Can Irish women speak? A comparative study of the W. B. Yeats/Lady Gregory relationship may divulge significant implications. While Yeats is universally regarded as the spokesman of the Irish Renaissance and the symbol of modern Irish literature, Lady Gregory is often downplayed as the helping maid of the Celtic Revival movement. In other words, Lady Gregory’s importance in the Irish Renaissance is arbitrarily overlooked (Fogarty 101).
Nuala O’Faolain’s comment reaffirms the subordination of Irish women and woman writers as well. “Modern Irish literature is dominated by men so brilliant in their misanthropy. . . .the self-respect of Irish women is radically and paradoxically checkmated by respect for an Irish national achievement”
(132). However, the fact that women living in early modern Irish nationalism are marginalized does not necessarily lead women to the impasse where female speech is impossible. O’Brien’s The Country Girls Trilogy foregrounds an alternative to the male-dominated discourse, not least because the series is exclusively articulated by the female protagonists—the first two fictions by Caithleen, and the third by Baba. It is this very narrative style that renders the outrageously patriarchal violence all the more conspicuous and to a certain extent lessened.
To support my textual analysis of O’Brien’s trilogy, I have turned to
Foucault’s discussion of sex, power, knowledge, discipline, and punishment.
Foucault’s theory of a de-centered, all-pervasive knowledge-power or
“discourse” has often been used in combination with feminist critiques in analyzing how socio-political power operates, and how people try to change their social relationships based on gender, class, and race. What is most significant, Foucault suggests in the first volume of The History of Sexuality, is not the agent of power but rather the pervasively localized operation of power relations which are never stable but intermingled in the capillary webs of power struggles, and thus undergoing incessant transformation (92-93).
Combined with these localized practices of power relations is Foucault’s idea of the disciplinary enforcement of surveillance. In Discipline and Punish, he traces the history of the penal system, pointing out that it is more efficient to place people under scrutiny than to subject them to carnal punishment: thus in the modern penal system, new mechanisms of surveillance emerge in barracks, hospitals, prisons, and schools to replace the traditional forms of punishment that employ physical torture. This internalized form of punishment is more effective because those in custody are plunged into a state of self-imprisonment and self-surveillance (Discipline and Punish 104-12). The female protagonists, Caithleen and Baba, in O’Brien’s The Country Girls’
Trilogy are indeed ensnared within the intricate webs of patriarchal power
relations. By applying Foucault’s theories of power, discipline, and punishment in this paper, the ways in which Caithleen and Baba are conditioned by family, religion, and society have been investigated. In addition to doing a textual analysis of O‘Brien’s trilogy, I have also examined the image of Ireland and Irish women in her autobiography, Mother Ireland.O’Brien’s short story “Sister Imelda” reproduces her earlier Country Girls’
Trilogy in depicting the woman fighter and survivor in the face of a menacing
patriarchy, Catholic religion, and sterile Irish society. Following the depiction of Irish women’s troubles, the last section discusses the actively “resisting”female characters created by O’Brien, more specifically their production of a female counter-discourse. While Foucault discusses the intimidating micro-politics of the dominant discourse, the seminal part of his theory of power consists in his conviction that power produces both subjugation and production: it is used not merely as a means of control but also as the medium through which the underprivileged fight back and gain control. Unlike traditional theorists who emphasize the absolutely deterministic attributes of
power relations, Foucault refuses to follow the stereotype and elucidates the potential reversion and reproduction of power mechanisms. This counter-discourse is possible simply because, as he asserts, the centers of power relations are power-struggle battlefields always in the process of being challenged, debated, and even replaced (Power/Knowledge 119). Foucault explains further the connection between power and discourse:
Discourses are not once and for all subservient to power or raised up against it, any more than silences are. We must make allowance for the complex and unstable process whereby discourse can be both an instrument and an effect of power, but also a hindrance, a stumbling-block, a point of resistance and a starting point for an opposing strategy. (History of Sexuality 100-01)
Foucault’s dynamic theory of power is helpful in developing my discussion of the complex interaction (conflict but also compromise) between male domination and female subversion in The Country Girls’ Trilogy. This emphasis on the constructive effects of power and resistance corresponds to my reading of Caithleen in The Country Girls’ Trilogy, who, in spite of her repression amid the patriarchal systems such as family and religion, manages to fight hard against the confining systems, codes or discourses. Caithleen thus endeavors not to replicate the submissive role her mother plays, though this effort could also lead to certain “reactive forces.” Her affairs with Mr.
Gentleman and Eugene Gaillard prove to be a tough challenge, for in the process of their romance, Caithleen is not only dealing with individual characters but with the mechanism of patriarchal ideology of mid-century Irish society. Facing these various hardships, the female protagonist grasps every opportunity to escape from the ruthless confinement imposed upon women. From this perspective, Irish women are not irrevocably doomed to fall victim to the male oppression without any means of resistance. On the contrary, they are potentially capable of both reevaluating the male discourse and regaining their own subjective speaking position. Thus, Foucault’s theory is thought-provoking in understanding the ways in which female characters like Caithleen and Baba try through various strategies to reclaim their own voice, subjectivity or self-identity. This emphasis on the strategy by which a
woman might move toward or into a “counter-discourse” and thus, potentially find her own identity as a certain sexual difference may open up a potential location for the woman outside of traditional patriarchal oppositions. Just as Irish women’s position in their society has been rapidly changing since the nineteen seventies, so have feminist theories been moving away from the goal of “reversing” the male-over-female hierarchy toward a model which, having broken down all such hierarchies—in a move suggestive of Nietzsche, Derrida and Foucault (whose all-pervasive power can “oppose itself”)—takes woman’s identity as her position outside or beyond male logic (logos) and make her distinction as an autonomous entity possible.
Conservative and dependent, Caithleen falls victim to the ever-deepening whirlpool of patriarchy, against which Baba fights incessantly for excitement and exploration without hesitation. Indeed, while Caithleen tends to be more reserved in her attack of the injustice imposed on women, Baba is an outspoken critic of sexual inequality. If Caithleen is on behalf of the traditional, underprivileged women, then Baba in a striking contrast symbolizes the “Laugh of the Medusa” that strikes back, endeavoring to petrify the monolithic masculine Irish culture. Even though Caithleen is often forced to be obedient to the patriarchal Irish society, the seeds of resistance and revolution are planted solidly in her mind. In consequence, though failing to make dramatic change to the status quo of women, Caithleen keeps struggling to get out of the quagmire she is in. On the other hand, it is Baba rather than Caithleen who survives at the end of the series, and has the final say (532). Although Caithleen cannot reclaim her right to speak, Baba as the speaking subject of the final fiction to a certain extent takes charge of it. The efforts made by Caithleen and Baba to reconsolidate their female identity by speaking for themselves distinguish O’Brien from other traditional Irish writers, males and females alike, in the depiction of women. And the different voices of O’Brien’s woman characters will be amplified by the woman writers that emerge and thrive in Ireland beginning from 1970s.