Philomena - Martin Sixsmith
An affecting tale of a mother and her son, who were forcibly separated by nuns in one of Ireland's notorious mother and baby homes.
Philomena – Martin Sixsmith
This was one of the first books to bring the scandal of Ireland's dreadful “mother and baby homes” to public consciousness. The homes were institutions where unmarried mothers were sent to give birth to children, whom they were then coerced into giving up. Many of the children were subsequently illegally adopted; others died young (most of the homes had appalling child mortality rates).
The book opens with a split narrative, following a young, liberal civil servant in Ireland's Department of External Affairs, who is trying to stem the flood of Irish babies given over to adoption by American families. Interspersed with details of his work is the story of Philomena, her friend, and their children, Mary and Anthony. The mothers were both placed in Sean Ross Abbey in Tipperary, where it was customary to maintain children until about three years of age, when they were adopted. Their mothers had to work in the home until their families paid £100, or the children were adopted and the new family had paid a fee.
The opening chapters lay bear the misogyny and complete lack of charity underlying the mother and baby system. I thought that a quote from Archbishop McQuaid's assistant gave the clearest explanation of the ideology underlying the mother and baby homes and the analogous system of forced adoptions that I've come across:
“You will see there is compelling evidence that women who allow themselves to produce such children are in the vast majority of cases grave sinners with severe moral problems. There is scientific data showing that the offspring of fallen women are fated to become rebels and to suffer from complexes analogous to those of certain invalids...such offspring are destined for suffering and often failure. No material or social assistance, such as you propose, would be of any use to such people unless and until the rents in the mother's spiritual fabric have been repaired. Such mothers are unfit to have custody of their own children.”
As you can see, girls who became pregnant out of wedlock were considered to be grave sinners, and every punishment they suffered was for their moral growth. So, for example, when they experienced pain in childbirth, they were told that it was the necessary result of their sin and given no pain medication.
Antony and Mary are closely bonded, and fortunate to be adopted together. Unfortunately, no one explains to them what is happening, so the bewildered pair are taken to America to meet their new family for the first time. Heartbreakingly, Antony tells Mary they must have been sent away from their mothers for being 'bad', and they need to behave perfectly so that they're not sent away again.
Antony/Michael's life is marked by his early loss. He attempts to search for his birth mother twice, and is stonewalled by the nuns on both occasions. And while outwardly extremely professionally successful, he needs substantial external validation throughout his life, and has a habit of sabotaging his intimate relationships. His need for approval is so great that, in spite of being a Democrat, gay, and hating the Republican Party's support for various anti-gay crusades in the eighties, he nonetheless joins the party as legal counsel when they headhunt him (he eventually becomes their chief counsel).
(As an aside, their are some interesting observations in the book about the Republican party's approach to politics that are still relevant to today. Michael is able to forget about what prominent Republicans are saying prominently about gay people because his colleagues are all tolerant and “it was understood that the campaigns against abortion and equal rights for women and homosexuals were simply useful things to do – they kept the religious right happy and appealed to redneck bigots.”)
The book is very moving, as I've said, but also anger-inducing. As if tearing a child away from its loving mother isn't enough, the nuns for Philomena to sign a document that states she will never attempt to contact her child again, and they provide no help at all when she attempts to look for him. The way in which Philomena does eventually find out what happened to Michael is tragic. It's also a book that throws light on some other topics, such as policy-making in Ireland in the fifties and sixties, and gerrymandering legislation in America. It's engaging and flows easily. I would recommend it if you're interested in a personal story of the mother and baby homes (if you're more interested in a research-based look at the homes in general, try Republic of Shame by Caelinn Horgan).
What I've been reading this week
I finished All the Beauty in the World by Patrick Bringley, his account of his time working as a security guard in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. I really enjoyed it, but I'm not sure that I would necessarily recommend it to everyone. As you can imagine, there's a lot about different art in the book, so it probably helps to have an interest in the subject (although he does repeatedly make the point that art should be for everyone, not just those who have studied art history).
I am still making my way through Shared Notes by Martin Hayes, the famous' Irish fiddler's memoir, and I keep on finding myself doing other things when I had planned to read it. As a result, I haven't progressed very far – I'm still reading about his teenage years. It's a great book though, and I love the way he writes about music. I'll definitely be writing a review about this one.
Next week, I start a readalong of Ulysses on Sunday, which is also Bloomsday, so I want to finish the Martin Hayes book and Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (which I was reading last month) before starting that. I also have a book to read for my book group (Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry, a book about which I know absolutely nothing at all).
Hope you have a lovely week. I'll be back next Sunday with a review of For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy on my Little Pain by Victoria Mackenzie, a short novel inspired by the meeting of two of England's earliest-known female writers, Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe.