The Banshees: A Literary History of Irish American Women (6 page)

open them to exploitation, whereas making birth control available would

help liberate the working-class woman. Needless to say, the church hierar-

chy condemned Sanger along with the women’s rights movement and urged

good Catholics to participate in neither. In a fi nal irony, Sanger’s support

for women’s sexual freedom alienated the women’s movement, although she

found supporters among the eugenicists, neo-Malthusians, and Darwinists

(Tobin 2003).

As Irish American women moved into the workplace, protecting the

domains of family, church, and nation began to seem less important than

exposing the injustices perpetrated on their sex. As early as 1892, this group

represented “a sizable presence” within the workforce (Nolan 2004, 1).

Among their supporters were the Irish American labor activists Leonora

Kearney Barry, Mary Harris “Mother” Jones, Mary Kenney O’Sullivan,

and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, who helped ensure union representation for

women as well as men (Ruether 2003, 4). Mother Jones, who emigrated as a

child from County Cork, was a teacher and a dressmaker before she became

involved with the unions, particularly the United Mine Workers (Weaver

1985, 24). Throughout her life she worked to protect the underdogs—

blacks, women, children, and the poor—and recounted that story in
The

Autobiography of Mother Jones
. Another dressmaker, Mary Kenney, who later

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

married the journalist John O’Sullivan, helped found the Chicago Women’s

Bindery Union and the Women’s Trade Union League. With the support

of Jane Adams’s Hull House, Kenney formed the Jane Club, a cooperative

where poorly paid working women could live together, and later penned an

unpublished memoir (see entries for Mary Kenney, Elizabeth Flynn, and

Dorothy Day in Simkin).

Despite being dismissed as a “lady tramp” (Weaver 1985, 23), Leonora

Barry, a member of the Knights of Labor, rose through the ranks to become

a master workwoman in charge of one thousand women and the fi rst female

to be elected to the position of General Investigator. In this offi ce she was in

charge of a new division—women’s work—and helped further the develop-

ment of unions. A former teacher, she drew on this experience to educate her

female workers. Elizabeth Flynn, a co-founder of the American Civil Liber-

ties Union, supported women’s rights, among them equal pay, birth control,

day care, and suffrage; she also wrote a feminist column for the
Daily Worker

(Simkin). These activists were joined by Kate Mullaney, who organized Irish

laundry workers; Lucy Burns, a suffragist and militant activist; and Kate

Kennedy, Margaret Haley, and Catharine Goggins, who unionized public

school teachers to demand equal pay (Dezell 2001, 95).

This was an important political move, for early on Irish American

women comprised the majority of teachers. By 1910, these women, most of

them daughters of domestic servants, represented the majority of public ele-

mentary school teachers in Providence, Boston, New York, Chicago, and San

Francisco (Nolan 2004, 2). By 1939, 70 percent of Chicago’s schoolteach-

ers were Irish American women (Nolan 2004, 92). Clearly, teaching was

a major entrée into the middle class (McCaffrey 1992, 32). Some of these

teachers were also writers. In the early 1900s, Myra Kelly, an elementary

school teacher, published three collections of short stories—
Little
Citizens
,

The Humors of School Life
(1904),
Wards of Liberty
(1907), as well as
Little

Aliens
(1910)—which drew on these experiences while also emphasizing the

diffi culties of assimilating (Fanning 2001, 181).

Irish American teachers were members of the 7.1 percent of Catholics

residing in the professional class (Schneider 1952, 228–232). They attained

this status largely because of their education. As early as 1884, the American

Catholic Church directed its parishes to build and run their own schools

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using teaching nuns. These women, many of them Irish, went on to establish

the “most extensive and accessible system of higher education in the country”

(Kennelly, quoted in Dezell 2001, 96). In Maryland, Notre Dame Academy

for women opened in 1896 (Shelley 2006, 580). By 1900, the Sisters of Notre

Dame de Namur had established a girls’ industrial school; the Sisters of St.

Joseph were teaching typing, bookkeeping, and accounting; and the Sisters

of St. Francis were operating a nursing school. By 1918, fourteen parishes

had collaborated to open Catholic women’s colleges such as Trinity (founded

by Sr. Julia McGroarty), the College of St. Catherine (founded by Mother

Seraphine Ireland), Manhattanville, and St Mary’s. In 1925, the Sisters of

St. Joseph Carondelet founded Mt. Saint Mary’s College in Los Angeles for

daughters of immigrants, most of whom were Irish (Dezell 2001, 177). By

1926, twenty-fi ve Catholic women’s colleges had been opened. By 1928, 50

to 66 percent of all Catholic college students attended Catholic colleges and

universities (Shelley 2006). Given this degree of support, it is not surprising

that Irish American girls were attending school at rates higher than other

Americans (Nolan 2004, 81). Moreover, they continued their education: a

greater proportion of Irish Americans attended college than did their WASP

counterparts (Dezell 2001, 83).

These schools were “pioneers in educating women” (Dezell 2001, 96).

The Irish religious provided not only strong role models but also a sense of

feminism, especially evident among the Sisters of Mercy and the Sisters of

the Good Shepherd (Shelley 2006, 580). Equally important, these women’s

colleges were academically superior to many of the men’s (Gleason 1985,

252). Given this level of attainment, Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s statement—

that “the performance of Catholic scholars and writers [at midcentury] is

particularly galling” (2006, 484)—seems to have overlooked the many

accomplishments of its female members.

