The Fallen:The Lost Girls of Ireland's Magdalenes' Legacy of Silence is a historical volume by Louise Brangan. It's taken me 11 days to read a book this time. That's a good deal less than the book I reviewed last on this blog. I'm not as speedy as I once was, but I'm picking up the pace.
Brangan, the author of this study, is Irish. There is a tremendous emphasis on Irish events and associations. The organization Justice For Magdalenes is mentioned a number of times. There is also a very thorough Wikipedia article on the Magdalene Laundries, which is the main focus of The Fallen.
Yet who are the Magdalenes in the context of Irish history and culture? They are women and girls who were rejected by their families and sent away to live in total separation from everyone they knew. You would think this meant that the Irish are a people who value conformity, but then why were there so many of these Laundries throughout Ireland? The women and girls who were sent to the Laundries are portrayed as unconventional in The Fallen.
When I read about ancient Celtic Ireland in Peter Tremayne's Fidelma mysteries, it seemed to me that the Irish of that period were creative, rebellious and unpredictable. I apparently never blogged about Fidelma and I never reviewed any of the books on Goodreads. This means that I read them pre-Goodreads. So I can't draw on material from Goodreads for this review. Fortunately, I have notes in my journal.
I thought the mass exodus of Irish people to the United States in the 1840's was due to poverty and starvation. Since it happened during the Great Famine, this was true but it wasn't the entire truth. Brangan tells us that Protestants, intellectuals and women left due to increasing Catholic religious intensity. This is another dimension of Irish history.
Brangan brought The Country Girls by Edna O'Brien to her readers' attention. It was banned. Brangan thought it was banned because it took the perspective of the women and girls who'd been sent away to the Laundries. I recall reading it some time ago and not understanding why it was significant. Brangan made me realize why this book was so controversial in Ireland. According to Brangan, Edna O'Brien found a copy of The Country Girls in her family's outhouse. Her mother had put it there.
As I read in this book about a commission in Ireland to investigate the industrial schools and how the government had to redress what happened to the women and girls who'd been sent to the Magdalene Laundries, I was continually shaking my head because it felt totally wrong headed that the Irish state was being held entirely responsible. Brangan did eventually bring this up and chalked it up to the separation of church and state.
The Fallen educated me about the Irish health system too. It's apparently a combined system. Although most health care is paid through taxes, there are some things that taxpayers need to pay for themselves.
Some survivors have said that the Magdalene Laundries were "Ireland's Auschwitz". It's more than a bit much to call it that. This wasn't a genocide. I'm willing to call genocides what they were. The Jewish Holocaust wasn't the only one. The consignment of women and girls who didn't fit in to society to the system of Magdalene Laundries was certainly a tragedy and it was Ireland's tragedy.
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