260 Entering the Legend ....................................................................... 269 Part Three ................................................................................................... 275 Newer Plots .................................................................................... 275 Conclusion ................................................................................................. 281 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................. 284 Reference List .................................................................................................... 304 Appendix I The Homeric Hymn to Demeter ..................................................... 313 Appendix II The Pomegranate .......................................................................... 325 ABSTRACT Is the Mother Re-visioned in Contemporary Irish Women’s Literary Fiction? Bridget (Noeline) Hogan This thesis discovers signs of positive change in maternal representation in contemporary Irish women’s literary fiction. It is undertaken in the context of recent social change in Ireland encompassing heightened feminist consciousness and an upsurge in publication of Irish women’s writings. The rationale for the thesis is my belief that literary representations are important in shaping social life and that, in the wake of national traditions of symbolization and stereotyping of the maternal, of literary traditions of maternal idealization and demonization, and of a history of neglect in Irish literary criticism, a study on the re-visioning of the mother in Irish women’s fiction is opportune. As part of the Introduction to this thesis a brief review of feminist literary critiques of Irish women’s writings by Anne Fogarty, Ann Owens Weekes, Áine McCarthy and Heather Ingman is provided. Chapter One provides historical, literary and feminist frameworks for the discussions of the contemporary fictions analysed in the chapters which follow. The following three chapters apply close textual analysis to six contemporary novels, grouped in twos, in the light, predominantly, of feminist theories. Chapter Two covers Clare Boylan’s Room for a Single Lady and Mother of Pearl by Mary Morrissy, where the focus is on mothers who struggle against male ideologies of maternity. In Chapter Three, One by One in the Darkness by Deirdre Madden and Two Moons by Jennifer Johnston centre on older mothers who choose to live within patriarchal norms. Chapter Four features Kate O’Riordan’s The Memory Stones and Nothing Simple by Lia Mills where new feminocentric plots are provided for non-traditional, migrant mothers. Throughout all of these writings, the mother/daughter plot is a major pre-occupation. In conclusion, the thesis raises some issues concerning the reconfiguration of family figures that arise in the context of the re-visioning of the mother. i DECLARATION I hereby declare that this thesis is entirely my own work, and does not contain material previously published by any other author, except where due reference or acknowledgement has been made. Furthermore, I declare that it has not previously been submitted for any other academic award. Bridget (Noeline) Hogan June 2013 ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My sincere thanks go to my Supervisor, Dr. Sinéad McDermott for her sustained support and advice over more years than we could have imagined in the preparation of this thesis. I am grateful, also to Dr. Niamh Hehir for her help and interest while she acted as Substitute Supervisor. I should also like to thank the staff at Deansgrange Library, Co. Dublin for their help. I could not have undertaken this project without the love and support of all my friends and family – thanks everyone. iii INTRODUCTION The decades surrounding the turn of the millennium were years of profound political, economic, social and cultural change in Ireland, giving rise to rigorous reappraisal in the media and in cultural life generally of the institutions and mores of Irish society. On the literary front, Anne Fogarty wrote of ‘a fundamental transition in culture and politics’ (Fogarty 2000:59-60) when pointing to what seemed to be difficulties being experienced by male anthologists
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