City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 1995 Mary McCarthy, Mary Gordon, and the Irish-American Literary Tradition Stacey Lee Donohue Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/1412 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from themicrofilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bieedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back of the book. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6" x 9" black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. A Bell & Howell Information Company 300 North Zeeb Road. Ann Arbor. Ml 48106-1346 USA 313/761-4700 800/521-0600 m a r y McCa r t h y , m a r y Go r d o n , AND THE IRISH-AMERICAN LITERARY TRADITION by STACEY LEE DONOHUE A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 1995 DHI Number: 9530868 Copyright 1995 by Donohue, Stacey Lee All rights reserved. OMI Microform 9530868 Copyright 1995, by UMI Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 ©1995 STACEY LEE DONOHUE All Rights Reserved iii This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in English in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. AfKJ! to, m s [signature] Date Chair of Examining Committee [signature] / ff / Date Executive Officer [signature] [signature] Supervisory Committee THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK Abstract m a r y McCa r t h y , m a r y Go r d o n , AND THE IRISH-AMERICAN LITERARY TRADITION by Stacey Lee Donohue Advisor: Dr. Morris Dickstein There is a distinct literary canon in the United States, composed of Irish-Catholic-American writers, which requires different modes of criticism or evaluation than other U.S. literatures, particularly the dominant, largely Protestant or Protestant-influenced, American literary canon. In addition, as a recently recognized literary tradition, many women writers have either been ignored or unnoticed because their works do not immediately fit into the evolving criteria of evaluation for the Irish-American literary tradition. My purpose in this study is not to survey the Irish-American literary canon, but to examine two women writers who have not always been admitted to an innately misogynistic Irish-Catholic tradition. Ironically, the dominant feminist literary tradition also does not know how to place Mary McCarthy and Mary Gordon (and perhaps other Irish-American women writers); feminists often are disturbed by a lurking conservativism in their works. Thus, both writers are doubly displaced. Through a cultural-religious-feminist analysis of their writings, I would like to reestablish McCarthy and Gordon within both the Irish-American literary tradition and the feminist literary tradition. In doing so, I will be addressing the following questions in an attempt to create new ways of evaluating Irish-American women’s fiction: First, what is the Irish-American literary tradition and what are its criteria for inclusion? How is an Irish heritage reflected in the writings of both male and female Irish- American writers? How is the writer’s moral perspective shaped by an Irish-Catholic religious heritage? How does a woman writer navigate among often competing identities as an orthodox Catholic, culturally Irish, intellectual, feminist, woman writer to create a space for herself and her heroines? Does Gordon’s feminism allow her heroines to transcend—to a degree—their fates? The dissertation makes use of current historical (Kirby Miller, Hasia Diner, William Shannon), cultural (Werner Sollors, Charles Fanning), religious (Paul Giles) and feminist literary criticism (including Carol Gilligan). vi Acknowledgments I would like to thank my parents, Janice and Harold Mahneke, my friends, Suzanne Samuels, Mary Been, Naomi Rand, and my colleagues at the Borough of Manhattan Community College for faithfully tolerating my self-absorption and listening to me moan for the past few years. Matt Smotzer deserves thanks for giving me shoulder rubs, emotional support, intellectual stimulation, and for making me laugh. Special thanks to my dissertation committee, Drs. Neal Tolchin and John Brenkman, and especially my chair, Dr. Morris Dickstein, for helping me shape the content and direction of the dissertation. Thanks to Dr. Jane Paznik-Bondarin for reading one Mary Gordon section (during a most hectic semester), and to the members of the Spril 1995 CUNY Faculty Writing Seminar for helping me revise another. A big :-) for Dr. Fred Gardaphe for offering editorial advice, as well as encouragement, via email. And to Mary McCarthy and Mary Gordon whose fiction and essays gave me something to think about, thank you. vu Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction 1 Irish-American Literary History 5 Mary McCarthy and Mary Gordon 8 Women and the Irish-Catholic Church 12 The Influence of Culture, Religion and Gender Chapter 2: The Irish-American Literary Tradition 24 Introduction: Cultural-Literary Criticism 24 Historical Background 27 The Irish and Irish-American Family 40 Irish and Irish-American Women 47 The Catholic Church and the Irish-American Artist 50 The Literaiy Tradition 57 The Influence o f Culture Chapter 3: Mary McCarthy, Mary Gordon, and the Irish-American Literary T radition 86 Mary McCarthy 88 McCarthy’s Irish-American Fiction 96 Irish Fatalism 96 The Analogical Imagination 103 “Artists in Uniform” 104 Mary Gordon 106 Mary Gordon’s Irish-American Fiction 106 Vlll The Protestants 109 The Irish-American Family 113 The Randomness of Life 121 The Influence of Religion Chapter 4: Mary McCarthy ’ s Irish-Catholic Sensibility 125 The Gap of Faith 133 Good and Evil: McCarthy’s Duali sm 148 Chapter 5: The Sacred and the Secular in Mary Gordon’s Fiction 159 The Irish-Catholic Imagination 160 Sacred and Secular Gordon’s Dualism 170 The Influence of Gender Chapter 6: “Angels of Self-Sacrifice”: The Heroines of McCarthy and Gordon 191 The Limitations and Possibilities for the Irish-Catholic Heroine 195 Women in the Orthodox Catholic Church 195 The Divided Heroine 199 Myn Owene Woman? 204 Fairy Tales and Nightmares 211 The War Between the Sexes 213 The Sado-Masochistic Irish-Catholic Heroine 219 The Mind/Body Problem 225 Mary Gordon’s Feminist Heroines and Mary McCarthy’s Angels of Self-Sacrifice 233 The Ethics of Care and Justice 238 The Feminist Influence 246 Chapter 7: Conclusion 258 Bibliography 266 1 Chapter One Introduction The Irish-Catholic-American sensibility is broad. James T. Farrell, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Eugene O'Neill, Mary McCarthy, Flannery O’Connor, Elizabeth Cullinan and Mary Gordon might not appear to have much in common, but they do. A particularly Irish brand of Catholicism hangs like a shroud. The humor is often dark, cruel, biting, and self-deprecating. The politics are generally liberal with paradoxical conservative views, or conservative with paradoxical liberal views. There is usually a conflict between the flesh and the intellect. The plot is often centered on family relationships and gatherings to illustrate their power on each character. There is often a self-loathing, similar to what we find in Jewish-American writers of this century; however, Irish-American writers combine this self-loathing with a distrust of free will that often results in a tragic, fatalistic outlook on life. There is an idealism that flourished despite years of colonization and emigrated along with millions of Irish men and women to the United States creating in their literature a disorienting sensibility of romanticism tinged with paradoxical fatalism. Mary McCarthy (1912-1989) and Mary Gordon (1949) are two Irish-American writers, writing in the relatively unexplored Irish-American Literary tradition that is informed by an orthodox Catholicism. I certainly wouldn't want to limit them to that identity, however, especially when within their respective writings, each attempts to create an individual identity or integrate identities from a rich yet murky multilayering of cultural identities as Irish-American-Catholic-Women-Writers. Of course they are very different writers: Gordon is more satisfying aesthetically and emotionally, McCarthy intellectually. However both broke away from an anti-intellectual, puritanical Irish-American Catholic Church, though not before it left an indelible influence on both their writing and their moral sensibility. Both writers share the same sense of humor that arises from the hypocrisies— the gap—between illusion and reality, a gap they recognized in the Church when they were young teenagers.