Part Four: Strong, Stoic, Do-ers
Fourth of a five part series presenting key themes of the Women of Ireland Project Interviews
In Ireland, we love a ‘strong woman’.
The ‘strong woman’ is, in many ways, the archetypal woman of Ireland.
She’s the woman we both admire and aspire to be and in a country famous for its humility and discomfort with compliments, being referred to as ‘strong’ is probably one of the highest bits of praise or regard you may receive from another.
“She’s such a strong woman!”
“She’s so strong like”.
“She’s just so strong, you know”
There’s a normalcy and ordinary-ness to such phrases; we all know exactly what is meant by them when they are used. We know who that strong woman is and why she is strong, and yet, when you try to get granular about what exactly is meant by the ‘strong’ part of the ‘strong woman’, it’s a phrase that is very difficult to define.
As I’ve come to see it, you can’t disentangle the ‘strong woman’ from the situation, or the circumstances, which prompt the ‘strength’. For a woman becomes a ‘strong woman’ because of how she behaves and responds to that situation.
In Ireland (and I’m sure, the world over), a strong woman is not just a woman who is indomitable, tough, fierce, and unrelenting — a strong woman is someone who, when faced with a difficult situation, ‘keeps going’ and ‘just gets on with it’ without complaint.
The without complaint part is the part that brings the praise. The awe. The reverence. The part that defines the strength of ‘strong’.
Somewhere along the line stoic, I think, got conflated with strong, and a stoic woman was praised as ‘strong’.
And she’s the one that shows up in women’s stories:
“I was just getting on with it, do you know? And you have that little bit of a badge of honour, like sure so many women go through this, and they don’t [say anything], they just get on with it” (Women of Ireland Project participant)
“She’d tell you these stories so matter-of-fact, there's no pity in it, there's no victim, it just is what it is and ‘get on with it’ and ‘move on’. Do you know? And she's, I just think she's so strong” (Women of Ireland Project participant)
“Like, I just think women generationally, definitely in my family…. they just got on with it. The men kind of went out and went to work. I’m sure there were some exceptional men at that time that did other things as well, or were amazing fathers, but by and large, it was the woman that was responsible for keeping the family together and keeping going….. I just think there’s so many things…. that Irish women bury and…. just keep going. It’s like; right, what’s next?” (Women of Ireland project participant)
The strong woman is the resilient woman, the woman who can persevere, the woman who holds it all together, and carries the responsibility of keeping it all together for those around her, she takes care of other’s emotions and needs while keeping her own undercover, and while she’s busy and occupied normalising extraordinary circumstances for everyone else, she’s able to hide and ignore her own vulnerabilities. For if she did reveal them, she’d be at risk of having ‘made a show of herself’ and no longer being seen as ‘strong’, for it’s the without complaint —the self-control (self-denial) and reservation— that means you get to wear the badge of ‘strong woman’ honour:
[I remember] “my uncle who —he died a few years ago— was a lot older like. But [when he’d mention a woman] he used to say, ‘Oh that so and so, she's such a lady, you'd never know that anything was going on in her life’, you know, [like] if she was having a bad [time of it, she didn’t let anyone know that]. And it was seen like this badge of honour that you don't show emotion like, you know?” (Woman of Ireland project participant)
At her core then, the strong woman of Ireland is a stoic do-er. She doesn’t complain or show her feelings in the tough times, and she keeps going, keeps doing, keeps busy - she busies herself through it.
That Ireland so reveres and admires the silent ‘strong woman’ while simultaneously ridiculing and vilifying the vocal ‘strong woman’ is possibly a product of the strict ideals of womanhood that emerged in post-Famine Ireland.
There have always been strict ideals of womanhood, ideals that hadn’t really changed for centuries; the ideal woman was chaste, silent, virtuous, pious and passive. However, somewhere along the line, in amongst all the rapid social, economic and religious change that typifies Ireland in the post-famine years, some of those ideals took on a whole new level of emphasis. Mainly, that the ideal woman (is a mother - that’s a given) was not only silent and passive, she was also self-sacrificing and martyr-like. How much of herself she gave to others was a mark of her strength.
