19th century AD

Eire-Ireland:Journal of Irish Studies, Spring-Summer, 2001 by Catherine M. Eagan

Irish immigrant characters are even more offended than the Irish at being treated like slaves, and their shock at their treatment in the "land of the free" is dramatized. In Boyce's Mary Lee an Irish peasant named Mrs. Motherly responds to the abolitionist statements of Mr. Weeks by reading from a niece's letter, which charges that the Irish are treated worse by the Yankees than they were by the English. Mrs. Motherly then comments, "`It's a wonder they're not ashamed to purfess so much tinderness for the slaves, and trate the poor Irish so manely as that.'" (46) In Quigley's The Cross and the Shamrock, Van Stingey's cruelty to his Irish-American railroad workers, whom he calls "`darned paddies,'" makes an Irish priest wonder if America really is a free country if laborers receive store pay in lieu of wages, have to begin and end their days in the dark, and take orders from low sorts of men. "`I ask any man,'" the priest exclaims with anguish, "`Is this not slavery'?" (47) In Sadlier's Con O'Regan, Paul Bergen's long lost brother Felix pleads with him to come farm with him in Iowa, "`where a man can be his own master, and not be driven about like black niggers from post to pillar.... '" (48)

Often, the common racial heritage of the Irish and Anglo-Americans was emphasized using sentimental tactics. Sentimentalism encouraged potential Anglo-American readers to identify with Irish characters and sympathize with their struggles. Though Charles Fanning laments the didacticism and sentimentalism of Irish-American novels in this period, the use of sentimental convention had the most potential to convince native-born American readers of Irish racial sameness. (49) Nancy Armstrong, for example, has suggested that the sentimental novel's tendency to organize novel plots around the matching of characters with their appropriate marriage partners served to preserve racial purity. (50) As these novels manipulate their readers into caring about the births and deaths, romances and marriages, and hardships and triumphs of the Irish on both sides of the Atlantic, they indirectly assert the illogic and cruelty of English and American persecution of their fellow white, civilized Christians.

These novels generate sympathy for their Irish characters in the most basic ways. Aware of the American public's enjoyment of Irish quaintness, the novels feature many "local color" stories, fairy myths, and anecdotes of "the gay, light hearted Irish peasantry." (51) Appropriately, stories are often set in pastoral areas, and the characters demonstrate qualities supposedly endemic to Irish country life, like generosity and hospitality. (52) Like many American sentimental novels, these Irish-American novels often feature a child as the hero. (53) This child is usually faithful to his or her religion and refuses to convert or go to a mixed school. In The Cross and the Shamrock the O'Clery children steadfastly adhere to their religion even though they have been kidnapped by Protestants. Paul, the oldest child and the caretaker of the other children, ends up becoming a priest. In Sadlier's Willy Burke, Willy's behavior is exemplary--his brother, who falls into the clutches of a woman who promises him riches and education if he converts, reminds the reader of Willy's goodness.