The Christian Home in Victorian America, 1840--1900

3. Catholic Domesticity

[3J Catholic Domesticity It took almost fifty years before Irish Catholic immigrants developed a Victorian domesticity similar to Protestant sensibilities. Due to their social and economic situation, Irish Catholics directed their attentions toward nondomestic issues: work, religious freedom, anti-Catholic sentiments, and Irish politics during the first half of the century. Severe poverty, constant relocation, and tenement life created a situation in which even "an angel from heaven would soon be made as black as the deviL" Many families sent only their single sons or daughters to America expecting that the children would send money home. Those sons and daughters either delayed their marriages or remained single. Women, on whom domestic sentiments frequently centered, were busy working as servants, in cottage industries, or factories. Very few women had the leisure or finances to pursue the "cult of true womanhood" popular among the wealthier classes.I Consequently, prior to 1880 only a select few Irish Americans attempted to create a Catholic domestic ideology appropriate for the New World. These few established models which were adapted to a late Victorian world. By the end of the century, when domestic comforts could be reached by more Catholics, numerous local commentators on home life arose. These writers were joined by the Catholic clergy, both at home and abroad, who found in the family ways to promote their particular perspective on modern life. Sources ofCatholic Domesticity Catholic novelists were the earliest arbiters of Irish American home life. As members of the educated middle class even before the Civil War, novelists played a crucial role in the development of Catholic domesticity. While the majority of Irish Catholics lived in poverty, 52 Catholic Domesticity 53 these literary elites detailed what they believed was proper home life. Sitting between rich and poor they created a middle-class world view by appropriating characteristics chosen from the rich and the poor. They imagined an aristocratic Catholic upper class-Europeans who lived in Old World charm in America-and an old-fashioned Irish working class, one step out of the bog. From these two groups they collected values which supported their own middle-class life-style. Their values were understood as universal and eternal because they appeared in all "good" families irrespective of economic status. Novelist, translator, and social critic Mary Ann Madden Sadlier stands as a perfect example of the early arbiters of Catholic life. She was born in Cootehill, County Cavan, in 1820, where her father was a prosperous merchant who eventually suffered financial problems in the 1840S. After her father's death, like many young Irish women, Sadlier immigrated to the United States. Two years later she married James Sadlier who was a manager of the Canadian branch of a Catholic publishing house founded by his brother. Unlike many Protestant women writers who were single or had small families, Mary Sadlier had six children. In 1860 the family moved back to New York, and Mrs. Sadlier continued the writing she had begun as a girl in Ireland. Although she maintained a summer home and commanded the attention of Catholic notables like Orestes Brownson, Sadlier never entered the hallowed halls of the New York moneyed because of her Irish origin. Religion and ethnicity kept her from experiencing the life of the well-to-do, while her economic and educated status kept her from feeling the bite of poverty. She left economic instability in Ireland but could not feel totally comfortable in her new American life. Like most Catholic writers, she saw her middle perspective as giving her permission to comment on both rich and poor, and she did so in almost 50 novels. Through the prism of the upwardly mobile middle class, Sadlier created domestic situations which were both descriptive and prescriptive.2 It is difficult to determine how middle-class attitudes toward the home filtered through the Catholic American community. In 1850, when Mary Sadlier published Willy Burke; or, the Irish Orphan in America , an incredible 7000 copies were sold in the first week. Orestes Brownson in his Quarterly encouraged the production of Catholic literature, although he often disapproved of what was written. Writers like Con O'Leary wrote at the behest of their publishers who knew what was most likely to sell. Father O'Reilly's advice book, Mirror of True Womanhood (1876), went through seventeen editions by 1892. It 54 The Christian Home in Victorian America was followed two years later with True Men...