❗️❗️ Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan❗️❗️
56/∞
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
👉 Buy this book! 👈 through my link and help me build this website! 😊
📚 Length: 129 pages
🔊Audiobook: 2 hours
Why you should read this book?
💡To discover that Ireland is not only wine, women, song and beautiful countryside.
💡 To learn what Magdalen Laundries were about.
💡 To discover what Tuam Baby Scandal was about.
When somebody says Ireland, most people are going to imagine green rainy island, leprechaun, pot of gold and Guinness. Ireland is all of that, but every single nation has its secrets and Ireland is no exception. This story takes place in the time when Ireland is still an extremely poor country (Ireland was actually an extremely poor country for the most of the known history, it is only recently when the situation improved a little bit.
This story is set in 1985 when there are literally no jobs in Ireland and the only chance for young people is to jump on a boat and emigrate to London, NY, Sydney and so on. Irish do it cyclically since the Great Famine in 1841 since their government failed them. Whenever the island goes to shits, Irish just jump on a boat and leave. Nevertheless, we can say that only the lucky ones could leave, because some 30.000 Irish women got imprisoned in Magdalen Laundries. Magdalen Laundries was the institution for fallen women who were rejected by their families. Ireland is very conservative county, beyond imagination of a plain continental European like me. Women could ended up in Magdalen Laundries there for not being ‚’cautious’ enough, for being raped or they were sent there as a prevention because they were too pretty. But the main reason was that they got pregnant and were unmarried.
Are you ready to dive into the Ireland’s darkest secret?
…
Isn’t that mental? You do not commit any sin in the eyes of God but some religious spinster decides you could, so she sends you to a monastery, where you are going to be worked to death and where you are likely to be raped by some cringy catholic priest. Add the emotional pain of children being taken away from their mothers and you have a receipt for a beautifully fucked up society. I would like to make a reference to Dr. Gábor Maté and his book Scattered Minds (reviewed by der Kaiser 👑). Dr. Gábor Maté talks about what impact has the separation of the infants from their mothers. It is the reason why many kids have ADHD and are emotionally unstable.
Now, while I was studying at University College Dublin, references about Magdalen Laundries were made all the time in all kinds of legal classes. I sensed that Irish are obsessed by this topic, especially during the dissertation seminar. That gave me a hint it is something big. Something really inhuman and disgusting.
When you look on the history of British islands, they managed to set up a whole range of GULAG like institutions. It started with workhouses in Victorian era. The rich did not want the poor to dawdle their time, so they came up with brilliant ideas of how to make sure they are worked to death.
You are probably wondering how a girl would end up in Magdalen Laundry. Once a girl would get pregnant and the man would not acknowledge the baby as his, she would go to Mother & Child Home where she would give a birth to baby and kept it up to 1 year of age. After that the sisters would take the baby away, put it in the orphanage or offer the baby for the adoption (some of the babies were sent to the USA and other English speaking countries). Mothers would be helpless. After giving up their baby many mothers would then try to return home where their would be told they are disgrace to the family and they cannot stay. These girls would then go the last option they had: Magdalen Laundry, where they were washing laundry for no pay, where they would be ridiculed by the sisters and where nobody knew how long are they going to stay before they will be released.
Sadly, not all babies were so lucky to survive or to be offered for the adoption. This is connected to so called Tuam Baby Scandal when nearly 800 bodies of dead babies were found in a septic tank is small Irish town of Tuam. Sisters were supposed to feed the babies and take care of them, but remember, Ireland is an extremely poor country at that time. The sisters were not given a large enough budget to feed the kids. So they just let them starve to death and let them die. In my opinion, this is absolutely outrageous.
To make a reference to a book which talks about something completely different, but it is in my opinion related to Magdalen Laundries. The book is called My Secret Garden by Nancy Friday and it talks about female sexual fantasies. I briefly remember that one of the women describing her sexual fantasies in the book was Irish. She was abused by nuns in the convent as a child. She and the other girls were told to strip naked and then they got beaten with the stick on their naked bodies. The impact it had on the women in the book was that she enjoyed punishment during sex and liked to be beaten. This has was also reflected in her sexual fantasies.
