The Banshees: A Literary History of Irish American Women (37 page)

taking the Pill. All of these traits combine to carry her from Chicago to San

Francisco in search of the truth about her mother. However, upon learning

the truth—that while engaged to another man, her mother had an affair

with a priest whose guilt led him to commit suicide—Allegra damns her.

Her mother, she exclaims, “deserved to go to hell. . . . To be so thoughtlessly

wicked, so wantonly destructive; to stumble so lightly into wickedness her-

self, and then to lure another to follow her, yes, hell, or whatever stood for

it in that unknowable world beyond this, hell and for all eternity was what

[she] deserved, if any did. Allegra hoped she was there; she thought she must

be there” (Donnelly 1998, 300). This reaction not only negates Allegra’s

feminist beliefs, but also returns woman to her archetypal role as the weak

one, the temptress, the doom of man.

Sommers, Katie Roiphe, Naomi Wolf, and Camille Paglia propagated

the myth that feminism was not empowering, but rather reduced women

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to victims. Roiphe argued that “rape is a natural trump card for feminism.

Arguments about rape can be used to sequester feminism in the teary prov-

ince of trauma and crisis” (quoted in Showalter 2009, 318). Similarly in
Fire

With Fire
(1993), Wolf blamed women for their own oppression, citing “the

culture of competition between women” (quoted in Whelehan 1995, 140).

Two Irish American memoirs refute this stance: Martha Manning’s memoir

Undercurrents
(1994) and Lucy Grealy’s
Autobiography of a Face
(1994) are

prime examples of how such pressures lead not to oppression, but rather to

depression and suicide.

In
Black and Blue
(1998) Anna Quindlen similarly attempts to reveal

the effects of domestic violence and quash the post-feminist tendency to

blame the victim by tracing the genesis of abuse. Quindlen tells the story of

Fran Benedetto, alternating between efforts to escape her husband Bobby,

a violently abusive New York City policeman, and delving into their early

relationship to explain why women stay and how hard it is to escape. Fran

fi nally gets away thanks to a women’s “underground railroad.” But eventu-

ally Bobby fi nds her, beats her yet again, and kidnaps their child. Fran tries

to rebuild her life without him, but the doubts never disappear. The last

thing she tells us is, “Everyone says that, that I did the right thing, that I

shouldn’t look back, that I had no choice. Maybe they’re right. I still don’t

know” (300).

Novels by Dorothy Allison and Joyce Carol Oates further expose the

fallacy of this position. Such works were necessary. According to Theresa

de Lauretis, as long as no terminology existed for “‘family violence’ medi-

cal professionals usually ignored the causes of a patients’ injuries, returning

wives and children to their abusers, thereby perpetuating domestic violence.”

This lack of attention, fostered by “gender neutral language,” was particu-

larly harmful to victims of incest since it obscured the fact that with incest

and child sexual abuse, “92 per cent of the victims are female and 97 per cent

of the assailants are male” (1989, 242). Similarly, Judith Fetterley called for

such works, arguing that “the traditional canon of literature also constitutes

a form of violence” in its reifi cation of male authors and masculine values

(quoted in M. Daly 1998, 206).

An example of the female gothic, Dorothy Allison’s
Bastard Out of Car-

olina
(1992) tells about growing up—and surviving—as a victim of physical,

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psychological, and sexual abuse. In this, survival is the key, for Allison pre-

fers to focus on her character’s strength (Bona 2004, 233). Throughout

the 1990s, Joyce Carol Oates also wrote about “victims and victimizers”

(Cologne-Brooks 2005, 175). Although she recognized victims of both gen-

ders, like Allison, Oates prefers to focus on her characters’ strength—men-

tally disturbed Kathleen Hennessey in
The Rise of Life on Earth
(1991), a

fi ctionalized version of Mary Jo Kopechne in
Black Water
(1992), female

gang members in
Foxfi re: Confessions of a Girl Gang
(1993), incest and child

abuse in
First Love
(1996), date rape in
We Were the Mulvaneys
(1996), gang

rape and domestic violence in
Man Crazy
(1997), and the loveless life of

Marilyn Monroe (and in some ways, Princess Diana [Cologne-Brooks 2005,

216ff]) in
Blonde
(1999). Although Oates has been criticized for her dark

visions of violence against women, she justifi es her approach by the fact that

these issues must be explored—and exposed (Showalter 2009, 498).

The fi n de siècle also marked the novelistic emergence of the sexually

androgynous half female, half male, described as possessing a “man’s brain

and woman’s heart” (Showalter 1990, 60). This describes the main characters

in Karin Cook’s
What Girls Learn
(1998) and Oates’s
We Were the Mulvaneys

(1997). Although the theme of rape is a constant in her works,
Mulvaneys

stands out as a powerful exploration of its impact. Corrine Mulvaney, mother

of four, fails to fulfi ll her sacred obligation of motherhood when she casts out

her daughter Marianne after she is raped so as to “save” her husband Michael

from incipient alcoholism fueled by grief. When Michael confesses, “God

help me, I can’t bear to look at her,” overnight Corinne spirits away their

seventeen-year-old daughter, abandoning her with a distant aunt, failing to

discuss the decision with her children, refusing to allow Marianne to visit,

and rarely visiting her. The punishment for the mother’s sin is suggested by

the past tense title (
We
Were
the Mulvaneys)
, for what had been a happy fam-

ily disintegrates. First the oldest son, Michael Jr., moves out; next, Patrick

goes away to college.

Throughout, Patrick’s experiences are mirror images of Marianne’s.

