The Banshees: A Literary History of Irish American Women (46 page)

estrangement from their mothers.

In this regard, these works are clearly distinguishable from those of

post-feminist writers, for “post-feminism dovetails closely with a heightened

social and economic emphasis on showplace domesticity, virtuoso parenting,

and technologies mobilized in the name of family cohesion. It may very well

be one of the ideological connectors between a contemporary sense of unfet-

tered material entitlement and a moral discourse of virtuous familialism”

(Tasker and Negra 2007, 7).

While the distant matriarch is a familiar Irish American trope, with few

exceptions the mothers in these twenty-fi rst-century Irish American women’s

novels bear little resemblance to their predecessors. Juli’s mother drinks to

drown her guilt over the imminent death of her mentally challenged daugh-

ter. Amma’s mother appears to be withdrawn because (like her foremothers)

she mourns the death of a child; however, she actually caused her child’s

death in a case of Munchausen By Proxy gone wrong: “The caregiver, usu-

ally the mother,
almost always
the mother, makes her child ill to get attention

11.
The Bitch Posse
was fi rst published as
The Bitch Goddess Diary
in 2005.

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for herself. You got Munchausen, you make yourself sick to get attention.

You got MBP, you make your child sick to show what a kind, doting mommy

you are” (Flynn 2006, 228). There are no doting mommies in these books.

Most are divorced, more interested in escaping reality or pursuing new loves

than in raising their daughters.

Of course, a bad mother is no excuse to murder. In
Sharp Objects
,
Amma

and her gang of three torture and kill two of their classmates because Amma

resents her mother’s attention to them. The high school seniors in
The Bitch

Posse
accidentally murder their lecherous drama teacher while trying to scare

him into never seducing another underage girl. Amma is a psychopath so she

feels no guilt. But the Bitch Posse—Rennie, Cherry, and Amy—are wracked.

Martha O’Connor’s
The Bitch Posse
ostensibly alternates setting and

point of view with individual chapters moving between Rennie, Cherry,

and Amy’s high school escapades in 1988, and attempts to deal with their

unresolved guilt in 2003. This nonlinear strategy does not work—unless

O’Connor’s intent is to show that the girls’ guilt has left them unable to

mature. Colleen Curran’s
Whores on the Hill
includes no murders, only a

prank gone wrong. This comparatively tame novel is set in a Catholic girls’

school (on a hill) in Milwaukee. The protagonists are called the “whores

on the hill” because they manage to look like punks even while wearing

their school uniforms—“Fishnet stockings under our uniform skirts, black

combat boots, oxford shirts torn at the collar, at the cuffs . . . scapulas, rosa-

ries, every single crucifi x we owned” topped with razor-cut hair and kohl-

rimmed eyes—while remaining on the honor roll (Curran 2005, 21). In true

(third-wave) feminist style, the friendship of Astrid and Juli causes newcomer

Thisbe—who had not spoken in “six months and seventeen days”—to regain

her voice (12).

Whereas these girls would rank their counterparts in
The Bitch Posse
as

“skanky ho[s],” they view their own behavior as empowering. Baumgard-

ner and Richards maintain that “third wave women have been seen as non-

feminist when they are actually living feminist lives” (2000, 48), accusations

arising from the tendency of some third-wavers, particularly the above novel-

ists, to depict apparently promiscuous young women. But third-wavers view

sexuality quite differently. “You know there is power in promiscuity, but

there’s a trick to it,” says one of the “whores” on the hill. “You know the

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

difference between doing something for fun and doing something because

you feel pressured. Own it. Love it. Live it. And tell the rest of the world

to step the fuck off, pronto” (Curran 2005, 55). Not surprisingly, much of

the novel revolves around the girls exploring their sexuality. They claim to

hold the power, but repeatedly they are used, sometimes raped by boys they

supposedly control. Their conversations include comments such as “I just

couldn’t believe he was going out with me” (101), and acting out that reveals

their anger. Most telling is their fascination with self-mutilation. Juli burns

herself with cigarettes and cuts her arms. The fi rst time Thisbe does it, she

“smil[es] through the sting, savoring it” (127).

These actions and reactions parallel those in the other third-wave novels.

In
Sharp Objects
, the journalist Camille cuts words into her skin:
cook, cup-

cake, kitty, curls . . . baby-doll . . . harmful . . . petticoat . . . wicked
. Doing so

gives her control (Flynn 2006, 60–61). In
The Bitch Posse
, Cherry explains

that “one slice across with a knife or razor blade and pain and hatred and

self-loathing melt away” (O’Connor 2003, 83). She justifi es cutting by not-

ing that Princess Diana—a touchstone for all the young women in these nov-

els—was also a cutter. Later, she tells Amy, “It’s just taking the pain inside

and putting it outside where it’s real.” After Cherry cuts her arm, Rennie

takes the razor blade and slices hers. “She opens her eyes as if shaken awake,

and her tears have stopped. She doesn’t look afraid anymore.” So Amy takes

it and draws blood: “It struck like a tuning fork and vibrated with life; I
do

feel better. I feel alive, and everything around me is crisper, cleaner, louder,

more defi ned. The air rings with importance. I matter. I am. This is better

than blanking out with vodka” (94–95). Similarly, when Rennie cuts herself,

“Everything feels so clear, the horrible self-hating feelings are gone” (203).

Rennie sums it up when she says,
You have to hurt if you want to feel anything

at all
(71).