Long before it was common or fashionable, Irish American women writ-

ers resided among the upper-class professionals because they held college

degrees. Carson McCullers attended New York University and Columbia

University, Mary McCarthy graduated from Vassar, Maeve Brennan attended

The Catholic University of America, Elizabeth Cullinan was an alumna

of Marymount College, Maureen Howard was a Smithie, and Flannery

O’Connor earned an MFA at the University of Iowa. These Irish Americans

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

were among the 15 percent of married American women working outside

the home, a fi gure more signifi cant than it may seem at fi rst glance.

Prior to World War II, American society and government policy openly

discriminated against working women: most jobs and relief projects were

reserved for men. Married women were expected to stay home, and 85

percent of them did. The 15 percent who worked outside the home were

“viewed as selfi sh, greedy women who took jobs away from male breadwin-

ners” (Hartmann 1982, 16–17). After the war when the infl ux of returning

soldiers displaced the majority of women working in publishing (Friedan

1963), Irish American women retained positions on the major intellectual

journals and magazines, writing serialized novels and short stories for wom-

en’s magazines and occasionally for mainstream outlets.

The most prolifi c writer during this period was Kathleen Thompson

Norris, who turned out over ninety romance novels over the course of her

career. Norris could claim an Irish heritage from both sides of the family: her

maternal grandfather was the Irish actor Paul Moroney; her paternal grand-

mother was the Cork native Maria O’Keefe Thompson. As editor for the San

Francisco
Call
and later the
Examiner
, Norris began her career exposing the

foibles of the nouveau riche Irish in San Francisco. However, after marrying

Charles Norris in 1909, she started writing fi ction (Fanning 2001, 242).

Like Mary Ann Sadlier, Norris’s domain was home and hearth (Ebest 2005,

48). Thus it is not surprising that she rejected birth control, working women,

and the vote, reiterating those themes in her fi ction. Her sentimental fi rst

novel,
Mother
(1911), was a huge success. Indeed, her prodigious output, all

centered around the same theme, led her to be christened the “grandmother

of the American sentimental, domestic novel” (Gale 1999, 506).

Norris’s contemporaries conveyed these messages more powerfully. Kate

Cleary, who began publishing when she was thirteen, initially wrote short

stories for the
Chicago Tribune
. After marrying and while raising six chil-

dren, she published in
Century
,
Cosmopolitan
,
Harper’s
,
Lippincott’s
, and

McClure’s
magazines, ultimately churning out hundreds of poems, stories,

essays, and even a novel,
Like a Gallant Lady
(1897), before her death in

1905 at age forty-two. “The Stepmother” (1901), one of her best stories,

recounts the bleak life of Mrs. Carney, a former school teacher whose energy

and optimism have been drained by lonely life on the prairie. She makes

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this point abundantly clear on her deathbed when she warns her step-son,

“Don’t make [your wife’s] life—too hard! Women are not fi tted—to bear—

as much—as men. They—must—bear—more. Men love women, only—

they—don’t understand. . . . I hope you’ll remember . . . that a woman

isn’t always—well—or happy—just because she keeps on her—feet—and

doesn’t—complain” (Cleary 1901, 244).

Margaret Culkin Banning echoed these messages in her works. A 1912

graduate of Vassar, she went on to earn a certifi cate from the Chicago School

of Civics and Philanthropy a year later and was awarded a Russell Sage

Research Fellowship in 1914. Writing for
McClure’s
,
Cosmopolitan
,
Harper’s
,
Redbook
, and the
Saturday Evening Post
, Banning turned out over four hundred articles addressing issues such as alcoholism, body image, sexism, the

plight of the single woman, marriage and remarriage (
Harper’s
). Over the

course of her career she also published thirty-six novels, among them
Coun-

try Club People
(1976),
The First Woman
(1935),
Women for Defense
(1942),

and
The Women of the Family
(1926). An Irish American Catholic, Banning

often addressed issues pertaining to women in the church, particularly mar-

riage and birth control (Vassar College Libraries). Like her contemporaries,

Banning was an early advocate for women’s rights, often making her point

by putting her female characters in nontraditional roles and calling for their

participation in World War II. Like Mary McCarthy, although she married

four times, Banning kept her own name (Minnesota Author’s Biographies).

Katherine “Kate” O’Flaherty Chopin addressed these themes in her

novels
At Fault
(1890) and
The Awakening
(1899), and in short stories in

The Atlantic Monthly
,
Vogue
, and the
Century
. The best-known precursor of

second-wave feminist authors,
The Awakening
dealt with formerly taboo top-

ics such as miscegenation, adultery, and unhappy wives, which led to charges

of mental illness, not to mention negative reviews. Although Dorothy Anne

Dondore praised the novel as ahead of its time in 1930, Father Daniel Rankin’s

1932 criticism of it as “exotic in setting, morbid in tone, erotic in motiva-

tion” doomed it to obscurity for another two decades. Given its story of an

unhappy, adulterous wife who wishes to escape her husband and children and

ultimately commits suicide, the reasons for the church’s displeasure are obvi-

ous. Eventually critics such as Edmund Wilson helped reestablish Chopin’s

reputation, but Per Seyersted’s 1969 critical biography ultimately elevated her

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

status (Kolosky 1996, 5). “Revolting against tradition and authority; with a

daring which we can hardly imagine today; with an uncompromising honesty

and no trace of sensationalism, she undertook to give the unsparing truth