Both begin college yet remain isolated from family and friends. While Mari-

anne sporadically attends classes, she takes on the appearance of a young

boy, cutting off her hair and wearing baggy clothes to appear asexual. Pat-

rick, meanwhile, lets his hair grow long to indicate his disregard for society.

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Fueled by their individual demons, Patrick and Marianne eventually drop

out of college and lose contact with their family for years. Their primary dif-

ference lies in how they deal with the rape: Protestant Marianne fi nds solace

in the Catholic Church, where she learns to pray and grows serene, whereas

Patrick plots revenge. However, when he decides only to humiliate rather

than kill the rapist, the two halves are fused. “After I left that day, Easter

Sunday, remember?—it all just drained out of me. Like poison draining out

of my blood. Like I’d been sick, infected, and hadn’t known it until the poi-

son was gone” (Oates 1999, 453).

We Were the Mulvaneys
concludes on an ironic note. As the family

reunites after years of estrangement, the siblings notice a change in their

mother. Her previously unruly head of red hair has been tamed; her formerly

plain face looks pretty. Then Corinne introduces her new friend—Sable—

who had come into her life “like a hurricane . . . with her brassy hair newly

cut in a virtual fl attop” (Oates 1999, 437, 441). The two co-own a busi-

ness and share a home. While the nature of their friendship remains slightly

ambiguous, Corinne’s choice of partner seems congruent with the tendency

of fi n de siècle novels to feature nontraditional heroines whose identities are

far from static, if not marked by sexual anarchy.

This state is exemplifi ed in Mary Gordon’s three novellas,
The Rest

of Life
(1994), each of which tells the tale of a lost love; it is personifi ed

by Monica Szabo in Gordon’s
Spending
(1998) and Frannie Thorstin in

Susanna Moore’s
In the Cut
(1995). Gordon’s Monica is a fi fty-year-old

divorced female artist in search of a muse—not just for inspiration and fi nan-

cial support, but also for sex. She fi nds him in “B,” a man who takes care

of all her needs. As Monica’s art improves, so does her sex life. After their

fi rst encounter, Monica awakens the next morning exclaiming, “I couldn’t

remember how many times we’d had sex, and it wasn’t even eleven o’clock in

the morning” (Gordon 1998, 43). Sex is spotted throughout the novel. But

apart from Monica’s occasional concern that she might be literally selling

herself, these encounters are lighthearted—unlike
In the Cut
.

Susanna Moore’s novel is easily the most graphic example of the decade

of Irish American heterosexual anarchy. Frannie and her friend Pauline are

both sexually independent women, and for this they must pay. As the novel

opens, Frannie watches strangers having sex and keeps watching even after

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the man notices her. Unbeknownst to her, this becomes the scene of a sex

crime and so she meets detective Malloy, who is investigating the case. Soon

they are engaging in such descriptive sexual acts that Joyce Carol Oates

calls them “powerful, shameless,” and Bret Easton Ellis, the master of the

obscene, was shocked (Wadler 2007). Frannie enjoys everything Malloy does

to her; indeed, her need for love is so great that she feels no embarrassment

even when he seduces her in the precinct’s interrogation room. Frannie’s

life revolves around sex: her research focuses on sexual street slang, she and

Pauline regularly meet for drinks at a strip club, she tries to seduce one of her

undergraduate students. She willfully puts herself in harm’s way, walking the

New York streets or riding the subway in the middle of the night. Frannie

may be a professor, but she is not very smart.

Although Frannie’s behavior places her far beyond mainstream hetero-

sexual Irish American fi ction, it positions her fi rmly within the fi n de siècle

paradigm. With its scenes of sex and violence, anarchy and alienation,
In the

Cut
epitomizes “extreme female gothic” (Showalter 2009, 497).

The novel also recalls the late nineteenth-century belief that women

were indistinguishable, illustrated in artists’ works featuring identical women

peering at their images in mirrors and pools.4 Frannie and Pauline are two

of a kind, literally dying for love, for whatever Frannie attributes to Pauline

describes them both. Pauline refers to herself as a slut. She speaks “resign-

edly of her inability to fi nd true love” (Moore 1995, 29). Listening to the

detectives speak disrespectfully of women, Frannie recalls that “Pauline says

they have to despise us in order to come near us, in order to overcome their

terrible fear of us” (51). Later, Pauline “claims completely disingenuously to

fuck only married men because she prefers to be alone on the holidays” (65).

Refl ecting their “cougar” status, she and Pauline agree that “the best lovers

. . . are men who have been seduced when they were boys by older women”

(67). When Pauline says dreamily, “I can remember every man I ever fucked

by the way he liked to do it. Not the way I liked to do it,” Frannie agrees.

She is interested in “The After,” “an expression [she] learned from Pauline”

4. To view the full extent of this misogyny, see Bram Dijkstra,
Idols of Perver-

sity
(1986).

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regarding men’s ability to pull away emotionally after sex (86). Thus it should

not be surprising that Pauline and Frannie must be punished, both killed in

the same way by the same man.

Elaine Showalter notes that feminism was “problematic for women in

the 1990s.” It raised women’s expectations without the means to fulfi ll

them. But how could it? Neither philosophy nor ideology has that ability.

Nevertheless, “feminism can help us accept the struggle and resist regression

into victimization, infantilization, or revenge” (Showalter 1997, 105). In

this, Irish American women novelists played a strong role.

Unhappy Marriages, Bitter Divorcées

Fin de siècle novels represented change. Prior to George Eliot’s death in

1880, Victorian novels refl ected gender characteristics as a series of binary