The Banshees: A Literary History of Irish American Women (40 page)

women, changing enforcement of policies that protect women, appointing

1. See also Kelly Bulkeley,
Dreams of Healing
(New York: Paulist Press, 2003);

and James Gibbons, “The September 11 Dream Project,” http://www.hungryghost.

net/dream/dreampjtinnit.html.

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conservatives to policy positions, and redefi ning missions of women’s pro-

grams” (2006, 13). Although Bush was praised for his high-profi le female

appointees—such as Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, Secretary of Agriculture

Ann Veneman, Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton, EPA Director Chris-

tine Todd Whitman, and Communications Director Karen Hughes—Chao,

Veneman, and Norton were conservatives, and Whitman soon resigned in

frustration. Like Reagan and Bush senior, George W. Bush’s percentage of

white female appointees overall hovered at about 25 percent; black women

appointees were even scarcer (Tessier 2002).

The Bush administration also ignored women’s input regarding female

appointees, thus nullifying a quarter century of political progress (Finlay

2006, 14). Although she was a Republican, the Irish American Roselyn

O’Connell, president of the National Women’s Political Caucus (NWPC)

and chair of the 2001 Women’s Appointments Project, publicly and repeat-

edly expressed dismay about the administration’s failure to recognize women,

lamenting, “It’s a signal that we’re just not that important” (Tessier 2001,

n.p.). Indeed, within weeks of Bush’s inauguration, the Interagency Council

on Women, the Equal Pay Matters Initiative, and the White House Offi ce

on Women’s Initiatives and Outreach were eliminated. Luckily, attempts to

close offi ces of the Women’s Bureau of the Department of Labor, the Wom-

en’s Educational Equity Act programs, and the Women’s Military Advisory

Committee were unsuccessful, as were efforts to halt federal workers’ contra-

ceptive coverage and weaken Title IX. Nevertheless, in every case the agen-

cies’ funding was cut, and in many instances Bush cronies were appointed to

run women’s agencies, while information was either omitted or disinforma-

tion posted on women’s reproductive health sites (Finlay 2006, 15–23).

If the Towers had not been attacked, the public and the media might

have taken issue with these actions. Instead, the nation succumbed to “a

symbolic war at home, a war to repair and restore a national myth . . . our

fi xation on restoring an invincible manhood by saving little girls” (Faludi

2007, 13). The press not only capitulated, but also took the mission a step

further, crowing that the tragedy “pushe[d] feminism off the map” and her-

alding “the return of the manly man” and his partner, the devoted home-

maker. Such attitudes led feminist historian Susan Faludi to write: “Of all

the peculiar responses our culture manifested to 9/11, perhaps none was

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T H E N E W M I L L E N N I U M | 1 8 9

more incongruous than the desire to rein in a liberated female population. In

some murky fashion, women’s independence had become implicated in our

nation’s failure to protect itself” (2007, 20–21).

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, a wave of Irish American trade nov-

els took that attitude a step further by implying that feminism was no longer

necessary. Post-feminist writers confl ated Bush-era neoconservative politics

pertaining to gender and sexuality with more progressive movements, argu-

ing either that feminism had been attained and was now a matter of com-

mon sense, or that feminism had been attained but should be repudiated

(McRobbie 2007, 28). These novels valorized “female achievement within

traditionally male working environments and the celebration of surgical and

other disciplinary techniques that ‘enable’ (i.e., require) women to maintain

a youthful appearance and attitude in later life” (Tasker and Negra 2007,

1–2). Such beliefs perpetuated the racist, ageist, and classist distinctions

characteristic of patriarchal thinking, for clearly not every woman was able

to maintain such a lifestyle.

Although post-feminism values individualism, “this formulation tends

to confuse self-interest with individuality and elevates consumption as a

strategy for dealing with those dissatisfactions that might alternatively be

understood in terms of social ills and discontents.”2 Post-feminist culture

assumes and promotes equal educational opportunities as well as “freedom

of choice with respect to work, domesticity, and parenting; and physical

and particularly sexual empowerment” (Tasker and Negra 2007, 2)—again,

rights fought for by feminists and now assumed to be givens. These in turn

lead to the assumption that rather than needing to work, women might

merely
choose
to work, yet another example of post-feminist culture generally

excluding women of color or lower social class. Equally troubling is the post-

feminist “othering” of feminism—the assumption that it is diffi cult, shrill,

and restrictive.

As might be expected from nonliterary works aimed at the general pub-

lic, early twenty-fi rst-century Irish American mystery and romance novels

2. Recall George W. Bush’s advice to go shopping to overcome the trauma of

9/11.

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refl ect many of these assumptions. Since the writers are of Irish American

descent, the female leads are white, educated, and at least middle class. In

this they are representative of their generation: “college educated suburban-

ites who disagree with Church teachings on social issues” and are more likely

to associate “IR A” with their retirement accounts than with their ancestors

(Dezell 2001, 35). These heroines are “vital, youthful, and playful while

[their] opposite number, the ‘bad’ female professional, is repressive, decep-

tive, and deadly” (Tasker and Negra 2007, 9).

