Mary O'Grady

by Mary Josephine Lavin

First published in 1950, this sensitive novel is a compelling record of one woman's love and the strength of her silent faith. Mary O'Grady, an Irish peasant woman, discovers that motherhood brings her as many sorrows as joys.

Genres: Ireland, Fiction, Irish Literature, Classics, Historical Fiction

391 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1950

About the author

Mary Josephine Lavin (10 June 1912 – 25 March 1996) was a noted Irish short story writer and novelist. She is regarded as a pioneering female author in the traditionally male-dominated world of Irish letters. Her subject matter often dealt explicitly with feminist issues and concerns at a time when the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church and its abuses (e.g. the Magdalene Laundries) impinged extensively on Irish society.

Mary Lavin was born in East Walpole, Massachusetts in 1912, the only child of Tom and Nora Lavin, an immigrant Irish couple. She attended primary school in East Walpole until the age of ten, when her mother decided to go back to Ireland. Initially, Mary and Nora lived with Nora's family in Athenry in County Galway. Afterwards, they bought a house in Dublin, and Mary's father, too, came back from America to join them.

Mary attended Loreto College, a convent school in Dublin, before going on to study English and French at University College Dublin (UCD). She taught French at Loreto College for a while. As a postgraduate student, she published her first short story, 'Miss Holland', which appeared in the Dublin Magazine in 1938. Tom Lavin then approached Lord Dunsany, the well-known Irish writer, on behalf of his daughter and asked him to read some of Mary's unpublished work. Suitably impressed, Lord Dunsany became Mary's literary mentor.

In 1943, Mary Lavin published her first book. Tales from Bective Bridge, a volume of ten short stories about life in rural Ireland, was a critical success and went on to win the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. That same year, Lavin married William Walsh, a Dublin lawyer. Over the next decade, the couple had three daughters and moved to "abbey farm" which they purchased in County Meath which included the land around Bective Abbey. Lavin's literary career flourished; she published several novels and collections of short stories during this period. Her first novel The House in Clewe Street was serialised in the Atlantic Monthly before its publication in book form in 1945.

In 1954, William Walsh died. Lavin, her reputation as a major writer already well-established, was left to confront her responsibilities alone. She raised her three daughters and kept the family farm going at the same time. She also managed to keep her literary career on track, continuing to publish short stories and winning several awards for her work, including the Katherine Mansfield Prize in 1961, Guggenheim Fellowships in 1959 and 1961, and an honorary doctorate from UCD in 1968. Some of her stories written during this period, dealing with the topic of widowhood, are acknowledged to be among her finest.

Lavin remarried in 1969. Michael Scott was an old friend from Mary's student days in University College. He had been a Jesuit priest in Australia, but had obtained release from his vows from Rome and returned to Ireland. The two remained together until Scott's death in 1991.

In 1992, Lavin, by now retired, was elected Saoi by the members of Aosdána for achieving 'singular and sustained distinction' in literature. Aosdána is an affiliation of creative artists in Ireland, and the title of Saoi one of the highest honours in Irish culture.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Pat · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Mary O’Grady" was first published in 1950. It was one of only two novels Mary Lavin published. She was first and foremost an acclaimed short story writer whose first collection “Tales from Bective Bridge”, published in 1942, won the James Tait Memorial Prize. The New Yorker magazine so admired her short stories that it had a `first look’ agreement with her for all her stories.
Her mastery of the short story may explain why this novel Mary O’Grady is hard to like. A short story has an arc and a limited focus, but this novel is one long dismal slide down with no real conclusion except that the only thing that an early twentieth century Irish Catholic wife could look forward to was a life of sacrifice with the promised reward of a blissful life after death .
Mary O’Grady has grown up in the village of Tullamore surrounded by green fields. As a result of her marriage to Tom, a tram driver, she moves to Dublin to live. She never ever sees Tullamore again, but as a young wife will spend hours sitting by a piece of vacant land just to be looking at grass and trees. Her marriage is happy and she gives birth to five children Patrick, Elly, Angie, Larry and Rose. She is, however, full of fears for them and cannot bear for anyone else to take care of them making it impossible for her to visit her family in Tullamore. As they grow, it is hard for her the face the fact that one day they will inevitably leave he to pursue their own dreams. When Tom dies suddenly she is left to raise them on their own.
One by one tragedies hit the family. Patrick leaves for America only to return years later so mentally ill that he has to be institutionalized. The local priest persuades Larry he has a vocation so he goes off to the seminary and tries hard to adapt to religious life but to no avail. Torn between keeping her family close, but knowing they must also experience the world, Mary encourages Elly and Angie and their beaus to go and see the newly introduced passenger airplanes with tragic results. Rose’s struggles seem at last to offer a hopeful ending for both mother and daughter, one where they both take control of their lives and identities, but no.
What this novel does do very well is to illustrate the role of an Irish catholic woman in Dublin at the beginning of the twentieth century. Despite, or maybe because she has moved from the country to the city Mary leads a very isolated life with little in the way of close friendships. Her life is simple and quite dull but she finds satisfaction in taking care of her husband and her children at least while they are too young to determine their own path in life. What Mary Lavin does brilliantly is to take us inside that life. You are privy to May O’Grady’s deepest thoughts, feelings and fears. The children are all fully realized characters too. We see them through Mary’s eyes in a way that shows how perceptive she is of their individual personalities even while she suppresses her own in many ways. The city she really takes no part in is what gives her children’s lives possibilities not open to their parents.
Colm Toibin in his Introduction to The Penguin Book of Irish Fiction said that Mary Lavin was “prepared to dramatize the small details, the moments of pure truth. Her stories tell you very little about `Irish society’ and a great deal about the human heart.” Having now read one of her brilliant short stories, “Happiness”, and compared it to this novel I can see why Lavin herself felt her novels were failures and that she should stick to the genre where she was so rightly respected and honored.

[Carrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

My opinion on the story and characters went back and forth the entire time I was reading, but in the end my impatience and frustration with the lead character had lessened and my appreciation for what the author was trying to say grew. There's not much I can say without being spoilery, but underneath some dated sentimentality and exhausting glorification of motherhood, there is a pretty decent analysis of the inevitable sorrow of life. So Irish! 😉