Read The Banshees: A Literary History of Irish American Women Online
Authors: Sally Barr Ebest
Tags: #Social Science, #Literary Criticism, #English; Irish; Scottish; Welsh, #Feminism & Feminist Theory, #European
178). Nevertheless, these traits—which run throughout the works of Irish
American women writers—enabled Scarlett O’Hara to endure.
Quest for the Self
The model set by Irish American women became more widespread during
World War II, when prohibitions against women working changed rapidly:
media propaganda encouraged women to support their country not only
as wives and mothers but also “as workers, citizens, and even as soldiers.”
By 1945 the female labor force, three-quarters of whom were married, had
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doubled in size (Hartmann 1982, 20–21). By war’s end, married women
represented the majority of female workers (Chafe 1991, 13). Although their
jobs were neither glamorous nor creative, women “enjoyed the companion-
ship of fellow workers, the pleasure of mastering a new skill, the opportunity
to contribute to a public good, and the gratifi cation of proving their mettle
in jobs once thought beyond the powers of women.” As one housewife put
it, “some just love their jobs. I think they for the fi rst time in their life feel
important” (Hartmann 1982, 20).
But as the war wound down, the same forces that encouraged women to
work ensured that they returned to their “true calling” as wives and mothers:
• Businessmen, labor leaders, and government offi cials told women to
relinquish their jobs.
• Returning veterans compared American women unfavorably to the
“womanly” ones they had met abroad.
• Social welfare and child-care experts called upon women to pay more
attention to their maternal duties.
• Psychologists and psychiatrists emphasized women’s biological destiny
and diagnosed feminists as “neurotic or worse.” (Hartmann 1982, 21)
• Industry followed suit: across the country, 60 to 90 percent of all
postwar job ads were once again “for men only.” (Hartmann 1982, 21)
By the end of World War II, the Cold War mentality was urging con-
formity and obedience to authority in clothing, housing, and behavior, best
exemplifi ed in the move to suburbia, where a failure to conform might lead
to “painful ostracism.” During this period, with capitalism fl ourishing, the
auto industry quadrupled output from 2 million to 8 million cars. Thanks to
improved transportation, the suburbs exploded: between 1950 and 1960, 11
million of the 13 million homes built in America were in the suburbs. Sub-
urban dwellers were expected to have the “right” number of cars, children,
and spouses. Private backyards behind uniform tract homes were frowned
upon; instead, neighbors shared a common area and socialized together in
the neighborhood and at the local schools. Women were expected to marry
young, bear children, and stay home to raise them (Woods 2005, 126–35).
This message was reinforced by the media.
In the comics—the primary texts for 60 million readers in 1946, 80
percent of whom were young men and women between the ages of six and
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32 | T H E B A N S H E E S
seventeen—wartime strips had featured women so courageous and resource-
ful that they could rescue male heroes like Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon.
Among these powerhouses were Sheena, Queen of the Jungle; Mary Mar-
vel, Captain Marvel’s twin; Miss Fury, Batman’s counterpart; and of course
Wonder Woman. But after the war, these paragons gave way to simpering
teens like Betty and Veronica of the “Archie” comics. Likewise, Wonder
Woman and her feminist cohorts gradually devolved into the hero’s love
interests (Hartmann 1982, 190, 202).
Whereas the four major prewar magazines—
Ladies’ Home Journal
,
McCall’s
,
Good Housekeeping
, and
Woman’s Home Companion
—had featured
stories about young career women who not only worked but were also attrac-
tive and beloved by their husbands, these same magazines did an about-face
as the war wound down and the men came home.
Ladies Home Journal
set
the stage with “Occupation: Housewife,” whose (female) author dismisses
the housewife’s ennui by pointing out her many skills and reminding her
that even if she feels thwarted, “a world of feminine genius, but poor in
children, would come rapidly to an end. . . . Great men have great mothers”
(Thompson, quoted in Friedan 1963, 42. Beginning in 1949, subsequent
articles such as “Femininity Begins at Home,” “Have Babies While You’re
Young,” “Are You Training Your Daughter to Be a Wife?,” and perhaps the
most insulting, “Why GIs Prefer Those German Girls,” perpetuated these
messages. By 1950, only a third of magazine heroines were pursuing a career
outside the home—and they were usually getting ready to quit after realizing
they really wanted to be housewives and mothers (Friedan 1963, 38–44).
By the late 1950s, a review of the above magazines (minus
Woman’s
Home Companion
, which had folded) yielded roughly one career woman per
hundred articles, a focus echoed in other women’s magazines like
Redbook
and
McCall’s
. Worse, magazines such as
Life
presented supposedly fact-fi lled
stories that attacked educated working women.
Life’s
1956 Christmas issue
referred to them as the result of “that fatal error that feminism propagated,”
so masculinized that they emasculated their husbands. Even former career
women were suspect, for their education had led them to be discontented
with housewifery, disrupt the PTA, dominate their husbands, and destroy
their children. In contrast,
Look
praised the contented housewife: “No lon-
ger a psychological immigrant to man’s world, she works, rather casually, as a
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third of the U.S. labor force, less towards a ‘big career’ than as a way of fi lling
a hope chest or buying a new home freezer. She gracefully concedes the top
jobs to men. This wondrous creature also marries younger than ever, bears
more babies and looks and acts far more feminine than the ‘emancipated’ girl
of the 1920’s or even ’30’s (quoted in Friedan 1963, 59).”
These messages were echoed at the movies. During the war years over
100 million Americans attended the movies every week; indeed, the demand
for escapism was so great that in some cities theaters remained open all night.
