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431896 Lynch & Dodou P1.Indd Malin Lidström Brock Philomena and Ireland’s Mother-and-Baby Homes Abstract Tis chapter examines the portrayal of Ireland’s mother-and-baby homes in the generally well-received flm Philomena and the account on which the flm is based, the British journalist Martin Sixsmith’s portrayal of Philomena Lee’s life and search for her son, who had been given up to an American couple for adoption under coercive circumstances. Enforced adoptions have long been a part of Irish life that was silenced within ofcial discourse, just as the women themselves were silenced under a blanket of shame and denial within a form of patriarchal nationalism. Cultural representations such as flm and trauma biography will of course tend towards certain structures of storytelling that reveal in dramatic form the deep emotional wounds inficted on the survivors, yet are ofen challenged by an ofcial discourse as shallow and untrustworthy. Tis controversy draws attention to other conficts and paradoxes that can operate when there are attempts to give a voice to the silenced or marginalized, yet such eforts have begun a process of forcing a re-evaluation of Ireland’s narratives of nationhood through the twentieth century. In her inaugural address on December 3, 1990, Ireland’s frst female president, Mary Robinson, called for an open and pluralistic defnition of national identity: I want Áras an Uachtaráin to be a place where people can tell diverse stories – in the knowledge that there is someone there to listen. I want this Presidency to promote the telling of stories – stories of celebration through the arts and stories of conscience 48 Malin Lidström Brock and of social justice. As a woman, I want women who have felt themselves outside history to be written back into history […].1 Robinson’s call for new stories has been interpreted as a call for the reim- agining of Ireland’s foundational narratives, which until then had largely excluded stories about institutional mistreatment of women, children and other marginalized groups.2 Such stories began to appear in various Irish media during Robinson’s time as president and included the uncovering of abusive conditions in Church-run institutions for women – the so-called Magdalen laundries and mother-and-baby homes.3 Te new openness advocated by Robinson was complicated, however, by the emergence of the Celtic Tiger, that is, the economic boom that Ireland experienced from about 1995 to the recession in 2008. Accounts of institutional abuse com- mitted in the country’s recent past were unwelcome additions to the nar- ratives by which a modern, economically prosperous Ireland was defning itself.4 In addition, historical accounts were limited by a lack of access to the Catholic Church’s records about the establishments that it once managed.5 1 Mary Robinson, ‘Inaugural Speech’. Stanford Presidential Lectures in the Humanities and Arts, stanford.edu (3 December 1990). 2 Seamus Deane, Strange Country: Modernity and Nationhood in Irish Writing since 1970 (New York: Clarendon, 1997), 1–2; Richard Kearney, Postnationalist Ireland: Politics, Culture, Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1997), 63–4. 3 James M. Smith identifes three stories that caused a redefnition of the national narrative in the 1990s: the Kilkenny incest case in 1993, the 1994 television drama Family about domestic abuse and the 1996 television drama Dear Daughter about the abusive conditions in the country’s industrial schools in the 1950s and 1960s. James M. Smith, Ireland’s Magdalen Laundries and the Nation’s Architecture of Containment (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), 87–8. 4 Smith, Ireland’s Magdalen Laundries and the Nation’s Architecture of Containment, 167. 5 Niall O’Sullivan, ‘Philomena Lee Seeks Release of 60,000 Adoption Records’, Te Irish Post (24 January 2014, xvi). See, for example, the Ryan Report on the Goldenbridge Industrial School in Dublin, where ‘the Sisters of Mercy retained almost no records of complaints or allegations against the School, or even any reports of internal inspections or reviews’. Ofce of Minister for Children & Youth Afairs, Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, 2009 Implementation Plan (Dublin: Philomena and Ireland’s Mother-and-Baby Homes 49 Te ofcial silence that has surrounded Ireland’s institutions for women means that contemporary public knowledge about institutional abuse has been informed mainly by the media and by contemporary cultural repre- sentations. Such representations include drama, biography, documentaries, art installations, poetry and flm.6 Several works have dealt with the story of the Magdalen laundries in depth; fewer have explored Ireland’s mother- and-baby homes. In 2009 international attention was drawn to the adop- tion policies of the homes through British journalist and former political advisor Martin Sixsmith’s biography Te Lost Child of Philomena Lee: A Mother, Her Son, and a Fify-Year Search, frst published