The Banshees: A Literary History of Irish American Women (19 page)

ger. . . . Our doctor, Doctor Sheridan, said that if there’d been an operation,

my grandmother would very likely have lived a few years longer, and most

certainly she’d have suffered less at the end.’” When Mrs. Hyland tries to

stop her, asking, “‘What on earth are you saying?’” Winnie does not hesitate.

“‘Just that nine out of ten cases like hers are operable, regardless of

age. . . . Nan had no heart . . . condition and . . . no responsible doctor would

have said she did.’” With that, she walks away. When her sister fi nds Winnie

in the restroom, she congratulates her. “‘For a minute there I thought you

were going to hit her.’”

“‘I wish I had,’” Winnie replies (Cullinan 1969, 313–14).

This generation of Irish American mothers and daughters were not

cowed by their so-called betters, nor did they keep their opinions to them-

selves: instead, they struggled to “escape this architecture of containment

that is their inheritance” (McInerney 2008, 98). Through her fi ctional char-

acters, Cullinan describes the effects of the church on a great number of

Catholic women in the latter half of the twentieth century.

•

In 1969, William Maxwell revealed Maeve Brennan’s identity as “The

Long-Winded Lady.” This was quite a coup: “Maeve achieved what only a

handful of writers on
The New Yorker
in her generation did, in establishing

an identifi able persona within the ‘Talk’ column, but the manner of her

achievement was more daring than it looked, for she was unique in making a

woman’s voice heard regularly in that forum” (Bourke 2004, 190).

Brennan was not alone. In the 1960s, this cohort of Irish American

writers presented a united front in exposing and rejecting the sexism inher-

ent in church and society. Mary McCarthy’s Kay Petersen, Maureen How-

ard’s Mary Agnes “Ag” Keeley, Elizabeth Cullinan’s Bernadette/Frances/

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Cecilia/Winnie, Maeve Brennan’s Rose Derdon and Delia Bagot—even

Flannery O’Connor’s Mary Grace Turpin and Joyce Carol Oates’s Clara

Walpole—represent women’s struggles in the 1960s to gain personal iden-

tity, independence, and respect, not just from their husbands or lovers, but

also from the non-Irish American community as well.

Manifestly autobiographical, these characters’ struggles catch our atten-

tion because of their realistic insider’s view. They are not just Irish Ameri-

can, for they also open the doors on American marriage and motherhood.

They put a human face on the miserable women Betty Friedan represents

in
The Feminine Mystique
, yet these writers are at the same time uniquely

Irish American, for their stories are inextricably interwoven with the Cath-

olic Church. Hence the themes of guilt and repression, anger and rejec-

tion, depression and disappointment. As Alice McDermott explains: “the

language of the church, my church, was not only a means to an end in my

fi ction but an essential part of my own understanding of the world.” Catholi-

cism, she continues, “was the native language of my spirit” (2000, 12). As

the coming chapters reveal, these traits endure.

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3

The 1970s

A State of Upheaval

By the time I had reached adolescence, I was aware that society

had carved out a niche for me, now that I was about to become

a woman. I was offered one ticket, good for a lifetime, to the

bleachers.

—Caryl Rivers,
Aphrodite at Mid-Century: Growing

Up Female and Catholic in Postwar America

The 1970s were a decade of turmoil. Every year brought another calam-

ity—from Kent State, Watergate, Vietnam, and Nixon’s resignation

to Nixon’s pardon, the Iran hostage debacle, and Boston race riots—vio-

lence and disaster dominated the headlines, leading historian Randall Ben-

nett Woods to describe this era as “the most tumultuous and troubling

through which the United States had yet passed” (2005, 351). In the midst

of this tumult
Time
magazine declared feminists “Women of the Year” and

announced that feminism had “penetrated every layer of society, matured

beyond ideology to a new status of general—and sometimes unconscious—

acceptance” (“Women” 1976, 1).

The truth of this statement could be observed in developed countries

around the world. In France, women comprised 22 percent of lawyers,

18 percent of doctors, 40 percent of medical students, and 90 percent of phar-

macists. Under Margaret Thatcher, British women were guaranteed equal

pay for equal work. In Italy, more than twenty thousand women rallied to

demand abortion rights; in Iceland, women went on strike and closed down

the nation’s phones, schools, and theaters. Japanese women were employed

8 6

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in every fi eld and ruled the roost at home. Taking this trend to extremes,

in India Indira Gandhi became the fi rst female dictator (“Women” 1976).

Meanwhile in Ireland, amidst the terrorism aroused by Bloody Sunday and

retaliation by the IR A, the Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM) issued

a manifesto demanding equal rights and equal pay; removal of the marriage

bar; equal treatment for widows, single mothers, and deserted wives; equal

educational opportunities for women; and the right to legal contraception

and equal housing. When the WLM collapsed, Irish Women United was

formed; two years later, the Contraception Action Programme—an activist

organization that deliberately protested where they were most likely to be

arrested—was formed (Horgan 2001).

Back in the United States, a Harris poll revealed that 63 percent of Amer-

icans supported “most of the efforts to strengthen and change women’s sta-

tus in society.” Despite major national and international disputes, women’s

issues came to the fore while women-centered legislation proliferated—as

did the work of Irish American women. Among those recognized by
Time
as

“Women of the Year,” almost half were of Irish descent: Susie Sharp, the fi rst

female chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court; Jill Ker Conway,

the fi rst female president of Smith; Addie Wyatt, the women’s affairs director

for the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen; Kathleen Byerly,

the top aide to the Navy’s Pacifi c fl eet command; Charlotte Curtis, the edi-

tor of the
New York Times
Op-Ed page; Joan Ganz Clooney, who started

Sesame Street
and ran the Children’s Television Workshop; and Catherine

Cleary, the president of First Wisconsin Corp Bank and board member for

AT&T, Kraftco, and General Motors (“Women” 1976). During this period,

the FBI hired its fi rst female agents, Susan Lynn Roley and the former nun

Joanne E. Pierce, and Jane Burke Byrne was elected the fi rst female mayor of

Chicago (Woods 2005, 365).

