Whoredom In Kimmage: Irish Women Coming Of Age
Rosemary Mahoney
1993
Houghton Mifflin
$21.95
I must confess, sadly, that my initial attraction to this now-widely
acclaimed book was less than scholarly. I knew the author. We did not
know each other well, and she did not seem to like the little of me she
knew; however, that connection only served as the bait.
In reading Whoredom In Kimmage, one finds Rosemary Mahoney
carefully removing the protective garments of contemporary Irish society,
laying bare the means by which the women of that society, considered spiritual
and maternal guides, have been ignored beyond the doors of the kitchen and
bedroom. Although it may seem odd, Mahoney begins her book by closely examining
men in the pubs of Corofin, in West Co. Clare. She acknowledges this irony
in the preface where she explains, "I learned that a book about Irish
women would also have to be a book about Irish men, for a large part of
the tale of Irish women lies in their absences."
Leaving the pubs, Mahoney studies the panoply of cultural norms that have
all but removed women from Irish life outside of the quotidian duties of
homemaking and childbearing. Her subjects represent both the outcasts and
the new order of women in Irish society. Mahoney gives the reader an insight
into Irish women by virtue of the broad spectrum of people she encounters,
including a group of lesbian women, the abortion rights activist Ruth Riddick,
and Ireland's first woman president, Mary Robinson.
One of the real beauties of this book is Mahoney's ability to use her apprehending
eyes and ears to take in the language, the color, and the starkness of all
that she encounters, and to transform it into captivating prose: "I
saw sheep with identifying splashes of bright blue paint on their rumps,
bearded goats, stone walls white with lichen, Bridie O'Daly's slovenly farm,
velvety hills, a copper-haired child steering an enormous tractor through
a field, a white farmhouse with a twist of smoke spiraling from the chimney,
a shimmering stand of birch trees, a swaybacked horse. Everything looked
enormous and clean in the sun, and the sky was like a shallow sea."
Mahoney's book is written not only for those intimately interested in Irish
culture but as a means of wryly enlightening those readers in America who
think Ireland is a land of quaint thatched houses peopled by mysterious
freckled men and women with red hair who sing and drink their days away.
The author "shows her Irish" on a few occasions, and in those
instances one is compelled to read ahead and see if she will come forward
and say just how she feels. The compulsion to read ahead is coupled with
the desire to read some of Mahoney's prose over and over, to enjoy her craft,
in the same way one might ask a magician to perform a trick again and again.
The last time I saw Rosemary Mahoney was not in Ireland, not even in a pub.
But reading Whoredom in Kimmage predisposes me to wish I might have
a chance to meet her again, a chance perhaps to listen more, talk less,
and raise a pint of something strong and dark in honor of her achievement.
Philip Huckins is a visiting instructor in the English Department at Salem
State College, where he has taught introductory courses in composition and
communications. He is a Ph.D. candidate at Boston College and the father
of a two-year-old girl, Sarah.