There is perhaps no single story in Joyce’s Dubliners that can be described as better than the rest? However at different periods in my own life I look at Irish society and particular stories have greater or lesser relevance. In these times I often think of Evelyn, a virginal metaphor for the old sod, locked in the poverty trap; her freedom, self expression and sexuality, all pressed beneath the oppressive boot of the church and state that was Ireland in the early 1900’s.
At last for a tired and lonely Evelyn, an out presents itself in the form of her young lover’s invitation to elope, to flee the poverty, and paralysis, to escape upon the ferry and away across the sea.
The third class tickets were finally bought and the few pitiful possessions wrapped in a worn travel bag. The night before, unshared goodbyes were spent upon lingering glances and quiet tears.
The lovers met at the docks, he passed through the gates upon the pier and she let go his hand for a moment. She could not bring herself to do it, she could go no further. He watched her from the deck and she watched the ship melt into the bay.
I always smile when I watch the festivities on Bloomsday, or when I hear praise for Joyce, for Dubliners or Ulysses. It is ironic that we Dubliners should be so proud of a literature that insults us so blatantly, and paints such a grim and dark picture of our paralysis, and intellectual or philosophical depravity. We Irish are stuck in our ways, we are Evelyns steadfast upon the peer, unable to move, frozen by what Joyce often called our GPI (general paralysis of the insane). We celebrate our literati here and abroad, we put them to the fore when we create such farces as ‘The Gathering’ and attempt to coax the diaspora home for a fiscal ambush. Or when we filch pennies from unwary tourists amid the traps and souvenir shops, gathering (in Yeats' words) the half pence to the pence and prayer to shivering prayer'. Pennies and prayers for the new God, the 'God of the Markets'.
We should on occasion remind ourselves that Joyce and Beckett fled Ireland, Wilde was thrown in Jail and Behan drank himself to death. If we are courageous, or even awake enough one day we might ask why? Post Celtic Ireland is no country for intellectuals, it never has been. They are forged here within a truly opressive fire, one that consumes the intellect, insists upon conformity, and must be escaped if the soul is to breath and stay alive.
It is interesting that Eveyln's lover did not throw himself from the ship and swim frantically back to shore, as 'true' love might have demanded. However there is perhaps something compelling about the view of Ireland from a departing ship or an aeroplane window. One seems, for a moment to see clearly why flight is the only option, and that to linger, to look behind is to risk being turned into a pillar of salt.
In the mid 1800’s the Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin wrote a pamphlet suggesting that the Irish might better survive the famine if they were to eat their children rather than die of starvation. We have been eating our children ever since. A woman in Galway is denied her request for an abortion, and she dies of septicaemia. Her death and that of her child have become the property of the public and vested interests from Ballyjamesduff to Bangladesh. Had she been granted her request she would probably be alive today, and yet any woman who has died as a consequence of Childbirth, or committed suicide from post natal depression, might yet be alive had she sought and been granted an abortion before hand. In this case the tragedy was a consequence of septicaemia and not her being refused an abortion. Had her life been in danger she would and should have been offered an abortion. The 'mistake' (if any were made), was the failure to recognise that her life was indeed in danger. This 'mistake' would have little if anything to do with the abortion issue.
In the 1800s when death from postpartum septicaemia was much more common than it is today a Hungarian Obstetrician Ignaz Semelweiss, recognised that at his maternity hospital the majority of maternal deaths were being caused because the attending doctors were not washing their hands. They would move from the anatomy dissection theatres to the maternity wards and the blood on their hands was a sort of status symbol, like the white coat or the stehescope draped about the neck. Semelweiss was ridiculed and shunned by the profession for suggesting that doctors were passing infection to their patients. He ended his days as an inpatient in an insane asylum where he died from septicaemiaia, (most likely and most ironically from the same organism that causes post partum septicaemia).
The death in Galway if not a failure in recognising a moribund mother, is certainly a result of bacterial resistance to Antibiotics. This resistance is caused by us doctors over prescribing antibiotics, and the general belief amongst we Irish that penicillin is the secret cure for flu and the common cold. In this sense the death in Galway is as much the fault of many of those who are doing most of the shouting.
It is unclear whether the pro-choice campaign contacted the woman’s husband or whether he contacted them in order to use this tragedy for their own particular agenda? Regardless of the answer here both she and her death are being used, consumed by the public and the media to inform and entertain. Used by the opposition to score points against the government and by the government to supplement its back bone and pass laws that should have been passed 20 years ago. The woman's husband has been advised by her solicitor not to accept a HSE enquiry, but demand the bigger fanfare and bigger legal bill of a public enquiry. In a recent speech delivered at DCU Hillary Clinton has decided to have a piece of this macabre pie, and lecture to us Irish that we should 'respect the rights of women'. She did not specifically mention; Iraqi women, Afghan women, or the women powerful men have affairs with, but I am sure she meant all women, and not just wealthy middle class women of the west.
How many teenage girls have 50 or 60 euro to pop into their local doctor for contraception? Not to mention the additional 20-30 euro to spend on their prescription? How many young men have the readies to see their doctor for; sexual health screening, for STI checks or contraception advice? How much profit does the government, the GP and the pharmacist make upon the same contraception that if readily and freely available would save so many boat trips, so much misery, and so many lives?
If contraception were as cheap and as readily available as alcohol is to teenagers, what would remain of the abortion debate? Of course in Ireland we want to have a debate on abortion before we even begin to think about simple access to, and the actual cost of contraception and sexual health screening. And so the cart sits in front of the paralysed ass. The irony is so grotesque that one must question the motives of the voiciferous pro-lifers and pro choicers alike. In Ireland we may not eat our children but we continue to put them on the boat to flee, perhaps we would do them more justice if we follow Swift's advice and fill our bellies.
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