In universities, women’s studies programs proliferated; by the end of

the decade, more than twenty thousand women’s studies courses existed

(Ferguson, Katrak, Miner 1996, 45). Feminist research by Irish Americans

was world renowned. This decade saw the U.S. publications of Kate Mur-

ray Millet’s
Sexual Politics
, Robin Morgan’s
Sisterhood Is Powerful
, Mary

Daly’s
Beyond God the Father
and
Gyn/Ecology
, Gail Sheehy’s
Passages
, and

the beginning of Carol Gilligan’s research on female moral development.

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88 | T H E B A N S H E E S

Such studies raised awareness that previous research had focused almost

exclusively on male subjects, which led to “an avid feminist reexamination

of old studies” (Davis 1991, 222). By the end of the decade, publications by

women across the academic disciplines had tripled (DuBois 1987, 16). Bon-

nie Zimmerman describes the era’s zeitgeist: “we broke ground in virtually

every area of society. We took risks and created dazzlingly new ideas and

interpretations. Because we were pioneers—because we fervently believed

(rightly or wrongly) that we had been born anew—we were also ideologues

and fanatics, passionate about our new religion” (1990, 115). The spirit of

the times was exemplifi ed by a number of national events:

• 1970—the fi ftieth anniversary of women’s suffrage.

• 1971—Women’s Equality Day.

• 1972—the Equal Rights Amendment was passed by Congress and

sent to the states; National Women’s Political Caucus established; Title IX

passed.

• 1973—Roe v. Wade upheld.

• 1974—Equal Credit Opportunity Act passed; Coalition of Labor

Union Women established.

• 1977—fi rst National Women’s Conference.

The women’s movement was also refl ected in pop culture. The biggest

movie of the decade was
Star Wars
, in which Princess Leia played an equal

role among male her co-stars. Other fi lms made less subtle points. Molly

Haskell’s 1974 documentary,
From Reverence to Rape
, was one of the fi rst to

analyze how females were depicted in “women’s fi lms.” Similarly, Jean Kil-

bourne’s documentary,
Killing Us Softly
, revealed the many ways advertising

oppresses women.
Looking for Mr. Goodbar
, starring Irish American Diane

Keaton as Paula Dunn, was a cautionary fi lm for independent women, while

Norma Rae
promoted courageous women. The heroine of
The Goodbye Girl
,

Paula McFadden, is a single mom supporting herself and her daughter; like-

wise Alice Wyatt, the widowed mother in
Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
,

takes her son on the road in an attempt to earn a living as a singer. Similar

messages about independence, female friendships, and the sexual revolution

came across in
An Unmarried Woman
. Yet in every Hollywood retelling,

women’s problems were resolved by remarrying or entering into a committed

relationship. Hollywood was not quite ready for feminism.

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The media were also reluctantly undergoing change. Groups such as

Media Women (which consisted of female writers from the
New York Post
,

Sunday Morning News at CBS, the Associated Press,
Women’s Wear Daily
,

Newsweek
, Newsreel, and the Screenwriters Guild) organized to protest

inequitable pay, sexist treatment in the newsroom, and the perpetuation of

essentialist stereotypes by the postwar cadre of male editors. Media Women

was joined by OWL, the Older Women’s Liberation group. Despite their

solidarity, radical feminists such as Shulamith Firestone (leader of the New

York Radical Feminists) almost ruined efforts to negotiate with
Lady’s Home

Journal
editor John Mack Brown when she tried to tackle him. Thwarted by

one of her own, she stomped out. The following month, Robin Morgan led

a sit-in at Grove Press, demanding it cease publishing pornography (Brown-

miller 1999, 91–92).

On television, two of the most popular programs were
Laverne and Shir-

ley
—two young, independent, blue-collar women who worked in a beer fac-

tory—and
Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman
, a supposedly average housewife

surrounded by hypocrites (Woods 2005, 387).
All in the Family’s
bigoted

Archie Bunker (played by Irish American Carroll O’Connor) raised eye-

brows by calling attention to issues of race, class, and gender issues, but he

was regularly called on his prejudice by his liberal daughter (Sally Struthers)

and occasionally by his brow-beaten wife. Unfortunately, Archie Bunker’s

mindset was sometimes refl ected among women just like him.

Most outrageous was Phyllis Schlafl y, whose 1972 “Stop ER A” move-

ment warned that ratifi cation would force all women to work and to share

restrooms with men. To foil pro-choice proponents, Henry Hyde (R-Illinois)

introduced legislation prohibiting the use of Medicare and Medicaid funds for

abortion, a decision not only upheld by the Supreme Court but also extended

to members of the military and Peace Corps in 1978 (Woods 2005, 370).

Turncoat Marabel Morgan, author of
The Total Woman
(1973), promoted

the sexist behaviors railed against by Caryl Rivers in her memoir,
Aphrodite at

Mid-Century: Growing Up Female and Catholic in Postwar America
(1973).

Reviewing advice (repeated by Morgan) on how to catch a man, Rivers con-

cluded: “And there she is, folks, Aphrodite at Mid-Century: Adaptable as Play