The Banshees: A Literary History of Irish American Women (22 page)

leads Lena to realize, “
something is wrong. Something is badly wrong and I

don’t know what it is
” (Boyd 1973, 21–23), a feeling she is embarrassed to

confess to another woman. After Martha attempts suicide, Lena visits her

in the hospital. Haltingly, Lena tries to explain her own unhappiness. “I’m

sleeping on my back because I feel like a corpse,” she admits (70). Feeling

guilty because she does not enjoy sex, Lena stumbles through her emotions,

ignoring her needs and forcing herself to just try, try again. On her anni-

versary getaway, after multiple couplings “each time [her husband] touched

her, she would think
I can’t, I just can’t
,” but then she “would fi nd that she

wanted him with a new and odd intensity.” This is not lost on her worn-out

husband. “He wished she would come back so that he could make love to

her, and maybe this time the hunger would be gone. Over with. . . . [He]

knew that whatever was wrong with her wasn’t physical. For him, it was as

if cracks had opened in her personality, and she was trying to break into

pieces” (80–85).

A heterosexual reader might not consider
Nerves
a lesbian novel, for

only after reading Boyd’s subsequent works (or Bonnie Zimmerman’s anal-

ysis of lesbian novels,
The Safe Sea of Women
) do the clues emerge. The

fi rst step—“At fi rst isolated and inchoate, the lesbian discovers herself and

shapes a defi nition of what it means to be a lesbian” (Zimmerman 1990,

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32)—is only partially fulfi lled. Lena is certainly “isolated and inchoate,”

but she does not know why. Yet her feelings of struggle and pain, her sense

of difference, and her feelings of “speechlessness, invisibility, inauthentic-

ity” (74) hint at the source of her problem. The fact that nothing specifi -

cally sexual occurs typifi es the 1970s, for the “sexualization” characterizing

heterosexual men and women during the decade “passed most lesbians by”

(Faderman 1991, 247).

Boyd’s second novel,
Mourning the Death of Magic
(1976), moves beyond

that characterization. Like
Nerves
,
Mourning
is set in the South, alternates

points of view, and uses doubles—sisters Galley and Mallory—who represent

two halves of Boyd’s persona. Galley is a closet lesbian; her sister Mallory is

a feminist. Like Lena in
Nerves
, Galley is suicidal and depressed yet sexually

insatiable. Just as Lena could not be satisfi ed by her husband, Galley has

gone through numerous lovers: “she was fi fteen and lost her virginity twenty

or so more times before she reached seventeen,” not only in the usual way,

but also with “coke bottles, the hairbrush handles . . . the fi ngers inside her

in bathrooms at school, in bed at home, the penises she sucked, wanting

something, she didn’t know what. Certainly not what she got.” In college,

Galley takes a lover—her female philosophy professor—“whose elegant, ner-

vous hands brought Galley orgasms unmatched by her own frantic fi ngers,

by the clumsy hands of boys.” But rather than calm her searching mind, this

relationship pushes Galley over the edge (Boyd 1976, 76).

What saves Galley appears to be a Southern gothic twist: Mallory real-

izes that Galley is uncomfortable and unhappy because she (Mallory) loves

her (Galley)—not as a sister, but as a woman. Standing on the dock looking

out at the water, an outdoors setting often used to symbolize that loving a

woman is natural (Zimmerman 1990, 44), Mallory kisses Galley on the lips.

Immediately, “There was a faraway sound, then Mallory felt light, a rev-

elation”—also signifi cant lesbian metaphors (Zimmerman 1990, 55). “Lust

began to open inside her like a door, like a fi st unclenching. Her nerves

seemed to hang outside her like a web, like lace. It was right, and it was

inevitable. She felt a relief, a sadness, a pleasure she had not even known

about” (Boyd 1976, 208). This act and the lovemaking that follow make

them whole and give them purpose. Given the novel’s agenda, this act can-

not be taken literally. Rather, Mallory represents Galley’s mirror image—a

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lesbian trope fi rst recognized in the late 1800s3—the half she has ignored.

Once she acknowledges this element in herself, she becomes whole and the

story can be read as “a novel of awakening” (Zimmerman 1990, 37).

Like Dorothy Allison, Boyd left the South. This literal detachment

enabled both writers to observe how southerners differ from Yankees. “The

contrast defi nes us: mildly barbaric, a little too earthy, profoundly sexual,

living in the moment as easily as the past, and alienated from family and

region, not only by political convictions but by a rude sense of embarrass-

ment, a self-consciousness about the less admirable intransigencies of our

heritage—that rockbound prejudice that seriously undermines sanity and

intellect” (Allison 1995, xiv–xv). Indeed, one of the elements distinguish-

ing the Scots-Irish novels is an ever-present consciousness of race and class.

Despite the Catholic Church’s strong stance against racism, this awareness is

more evident in the Irish American novels of the South—generally Protes-

tant—than in those by the Irish American Catholics in the rest of the coun-

try. Such an attitude is inbred, for in addition to a general prickliness, the

Scots-Irish are particularly cognizant of racial inequity, in large part because

the majority were neither slaveholders nor part of the aristocratic slave own-

ers (Webb 2004). Boyd makes her stance clear: “Like every white American

I’ve ever encountered, I am a racist.” Of course, racism is not the only reason

she left. For Southerners, homosexuality carried the same stigma as incest;

worse, for Protestant Irish American woman writers, religion offered neither

guidance nor solace, since “none of them . . . took religion seriously” (Boyd

1995, 189).