Among the mystery writers are Karin Ficke Cooke,3 Diana O’Hehir,

and Nevada Barr, whose female sleuths are seemingly free to stop work at

the fi rst hint of homicide to track down the perpetrator. Among the romance

novelists, Sarah Dunn’s and Kristin Hannah’s heroines fall into the “Sex in

the City” category of independent young women looking for love in New

York. Megan McCafferty focuses on teenage angst, a white middle-class lux-

ury as well as a staple of post-feminism’s “chick lit” youth fetish. The heroes

in Christina Dodd’s “Darkness Chosen” series are usually upper-middle-

class shape-shifters. Similarly, Christine Feehan writes about vampires, who

generally do not hold jobs. Vampires are, however, almost always white and

they are timeless, yet another element of post-feminism. Post-feminist writ-

ers are obsessed with youth and temporality; vampirism takes care of that

(Wearing 2007). All of these characters remain fi rmly entrenched within a

post-feminist sensibility that does not reject feminism so much as ignore it

(Tasker and Negra 2007, 21).

The unfortunate epitome of post-feminist novels is J. Courtney Sulli-

van’s
Commencement
(2009), mistakenly considered by some as the twenty-

fi rst-century counterpart to Mary McCarthy’s
The Group
.
Structurally there

are a number of parallels. Both novels feature a group of young women, best

friends in college and as adults. Both narratives move from past to present,

between Smith and Vassar, respectively, and life in New York, settings gener-

ally requiring characters to be white members of the upper class. As in
The

Group
,
Commencement’s
chapters alternate between a group of friends—in

3. Karin Ficke Cook’s mysteries should be distinguished from Karin Cook’s

coming-of-age novel,
What Girls Know
.

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this case Bree, Sally, April, and Celia—and the novel begins with Celia’s

anticipation of Sally’s postgraduation wedding, just as
The Group
begins

with Kay’s. One of the characters, Bree (like McCarthy’s Lakey), is a lesbian

who only belatedly accepts her sexuality. Like McCarthy’s Polly, Celia is the

only Catholic and ultimately the most positive character; like McCarthy, she

is also an atheist and an aspiring novelist.

But
Commencement
is not
The Group
. Whereas the women in
The Group

are torn between their feminist aspirations and the confi nes of reality, the

women in
Commencement
take feminism for granted. As Sally says: “They

recognized that they were the fi rst generation of women whose struggle

with choice had nothing to do with getting it and everything to do with

having too much of it—there were so many options that it felt impossible

and exhausting to pick the right ones” (Sullivan 2009, 139). This line sounds

like the perfect entrée for a bit of Irish American satire, but
Commencement

takes itself seriously. It is not a satire, nor does Sullivan mimic her friends’

conversations or situations. Although some critics maintained that they were

“strong, warmly believable three-dimensional characters” (Maslin 2009,

25), apart from their names and varied familial concerns, all but April sound

identical. Indeed, some statements verge “on the banal” (Russo 2009, 8). In

her blurb for
Commencement
, Gloria Steinem compares Sullivan to McCar-

thy, noting that Sullivan “adds a new feminist generation.” Nevertheless, she

continues, these characters “make clear that the feminist revolution is just

beginning”—again!

Among the four women April is the only practicing feminist, yet she is

dismissed as a radical. Through April’s story important women’s issues—

rape, domestic abuse, prostitution, genital mutilation, and sex traffi cking—

are raised. But “even most Smith feminists thought she was too strident,

which was really saying something” (Sullivan 2009, 38). After graduation,

Sally marries Jake, jettisons plans for medical school, and has a baby. Her

constant chatter about their connubial bliss causes Bree—who had been

planning her wedding since age fi fteen—to snap. “The extent of Bree’s dis-

appointment shocked her. It felt almost physical, like a broken rib poking

through the skin, so that every time her thoughts twisted this way or that,

a horrible pain spread through her whole body” (54). She feels the pain

because she is in love with Lara, but “she still wished for a normal life, for the

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

kind of love that would please her parents” (77), a story line perhaps familiar

to other women in that situation.

Meanwhile, April begins working for Ronnie Munro, a militant feminist

who insists on April’s complete obedience—to the point of faking her own

death—and then uses the news to promote her latest documentary about

prostitution, a story line the
New York Times
critic Maria Russo dismisses

as “preposterous”: “It reads like a parody of Andrea Dworkin-style, all-men-

are-rapists feminism, and yet the novel is too earnest and timid to ques-

tion the blinkered viewpoint April develops” (2009, 8). Although the girls

acknowledge that Ronnie is crazy, her self-interest and disregard for April’s

well-being cast feminist activists in a negative light. Indeed, “Ronnie was the

sort of icon you loved if you were a militant, and loathed if you were just your

average run-of-the-mill feminist” (Sullivan 2009, 267).

Celia Donnelly (the author’s persona) is the lucky one. Initially, she wor-

ries about fi nding a man so she can quit working and write novels, but slowly

she starts to question that path. “Marriage wasn’t security. . . . Nor did it

necessarily mean happiness” (Sullivan 2009, 211). Eventually she realizes

“There was a very real possibility that no one was coming to save her. She

would have to make her own plan. If she wanted to someday leave her job

and write books, then she’d have to write books to do it, not wait around

for some hedge fund guy to fi nance her fantasies” (213). Similarly, Sullivan

published her fi rst novel while writing for
The New York Times
.

But the
Times
critics were fairly critical of their colleague: “This under-

tow of denial and avoidance is unfortunate in a novel with so much verve,

making it feel overly tame, as if Sullivan wants to soothe and reassure her

characters rather than letting them face the truths that might have elevated