Writing in the Irish Monthly, in 1913, Nora Tynan O’Mahoney describes:
“The true mother has no thought of self; all her life, all her love, are given to her husband and children, and after them, and because of them, to all and everything that have next most need of her”.
I hear the echoes of this view and expectation, over 100 years later in what Deirdre (a woman of Ireland project participant) said when she described the strong women in her lineage:
“While I believe my mum and my granny were very strong women, they didn't hold on to their power, they gave away their power, to their husbands… to do their jobs, to whatever…. [so] I was raised that a strong woman was somebody who gave gave gave”
In many ways, I both admire and aspire to be the ‘strong woman’. She is, in all honesty, ‘some woman’ (that phrase we use to extend awe and admiration) and Ireland, I feel, owes her a lot. She’s the one, through her resilience, stoicism, grit and perseverance powered the country through some very tough times — where would we be wihout her? She’s a useful woman to have around, and she’s a powerful ally and archetype to call upon when we all encounter those moments in life when we do, indeed, need ‘to just get on with it’.
“I'm super proud to be a woman of Ireland…. And I think that you're only given tasks that the universe knows that you're capable of tackling. And there's no stronger woman on earth than an Irish woman” (Women of Ireland project participant)
However, the stoicism, and self-silencing (and denial of emotions) the ‘strong woman’ requires does not come without cost. Listening to women’s stories over the last three years has shown me this. Many women are psychologically, physically, and spiritually “knackered” from all the ‘getting on with it’ and ‘keeping things going’. Like never before, we have an awareness of the damage this is doing (and has already done). And in these shifting times, we have an opportunity to redefine the ‘strong woman’. To redefine the behaviours that typify ‘strong’ and praise ourselves and each other for something other than a show of stoicism.
I give thanks to the strong, stoic do-ers who went before. Who got us where we are, and whose archetypal tenacity we will always need to summon — but as your nervous system will probably tell you, there are times when she needs to be told to take a day off.
As always... with every read, the lens through which I have been viewing my world (unbeknown to me previously, which has been seemingly foggyied over) becomes more and more clear.... you keep highlighting that which is in plain sight and yet hard to see...
It's as though these views and perspectives are bringing to life a numbness or deadness in an arm long fallen asleep!!
I have often been told, you're some woman, you're so strong, as though ita admirable... and its usually been in reference to people hearing I've written a book and spoken of my experience of abuse in childhood, or the crazy experiences I had with a close call almost marrying a man who I discovered just in time that he was living a double life as a sex addict and hiding his gas tendencies, and how I got through all of it... I'm often told how strong I am... and it does feel like a badge of honor when it's said, yet there's always a part of me that just feels like .... well... me! It wasn't that I was strong, it was because I had no choice... get through it of give up and leave this world.... they were the only choices... so I chose to fight for my life and stay!
So... what we are speaking of really is, aren't we strong to 'put up' with it all... why? Because what choices did we have, do we have, but to 'put up' with it...
However, this work, and the highlighting of areas which we have so long felt numb to... is giving us ways out, showing us we have alternatives, choices...
I feel the reason we were never shown all this in school was because if we saw how other women before us broke the chain of command and broke the rules... it would show us women that there were other ways, there were choices... but we had no role models
So... we had to be strong to cope... we had to because we had no other choices and didn't know they existed....because if we did, it would be a threat to the peace...
Look at Sinead O Connor... an example to women to stay silent or been seen as insane, emotional, or disruptive...shhh...silence now!
This one probably speaks the most to my own experience. My grandmother and mother were both widowed in their 50's with 8 children apiece. They typified the strong women title. As an adult facing challenges I think I felt intense shame about not coping as well as them. I think this project is amazing and can't wait to see where you go next with it. Its really illuminating what has shaped us. You communicate the findings with great clarity and compassion