When my mother arrived in Ireland, she was just 13. Raised in London by Irish parents, she thought that she had a sense of Ireland from her mother and father. She was accustomed to the accents, the colloquialisms, the humour. Like many emigrants, her parents never really assimilated during their years in London. They simply ran an Irish household away from home. Eventually, the displacement was so strong that they gave up a higher standard of living to return to a rather grim Limerick in the 1970s.
So my mother was surprised the first time a hefty schoolmate slammed her against a wall, and told her to go back to where she came from. They called her an “English bitch”. They taunted her “posh” accent. They said she would never fit in and they held her accountable for the actions of people she didn’t know, who lived long before her.
She lived here for 45 years. She died here. She told me often that people would refer to her as a blow-in, even after all that time. But she wouldn’t move back to London, she said. Ireland was her home.
It’s my home, too, and although I love this country for its warm people and its craggy, bristled, green landscape and a million other things, I still sometimes feel a friction here. Many of us seem to. For all its wonders, Ireland still operates under the legacy that brought it into being. To a large extent, we still hunch over the remnants of ideas that don’t work any more. We hang on to old grudges, we place a religion that doesn’t reflect how most of us actually live on a pedestal. We maintain legislation that says women do not own themselves. We are friendly, but we’re not really inclusive.
Relating to Dedalus
When I was 18, I was given a copy of James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I sat up through the night reading it. Its rage was mesmeric, the deep confusion it portrayed somehow comforting. Its protagonist, Stephen Dedalus, is a young man caught in the midst of personal chaos. He has not yet got to know himself, but he lives in an environment that ostracises anything unfamiliar. He has great potential and a creative spirit, but is hobbled by the Ireland he lives in. When talking with friends about Ireland, he says "When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight".
Obviously he was describing a different Ireland, a damaged country that had lost control of its own destiny. But it was an Ireland like any other country threatened by a powerful invader – entrenched in its culture. When a culture is threatened by outsiders, its people will dig in their heels. They will amplify and defend every aspect of it without analysis or criticism, because it is imperilled.
Dedalus is quite broken. Like a lot of Irish people, he is both drawn to and disgusted by the Catholicism that is presented to him as the only way to see the world. He is trapped and he is angry. His eyes narrow, and he says: “Do you know what Ireland is? . . . Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow.”
Many people will respond to that sentiment defensively, or in anger. “If you don’t like it here, then leave.” That’s what Joyce did. That’s what so many young people have done. Historically, they were pitched out across the sea in chaos. More recently, they were forgotten; left to figure out a way to live in a country that had no place for them, no job for them, so they left.
A journey in reverse
Now I find myself facing the prospect of living between Ireland and the UK, tracing my mother's steps backwards. Even though it isn't the same as entirely leaving, it raises all sorts of questions about the idea of home, about belonging and what it means to be Irish.
When you are away from home, often Irishness is reduced to whatever other people surmise it to be, and you’re judged accordingly. At home, you feel another sort of friction. Perhaps love of Ireland is destined to be unrequited.