in the UK and later reissued as Philomena.7 Sixsmith’s biography became the basis for British director Stephen Frears’s flm Philomena (2013), which was co-produced in the UK and the USA.8 Both works tell the real-life story of Philomena Lee, who in 1952 entered the mother-and-baby home at Sean Ross Abbey in Roscrea, Tipperary, where she gave birth to a son.9 According to biog- raphy and flm, Lee remained in the convent for four years while working for her keep. During this stay, she was coerced by the congregation running the home into giving up her son Anthony for adoption by an American couple. Both representations tell the story of Lee’s search for Anthony ffy years later, but unlike the flm the biography also deals with Anthony’s life in the USA and his search for his mother. Cultural representations have the potential to change prevailing dis- courses by bringing silenced or neglected topics to the public’s attention. Specifcally, cultural representations of the mother-and-baby homes and Department of Health and Children, 2009), 8. See also the McAleese Report, which states that ‘there are some gaps in the data available regarding entries to the Magdalen Laundries’, Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee to Establish the Facts of State Involvement with the Magdalen Laundries (Dublin: Department of Children and Youth Afairs, July 2014), xii. 6 Smith, Ireland’s Magdalen Laundries and the Nation’s Architecture of Containment, xvii. 7 Martin Sixsmith. Philomena (London: Pan, 2013). Henceforth in this essay, the biography will be referred to by its shorter title. 8 Stephen Frears (dir.), Philomena (Te Weinstein Company, Yucaipa Films, 2013). 9 Sixsmith, Philomena, 5–7. 50 Malin Lidström Brock Magdalen laundries can provide a voice to the women who sufered under and disappeared within the systems. In this way, the representations can inspire women who once resided in the institutions to make the transition from ‘passive victim to active survivor’ and they can relocate the problem from ‘the individual psyche to the social and political institutions that imposed a rigid national morality’ on the population.10 In addition, sto- ries told from a temporal and geographical distance create positions from which to break the silence that has long surrounded the institutions. On the other hand, representations can also confrm the dominant discourse by sensationalizing, exploiting and eroticizing victims’ traumatic memories, and by scapegoating easily identifable groups as culpable while ignoring the complicity of other social and political agents.11 In a similar manner, storytelling from a temporal and geographical distance risks simplifying or otherwise misrepresenting the past. Sixsmith’s and Frears’s respective stories demonstrate both tendencies. Contested Discourses Te migration of Lee’s story from private memory to biography and flm has resulted in distinct accounts that both challenge and confrm previous discourses on the mother-and-baby homes. Te establishment of the frst mother-and-baby homes in 1922 rested on a national narrative in which Irishwomen were defned strictly in domestic terms, as mothers and wives.12 Te idealization of motherhood resulted in the criminalization of sexual relations outside marriage. To uphold a national image of Irish female purity, the state and the Church collaborated to restrict and render invisible 10 Smith, Ireland’s Magdalen Laundries, xvii. 11 Smith, Ireland’s Magdalen Laundries, xvii. 12 Smith, Ireland’s Magdalen Laundries, 3. Geraldine Meaney, Sex and Nation: Women in Irish Culture and Politics (Dublin: Attic Press, 1991), 3–4. Philomena and Ireland’s Mother-and-Baby Homes 51 women who disobeyed or otherwise departed from social conventions.13 As a solution to the perceived problem of placing unmarried mothers in county workhouses for the poor, the state founded and subsidized sepa- rate homes for unmarried mothers.14 Tese mother-and-baby homes were mainly operated by Catholic Sisterhoods and were reserved for frst-time mothers, so-called frst ofenders.15 Women who entered the homes could be detained for up to three years, during which time they were expected to perform unpaid domestic duties and care for their children afer birth.16 By the 1970s, the homes were falling into disuse. In 2014, the media reported on a mass grave containing the remains of almost 800 infants on the grounds of a former mother-and-baby home in Tuam, Galway.17 Previous discourses concerning the mother-and-baby homes have been challenged by the media and by various human rights groups, as well as by cultural representations.18 Tree topics related specifcally to adoptions 13 Smith, Ireland’s Magdalen Laundries, 3. 14 Smith, Ireland’s Magdalen Laundries, 18, 52. Although the majority of homes were run by Catholic congregations, a Protestant home was set up in Dublin in 1921. Te home closed in 1971. Patsy McGarry, ‘Tis Time, the Issue of Mother and Baby Homes Must Be Addressed’, Te Irish Times (7 June 2014).
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