Abstract
‘Woman reigns as an autocrat in the kingdom of her home. Her sway is absolute’1 — so wrote Mary E. Butler at the beginning of the twentieth century, thereby highlighting the theme of motherhood which was then ubiquitous in Irish culture, from sentimental popular songs to the Catholic Church’s veneration of the Virgin Mary. Subsequent decades witnessed an intensification of this national preoccupation with the maternal, culminating in the formal recognition in the 1937 Irish Constitution that a woman’s natural and proper place is in the home as a full-time wife and mother. Such national idealization of the mother inevitably engendered an unquestioning cultural acceptance that motherhood should be the goal of every Irish woman, a guarantor of social prestige and respect. Yet while analysts were quick to note the veneration of the mother in Irish family life, mothers themselves were relatively silent on both the rewards and restrictions of such veneration.2 Until recent years, few Irish women spoke as mothers in popular culture or had a voice within the institutional structures of Church or state.
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Notes
Quoted in R.M. Rhodes, Women and the Family in Post-Famine Ireland ( London: Garland, 1992 ), p. 194.
K.H. Connell, Irish Peasant Society ( Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968 ), pp. 113–61.
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C.L. Innes, Women in Irish Literature and Society, 1880–1935 ( London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993 ).
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M. Hirsch, The Mother/Daughter Plot: Narrative, Psychoanalysis, Feminism ( Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989 ), p. 4.
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R.B. Woodward, ‘Edna O’Brien: Reveling in Heartbreak’, New York Times, 12 March 1989, p. 42.
E. O’Brien, The Bachelor’ in Returning: a Collection of Tales ( London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1982 ), p. 77.
C. Boylan, Holy Pictures (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1983), pp. 86–7. Subsequent references will be cited parenthetically in the text.
M. Lavin, ‘A Family Likeness’ in A Family Likeness (London: Constable, 1985), pp. 7–8. Subsequent references will be cited parenthetically in the text.
E. O’Brien, ‘A Rose in the Heart’ in Mrs Reinhardt and Other Stories (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1978), p. 105. Subsequent references will be cited parenthetically in the text.
E. O’Brien, I Hardly Knew You (New York: Doubleday, [1977] 1978), p. 73. Subsequent references will be cited parenthetically in the text.
E. O’Brien, Time and Tide (London: Penguin, 1992), p. 15. Subsequent references will be cited parenthetically in the text.
J. Johnston, The Railway Station Man (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1984), p. 45. Subsequent references will be cited parenthetically in the text.
J. Johnston, The Illusionist (London: Minerva, 1996), p. 169. Subsequent references will be cited parenthetically in the text.
C. Boylan, Last Resorts (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1984), p. 10. Subsequent references will be cited parenthetically in the text.
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© 2000 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Weekes, A.O. (2000). Figuring the Mother in Contemporary Irish Fiction. In: Harte, L., Parker, M. (eds) Contemporary Irish Fiction. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230287990_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230287990_6
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