In the hierarchy of self-mutilation, these actions are considered moder-

ate. In fact, most self-mutilation falls into this category. Cutting has become

increasingly popular, reaching almost epidemic proportions and considered

the twenty-fi rst-century equivalent of anorexia both in usage and inducing

a feeling of control (Focus 2009). It occurs mostly in girls ages thirteen to

nineteen and, as the above quotations suggest, serves as a release from ten-

sion or stress. According to Mary Pipher, author of
Raising Ophelia
, when

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self-mutilation is widespread, it suggests “enormous cultural processes at

work.” Just as anorexia and bulimia refl ected twentieth-century pressure on

young women to be thin, self-mutilation “can be seen as a concrete interpre-

tation of our culture’s injunction to young women to carve themselves into

culturally acceptable pieces.” It may be viewed as an act of submission or, in

the case of girls in these novels, a cry for help: “Stop me from hurting myself

in the ways that the culture directs me to” or “I will hurt myself more than

the culture can hurt me” (1994, 158).

Gradually these angry third-wave novels faded away as the country

began to change. After the bungling of disaster relief for victims of Hur-

ricane Katrina, the tide began to turn against the Bush administration and

its post-9/11, anti-woman mindset. In 2006, the Democratic Party retook

Congress; the following year Nancy Pelosi became the fi rst female Speaker of

the male-dominated House of Representatives. In 2008, even Republicans

recognized the power of women’s votes, as exemplifi ed in the nomination of

Sarah Palin as Republican vice-presidential candidate. Similarly, the desire

for a different type of president led to Hillary Clinton’s becoming the fi rst

female not only to win a presidential primary but also to receive 18 million

votes in the presidential election. That same year, Ann Dunwoody became

the fi rst female to be promoted to four-star general; and following the elec-

tion of Barack Obama, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan were appointed to

the United States Supreme Court.

Popular culture refl ected this changing mindset: the American public

fi nally grew tired of movies about innocent young girls depicted in
Amelie

(2001),
Whale Rider
(2002), and
Little Miss Sunshine
(2006), and moved on

to embrace more powerful women such as Lisbeth,
The Girl with the Dragon

Tattoo
(2008), and Karen Clark, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for

Diplomacy in the political satire
In the Loop
(2009), and messages about the

dehumanization of the war in
The Hurt Locker
(2009), directed by Kathryn

Bigelow, the fi rst woman to win the Academy Award for best director.

Irish American women’s prominence rose markedly during this period.

In 2004, Nancy Keenan—listed by
Washingtonian Magazine
as among the

one hundred most powerful women in America—was elected president of

NAR AL Pro-Choice America (Huffi ngton Post 2012). Kathleen O’Toole

served as Boston’s commissioner of police until 2006, when she stepped

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

down to become chief inspector of Garda Siochana, Ireland’s twelve-thou-

sand-member national police force (Slack 2006). In 2005, Joan Walsh,

featured regularly on MSNBC, was named editor in chief of
Salon
. Doris

Kearns Goodwin published two new books:
Team of Rivals
(2005), and
Lin-

coln
(2006). Likewise, Monica McGoldrick published
Ethnicity and Family

Therapy
(2005) and co-edited
Revisioning Family Therapy: Race, Culture,

and Gender
(2008).

Angry that women still earn 25 percent less than men, Evelyn Murphy,

former lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, researched and wrote
Getting

Even
(2006) and established WAGE—Women Are Getting Even—which

began collaborating with groups around the country to offer salary nego-

tiation workshops. In 2007, Kate Moira Ryan collaborated with Linda S.

Chapman to turn Ann Bannon’s “Beebo Brinker Chronicles” into a play

produced by Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner (Bannon 2011. The late Rob-

ert F. Kennedy’s daughter, Kerry, published
Being Catholic Now
, featuring

interviews with other famous Catholics, in 2008. Her sister Rory spent the

decade producing and directing awardwinning political documentaries on

topics such as AIDS, the dangers of nuclear power and Abu Ghraib, as well

as a biography of the correspondent Helen Thomas. Not surprisingly, Ken-

nedy cousin Maria Shriver was also politically active during this decade. In

addition to serving as First Lady of California, in 2009 she produced an

Emmy-winning HBO documentary on Alzheimer’s disease, from which

her father suffered, and “The Shriver Report,” which examined the status

of women in the workplace. This renewed respect for women was evident

as Irish American women’s novels began to change in tenor and theme.

Rebecca Barry’s
Later, at the Bar
(2007), a “novel in stories,” provides a

darkly humorous view of women as men’s equals—in drinking and in failed

relationships—a third-wave view of equality. Although the men’s stories are

as prominent as the women’s, the men remain unmoored while the women

persevere. The women may not be happier, but they are strong enough to

carry on alone. Gillian Flynn’s second novel,
Dark Places
(2009), tells the

story of Libby Day, a young woman emotionally stunted by her family’s

murder. Libby gains agency—and a life—as she slowly deciphers who really

committed the murders. Tess Callahan’s
April and Oliver
(2009) also falls

into this category. Like Libby Day, April has failed to mature because of a

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trauma in her life. Raped and molested by her uncle, she remains mired in

physically abusive relationships believing she deserves no better. Despite her

basic lack of self-esteem—and unlike heroines in the earlier third-wave nov-

els—April is otherwise a generous, loving, and decent character. She laughs

off the attentions of her cousin Al and fends off the advances of Oliver, who

is engaged. As the novel closes, April has moved away from the city and has