To encourage women’s participation in the war efforts, producers cast Betty
Hutton in
Here Come the Waves
(1945), Lana Turner joined the WACs in
Keep Your Powder Dry
(1945), and Lucille Ball portrayed an heiress working
in a munitions plan in
Meet the People
(1944). To reinforce the notion that
women could survive and succeed in the workforce while their men were
gone, Hollywood produced fi lms such as
Mrs. Miniver
(1942),
Since You
Went Away
(1944), and
Tender Comrade
(1943) (Hartmann 1982, 191–92).
But as the war wound down, these messages changed. Suddenly career
women were less admirable. In
Spellbound
(1945), the psychiatrist Ingrid
Bergman is frigid; in
Together Again
, the mayor Irene Dunne abandons her
career for marriage (1944); in
Mildred Pierce
(1945), obsessive business-
woman Joan Crawford neglects and alienates her daughter. With the rise of
postwar fi lm noir, Barbara Stanwyck and Rita Hayworth seduce and manip-
ulate their male paramours in
Double Indemnity
(1944) and
The Lady from
Shanghai
(1947), respectively, while Olivia de Havilland tries to murder her
twin sister in
Dark Mirror
(1946). If they weren’t killing or manipulating,
postwar female stars were often portrayed as victims. Ingrid Bergman is
driven mad in both
Gaslight
(1944) and
Notorious
(1946); Barbara Stanwyck
is terrorized in
Sorry, Wrong Number
(1948). Whereas women had appeared
confi dent and competent when the war began, within a matter of years they
had become helpless, insecure ninnies (Hartmann 1982, 202).
In this, the church was complicit. The Jesuit Daniel Lord wrote Hol-
lywood’s Production Code while the Irish Catholic Joseph Breen enforced
it, thus brokering a deal between Jewish producers and Catholic bishops
(Dezell 2001, 27). Films like
Going My Way
(1944) not only helped align
American Catholics with the nation’s commitment to war, but they also
moved away from Depression mores of collaboration and mutual support
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34 | T H E B A N S H E E S
toward a “moral economy of pragmatic leadership” (Smith 2010, 68). Henry
Luce’s
Life
magazine contributed to this reassessment. Whereas prewar arti-
cles had depicted Catholics as “ethnic Others,” postwar photo essays repre-
sented them as good American citizens, in the process eliding any hint of
ethnic difference. This message was underscored in a 1944
Life
editorial,
“The Kremlin and the Vatican,” which attacked Russia for criticizing the
pope, and in numerous articles featuring Cardinal Francis Spellman, praise
for the pope, and photo essays about cherubic altar boys (Smith 2010, 104).
Luce’s campaign was aided by Irish Americans Margaret Bourke-White
and Bishop Fulton Sheen. Bourke-White was the fi rst female photojournal-
ist hired by
Life
. In fact, one of her photos graced the inaugural cover (Bois
1997). Bishop Sheen helped revise the public image of Catholics with his
television show,
Life is Worth Living
, which ran from 1952 to 1957. During
this period Sheen was featured in a cover story in
Time
magazine, won an
Emmy for “most outstanding personality,” and became a permanent mem-
ber of the top-ten list of most admired American men. What was his appeal?
The promotion of “faith, home, and family as the foundation for collective
American identity” (Smith 2010, 140).
Responses to this retrenchment varied. Like their foremothers, some
Irish American women who were themselves professional writers supported
the move. Betty Smith’s novels of Irish America—
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
(1943),
Tomorrow Will Be Better
(1948), and
Maggie-Now
(1958)—reiterate
the belief that when women married, they quit working outside the home.
Indeed, the preoccupations of Smith’s heroines are “romance, marriage,
childbirth, and death” (Scott 1979, 90–92).3 Other Irish American novels of
the time such as Mary Doyle Curran’s
The
Parish and the Hill
, Mary Deasy’s
Hour of Spring
, and Ellin Berlin’s
Lace Curtains
(all published in 1948)
sound a comparable note. In a 1948 interview with
The Boston Post
, Curran
describes her novel by saying: “mine isn’t a love story. There isn’t a drop of
sex in it. . . . [I]t is my family of whom I am writing. . . . My mother was born
in Ireland. She taught her children the true Irish value of life. . . . My mother
3. In contrast, Smith’s
Joy in the Morning
is notable for its racy sex scenes.
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believed in education for her children, moral and intellectual. . . . [W]e must
return to those values” (quoted in Halley 2002).
But many prominent Irish American women writers refused to go that
route. A descendant of John McCarthy, an Irish immigrant who settled in
Newfoundland in 1837, Mary McCarthy married immediately after graduat-
ing from Vassar and then married three more times; nevertheless, she worked
from 1937 through 1962 as a writer and editor for the
Partisan Review
,
the most intellectually elite “old boys’ club” in New York City (Brightman
1992; Showalter 2001). McCarthy’s prominence in this imbalanced work
environment is all the more striking given the low stature of its women con-
tributors: in the
Partisan Review Reader
, a collection of the “best and most
representative” essays published from 1939 to 1944, only fourteen of the
ninety-two selections are by women. However, over a third were written
by Irish Americans—McCarthy and the poets Louise Bogan and Marianne
Moore—and they were soon joined by Flannery O’Connor.4 O’Connor’s
short stories “The Heart of the Park” and “The Peeler” (which became part
of her fi rst novel,
Wise Blood
) were published by the
Partisan Review
in 1949