Sadly, for many other women the stay in Magdalen Laundry had a life-long impact, because they simply hated sex. They hated the idea of being touched intimately, because many of them were sexually abused. They felt ashamed to be sexually intimate with somebody, because the evil nuns were trying to repress any natural human feeling of beauty and sexuality in them. Many of these women ended up divorced and unhappy. Some never got married at all.
It is also important to note that Ireland (as a very conservative catholic country) had no sex education in school and no prevention of teenage pregnancy, while we on the European continent are educated about sex and contraception since very early age (elementary school). I do not know how it worked with the access to contraception in Ireland but my guess it was not as widely available as it is today.
Given all this stuff, it explains why Irish girls in general are more conservative and very careful, unlike girls from some other countries.
Abortion was illegal in Ireland as well. That was until 1983. When I look on this issue from the perspective of the continental European, women should have this right and the right shall be not limited in any case. I find crazy that some states are trying to take this right away from women. Comparing the history of abortion right in Czechoslovakia, women were able to have abortion, but during dark communist era they had to stood up in front of committee consisted of hard-core bolsheviks. The members grilled the woman and were asking her very uncomfortable questions. Luckily, the committee was abolished after Velvet Revolution in 1989 and no such process is required today. I am not saying it was better, I am just saying they did not need to go to Mother and Child Home and Magdalen Laundries.
In these days, some women come from Poland do come to the Czech Rep. to have an abortion, because right to abortion was taken away from them in Poland. That happened because Poland is strongly religious and catholic country. It makes me proud, because the Czech Rep. is still freer and more developed country. 😎🤟
Another thing which might surprise you is that divorce was also prohibited in Ireland until 1995. Prior to that there was another referendum in which people of Ireland decided not to make divorce legal. Again, I find this crazy and undignifying. You have to ask yourself a question: if there are two people who are literally unhappy in marriage and they do not wish to be together, are you going to force them by staying together? Making them even more unhappy? Putting their kids (if there are some) to the risk at being exposed to stressful environment, getting ADHD, emotional traumas and so on. I do not think it is right...
It is only the bigot societies which allow for something like that to happen. Societies ruled by crazy set of rules which are then dogmatically enforced. These poor Irish women had literally no option and that is the only reason why they did end up in hands of Mother and Child Homes and Magdalen Laundries. Personally, I find this situation very sad I wish there was some other way how these women could have been helped. To be honest, I cannot even comprehend, what kind of emotional impact it must have had on mothers and their babies.
The last Magdalen Laundry located at Seán McDermott Street in Dublin was closed down in 1996 and it is estimated that some of 30.000 women went through these intsitutions.
To the story of the book:
Above I described a brief history of Mother & Child homes and Magdalen Laundries in Ireland. This book could be described as a sequel happening during the Christmas time.
It talks about an ordinary man called Furlough whose mother was unmarried server who got pregnant and was able to rear him with the help of the lady she worked for as a server.
Furlough is described as a quite successful man who has his own coal yard and delivers coal the to the entire town. One of his customers is local convent (Magdalen Landry).
One day he finds a girl in a coal shed in the gardens of the convent. She is broken, destitute and unable to say much. He takes her back to the convent where he witnesses intimate scenes such as breast milk dripping down of the breasts and making stains on the blouse. In this story, Furlough is a man, unable to comprehend and see what is going on. It almost appears to me as he would be facing a women’s secret he is unable to decipher. He does not know what is going on but he senses that something is wrong.
He then saves the girl called Sara, but finding her in the coal shed the next day and taking her home with her.
It is a story which talks about every day heroic act of an ordinary man.
Film adaptation:
The book was recently made into a movie starring Killian Murphy as Furlough:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27196021/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_5_nm_3_in_0_q_sma
Other documentaries:
If you want to know more about Magdalen Laundries watch documentary called “Sex in Cold Climate“:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12xTQAJdvdE
Tuam Baby Scandal is referenced in the documentary below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNl0FJCVB6E
Kaiser’s Verdict: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (fairly recommended read - not for the weak nautues)
The story underlining this book is quite heavy. But this book does not talk about all the scary and creepy stuff. It implies what was going on. In terms of English languages, this book si very flowery and beautiful. The story itself gives me chills.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Feel free to like, share and comment or recommend books/courses you find inspirational yourself. I’m keen to hear about them.
Coming Up Next:
Peace 🧘♂️✌️🌱
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