Ireland

Ireland is an old fashion country which still in the modern Ireland has strong views upon religion questions. Up until 1986 it was impossible to get divorced but after the divorce referendum it was easier however there are still cases today that are denied especially in the parts were the Catholic Church is still the major authority. In some parts of Ireland the Catholic Church still controls the outlanders and especially their standpoints towards divorce and “arranged” marriage are still debated. All these views are shown in the short story “Teresa’s wedding” were the girl got pregnant in the field and Father Hogan arranges a marriage without her approval. The short story by William Trevor also shows the society how it truly was before the divorce referendum were the Catholic Church in this dump of a town still has the control and Father Hogan is the judge of everything with his strict religious influential.

“Teresa’s Wedding” shows the concepts of what it means to be marriage but instead of the lovely reactions and happy thoughts you combine it with is no were to be find in this text. It is build up in a strange way with very detailed descriptions to create some sort of sense of characters and tone at the wedding. The composition is an exterior point of view were we see things from the outside sort of like the “fly on the wall”, which means that the narrator does not comment the story and tries to make the reader draw his own conclusions (litteraturensveje 494). It is typical that when you use the narrator point of view fly on the wall it is combined with a scenic presentation staged with an omniscient narrator. It is an omniscient narrator, because we do not hear any specific point of view but through the descriptions we hear more people’s thoughts. “Loretta ceased her observation of her sister’s husband through the window and regarded Artie Cornish instead” (page 18) and then suddenly we hear it from the bridegroom’s ear “Bedad, there’ll be no holding you tonight, Artie” (page 17). The way we switch between the characters through the story makes it hard to find anyone to sympathy with and find as we say on Danish head and tail in the story. The thing about an omniscient narrator is that the narrator knows everyone’s thoughts and how they act at this wedding.
Teresa is afraid of getting married, because her older sister Loretta’s marriage did not go very well “[….]A man who was no longer mentioned because he’d gone to England and had never come back”(page 16). Her other sister had more success; it says that her 3 children and their father was present at the wedding. All the 3 sisters had been consecrated by Father Hogan in the Church of the Immaculate Conception and celebrated in the same lounge bar as this one. The thing is that these girls got married to escape from the town, but perhaps to see other parts of the world were they will discover that not everywhere is as this dump. The thing about Loretta’s man disappearing could be since it was impossible to get a divorcement settled he went out of the Country to get away. The hole conversation between the girls is based on marriage and who will and who wont be married as Kitty Roche, who has a sickness called tuberculosis and as Agnes what husband would marry someone who couldn’t provide or make healthy children’s to keep the family going, but also that “the asthma caused a recurrent skin complaint on her face and neck and hands” (page 15) was enough to make every man walk away. I can only imaging what a sight it would be. The marriage was arranged by father Hogan even before the time Teresa told her mother she was pregnant. She even told Father Hogan that she did not love Artie, but he simply said “[…] all that line of talk was irrelevant” (page 19) Father Hogan has this status cause of the Church authority in this little dump of a town. He is beyond Teresa parents his way is the law. As Teresa says “[…] after Father Hogan had laid down the law and the law could be about miscarriage or that you cannot get pregnant without being married - it would be a sin to god. As Teresa says, she never has had feelings for him and why would he ask about the father to the baby at their wedding if he truly cared for her?

As I already concluded religion has a big role in this text. Especially the powerful influence that the Catholic Church has on this society. Teresa is one of the victims who had to take the consequences as the history claims as social pressure in the old Ireland as well. The conclusion was that Teresa had to marry Artie, an arranged marriage, as Father Hogan says: “it’s a great day to be a mother”. As I said earlier the divorce Referendum was in 1986 where there was a vote about divorce. Paul Durcan sets up the two sides of the situation. On the one hand you hear about the priest saying: “it is the wish of the Hierarchy” a declaration of faith, belief and the Catholic Church told people how to believe and that God was against divorce. On the other hand we hear about the human rights and he makes us feel sympathy for the wives and at the end he says: “for what are husbands for, but to praise their wives? Like the human rights becomes something sacred and holy. The priest in this text and Father Hogan in the short story are much alike and they both try to keep control. Colm Tóibín’s short story The heather Blazing is just the opposite outcome where we hear about a Judge who has a case about a Catholic school where one of the students gets pregnant and are banned by the headmaster forever and he has the power to change that decision, but because he only knows: “the law, its letter, its traditions, its ambiguities, its codes” (The heather Blazing line 18) he could not vote in favor for the girl, because it was from a moral aspect. But is that not what all this is about?

A theme in this text could be that you are still bound to your heredity and environment around you. I mean your status in society is also your boundaries. It is some sort of a hierarchy, where a person such as Fader Hogan has a higher status so his way is the law. It even claims in the text that Fader Hogan made a law. Another theme could be personal conflict. She has no free will or the desirer to leave the dump place, her only way out of this but as Loretta mind says “Also I though of this but I had been wrong … […] it was horrible and I was afraid Teresa would experience it as well” (page 17). What is right and what is wrong? We live in a world were we demand human rights for everyone, but is it not a disgrace that a religion can control someone without their own free will? Earlier in Ireland you could not buy condoms before you were married. Ireland is truly a land with strong believes in religion, but the progress in the fight for freedom has won (divorce referendum in 1986) and hopefully in the future people like Teresa can be married for the right reasons.

Underskrift:________________________________ Dato:05.03.2010