Captivity in the Sacrament and Ritual of Marriage

By the 1970s, Irish Americans were acquiring college educations and suc-

ceeding in business, outpacing every other “white ethnic group except the

Jews” (Meagher 2005, 132). Such successes led the Irish to move away from

the safe ethnic enclaves of the city. Some returned to Ireland (Almeida 2006,

554); in fact, more immigrants went home to Ireland during the 1970s than

during any other period (Almeida 2001, 52). Others preferred the relative

3. See Dijkstra 1986, or Gilbert and Gubar 1989.

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

anonymity of the suburbs. Comprised of third- and fourth-generation chil-

dren of immigrants, this group nonetheless remained staunchly Catholic

and, consequently, outsiders (Meagher 2005, 139). At the same time, they

did not necessarily feel like they belonged to the new parish either.
Humane

Vitae
had resulted in fewer Irish religious, fewer students attending paro-

chial schools, less reliance on the parish priest, and only a 50 percent atten-

dance rate at Mass (Almeida 2006, 556; Dolan 2008, 285). While Vatican II

had loosened church restrictions, these changes also contributed to “a loss of

mystery and identity” (Almeida 2001, 99).

This sense of cultural isolation is exemplifi ed in two very different

works—Ann Beattie’s debut novel,
Chilly Scenes of Winter
(1976), and Mau-

reen Howard’s third novel,
Before My Time
(1974). Beattie’s characters,

Charles, Sam, and Susan, exemplify the aftermath of the sixties youth cul-

ture: boredom, disillusion, and longing for the past as well as a preference

for fulfi llment over “rampant careerism” (Woods 2005, 357). Women have

“put their brassieres back on and want you to take them to Paul Newman

movies,” the men complain. Charles yearns for his former lover, Laura, who

has married someone else; Sam avoids the present through alcohol and sex;

while the naïve Susan is simply lost. Although Charles and Susan worry

about their alcoholic, suicidal mother (a recurring fi gure in Beattie’s fi ction),

their concern is tinged with cynicism. When they learn she has been hospi-

talized yet again, Charles explodes, “She’s not in pain. [Her husband’s] out

with some barfl y and she’s acting up” (Beattie 1976, 4).

To Beattie’s chagrin, such characters led her to be categorized as a

“chronicler of the disillusioned 1960s counterculture,” although some

reviewers consider this more a backdrop than a statement (L. Gordon 2011,

n.p.). Certainly her setting rang true. This generation felt alienated from

their country, from their parents, from traditional American beliefs in mar-

riage, materialism, and monogamy (Woods 2005, 358). In sum, despite the

use of Irish surnames and reliance on alcohol, Beattie’s exploration of the

characters’ ennui is more representative of a lost generation than of Irish

Americans specifi cally.

Conversely, the third-generation Maureen Howard dwells specifi cally

on denizens of the Irish American diaspora. In
Before My Time
, Howard

explores the marriages of two Irish American cousins, Laura Quinn and

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Mill Cogan, whose unions represent “uneventful, deeply felt, nonprogress,

of captivity in the sacrament and ritual of marriage, of life as a series of

inconsequential events, poignant and terrible, signifying little” (Grumbach

1975)—a theme that might be said to capture the mindset of many women

during this decade of feminist unrest.

Laura is the unhappy wife of a Boston lawyer; her cousin Mill is the

unhappy wife of a Brooklyn gambler. Whether Laura’s unhappiness stems

from losing her ethnicity and Mill’s from being mired in it, the fact remains

that both women fi nd their lives unsatisfactory. To survive, they escape

into the past. Taken together, the two women become an amalgamation of

Howard as she describes herself in her memoir,
Facts of Life
. Winner of the

National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfi ction and the PEN Kaufman

Award, this work stands as “a signifi cant document in Irish-American cul-

tural self-defi nition” (Fanning 2001, 345).
Before My Time
likewise stands

as a signifi cant feminist document, for it recounts the cultural sexism and

personal angst Howard encountered as a young wife.

Just as Laura passes her time as a housewife writing, Howard divided her

days between writing her fi rst novel and cooking gourmet meals for other

young graduate student couples. “I have glazed pates and salmon late into

the night. In a sense I have dined out in my own house, hoping to enter a

world I can’t belong to and that I now hold in contempt” (1975, 72). Just as

Howard and her husband lived in married student housing while he fi nished

Harvard graduate school, Laura recalls their “love nest, a roach infested sub-

let in Cambridge” (1971, 46). And just as Mill fi nds solace in gin, Howard

sprinkles her memoir with wine, whiskey, daiquiris, and martinis. Similarly,

Mill’s admission that “for years now she had lost the knack of wanting these

small domestic treasures” (Howard 1971, 30) echoes Howard’s lament,

“I’ve fi nally learned not to want things I cannot have” (1975, 174).

Whereas
Bridgeport Bus
introduced Howard’s persona in the guise of

thirty-three-year-old Mary Agnes Keely,
Before My Time
shows her at forty,

somewhat successful as a writer but saddled with children (Howard was

forty-three when the novel was published). She has escaped Bridgeport’s suf-

focation only to fi nd it a state of mind. Moreover,
Before My Time
includes

Howard’s ongoing lament about not doing her best work, as well as experi-

mental strategies for elucidating her tales, such as individual vignettes for

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

each character and journal excerpts to shed light on their actions and beliefs.

What distinguishes this novel from Howard’s subsequent work is the absence

of tragedy, which tends to shake up the characters and convince them to

change their ways. Instead, Mill and Laura engage in feminist consciousness-

raising, revisiting their pasts and confronting reality. There is agency in self-

awareness. Howard’s characters make conscious decisions to put the past

behind them and make the future better—an Irish American feminist con-