Analysis: the archetype of the silent, reticent, stoic man unable to vocalise his internal world is something we have not yet been able to escape
John McGahern's Amongst Women is often the first stop when calling to mind an image of mid-20th century Ireland. It presents a rural life defined by frugality, emigration and the Catholic Church. The protagonist, Michael Moran, is an aging War of Independence veteran: stoic, bitter and lonely.
A decade after the novel’s publication, commentator Joe Cleary argued that Irish writers such as McGahern present the recent past of Irish life as an oppressive and restrictive age. Such portrayals act as a negative validation of the present, which ‘whatever else it may be, is understood as a lucky escape from all that.’
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Arena, Colm Tóibín on The Barracks and all things John McGahern
Received into the world of the Celtic Tiger, the stunted rural town, which served as the locus of the novel, may well have been outdated, but the reticent protagonist was not. The archetype of a man unable to vocalise his internal world is something we have not yet been able to escape.
The latest official data from the Central Statistics Office reports that 78% of those who died by suicide in 2019 were men and the highest rates were in men aged 50-54. Of course, we need to contextualise today’s mental health issues within our own specific social and economic conditions. But engaging with emotional practices in the past can inform how we understand ourselves today.
Writing on the history of emotions, Monique Scheer said that fictional representations can be understood as templates of social norms, often offering insight into contemporary language and gesture. In the opening pages of Amongst Women, Moran’s daughters attempt to lighten his mood and prepare for Monaghan Day, a day usually celebrated with one of his comrades from the Irish revolution. Unable to lift his mood, Moran was ‘silent and dark and withdrew into himself, the two thumbs rotating about one another as he sat in the car chair by the fire.’
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Archives, Myles Dungan interviews John McGahern for a 2002 episode of arts show Rattlebag
Writing his memoir a decade later, McGahern recalled his relationship with his own father. "There were times when I was curious about his background and early life, and there did come a time when I could ask him without fear, but any enquiry was met with a low glare and silence, the thumbs rotating slowly around one another, and he would simply rise and leave."
That McGahern chose to so closely depict an image of his own father, silently rotating his thumbs, unable or unwilling to voice his internal life, within the protagonist of his most famous novel is quite telling. Indeed, McGahern is far from alone in recalling the emotional seclusion of adult men during the 1930s and 1940s.
An oral history project conducted at Maynooth University from 2006 to 2008 produced a large body of interviews from men and women born between 1916 and 1974. Countless images emerge from these interviews of silent fathers who ‘wouldn’t talk to you very much’, and homes where ‘there wouldn’t be a lot of talk.’
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From RTÉ 2fm's Chris & Ciara Show in 2016, Blindboy on outdated notions of masculinity
We can see this pattern manifesting well into the 20th century. Patrick, a labourer born in the southeast of Ireland in 1934, tells of how during his life ‘we never even thought of talking to anyone, we were doing our best to live, got your job, went in, kept your tail between your legs and did your job.’
Determining the beginning of this seemingly ahistorical trope of silent masculinity is a monumental task. In the modern Irish context, we may identify the remnants of a Victorian sensibility, or the trauma of various wars both at home and abroad. Perhaps we can lay a section of the blame on the culture of containment that characterised the early Free State, where, in McGahern’s words, ‘anything broken had to be hidden until it could be replaced or forgotten.’
My early research on post-revolutionary Irish masculinity has revealed countless memoirs, political biographies and oral testimony littered with both personal emotional vacancies and recollections of emotionally absent fathers. Decades of scientific study and sociological research have led us to understand emotions not so much as a natural and unchangeable force within us, but more so like a language, subject to conventions and learned from members of our communities. Such an understanding brings into question the relationship between boys and men; the importance of role models in constituting emotional mechanisms and perhaps even their potential to usher in a more acceptable vulnerability.
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From RTÉ Player, trailer for documentary series I'm Fine
In 2021, RTÉ's I'm Fine documentary series focused on men’s mental health. Watching the series, I was struck by an interaction between father and son. Opening up about his own struggles, Ray’s father initiated a touching moment with his son. Both men talked openly about the loneliness of mental health issues, often exacerbated by a toxic masculinity which strictly prohibits vulnerability and the performance of certain emotions.
Initiatives like Movember, the work of Pieta House and Men's Aid and shows like I’m Fine point to a fracture in the isolated nature of men’s mental health, but we need to also engage with its structural origins. A turn toward the history of emotions, their practice and indeed their absence, can help us with this. Interrogating generational patterns of emotional practice won’t relieve current stigmas, but it may help us to understand them.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
