Do Penance or Perish: A Study of Magdalen Asylums in Ireland (review)

Frances Finnegan's Do Penance or Perish (originally published in Ireland in 2001) reveals decades of questionable practices at Ireland's Magdalen Asylums, specifically those in Limerick, Waterford, New Ross, and Cork. The book does an excellent job in calling attention to some of the institutionalized abusive practices at these facilities. Its strongest point concerns the hollowness of the Asylums' stated goal to reform "fallen women" and return them to productive society. Instead, Dr. Finnegan conclusively shows that the nuns' focus was heavily geared toward individual moral reform, with release never being an important goal (pp. 35, 72). This was variously attributed to the relatively small market for domestic servants in Ireland, the nuns' lack of contacts in commerce and business, and concerns with the profitability of the attached laundry services (pp. 71–72). The book also illustrates that most of the women detained in the asylums were not actually "fallen women" in the traditional sense of the term, but were often placed there for perceived mental or moral deficiencies (p. 17).

However, these points could have had more impact if the book had been structured differently. The author wants to "return to narrative history in the hope of bringing individuals and their experience to life" (p. xi). That goal is defensible, but the asylum-by-asylum focus leads to a fair amount of repetition and wasted space. While the asylums did have their differences—such as the low population at New Ross, or the connection of the Cork facility to the Contagious Diseases Acts—the differences were not significant enough to justify the book's organization. The structure of individual chapters was unclear as well, with discussion at times wandering from the deaths of penitents to the operation of the laundry facilities without much attempt at transition (pp. 221–222). Similarly, a discussion of sources appears suddenly in Chapter Seven, even though the sources themselves had been used since the early sections of the book (p. 200). A thematic or chronological structure could have better highlighted the book's analytical points.

More substantially, the author's repeated dismissals of religion are somewhat overdone. This is not to defend nineteenth-century religious practices, nor to imply that the author need do so, but constant references to "dreary religious rites" that were "mechanically recited," or the fact that the women were "worn out with drudgery and prayer" do not really allow a thorough investigation of the ethos of the asylums, of which religion was an important (if perhaps hypocritical) part (pp. 25, 93). Dr. Finnegan admirably wants to emphasize the agency of the nuns, rather than merely making them the victims of a patriarchal Church, but this emphasis is weakened by the constant derogation of religion, which unquestionably was a motive for the nuns' agency. This leads the author to ignore many interesting points that could have been analyzed in more detail, such as the fact that one of the original Dublin rescue homes was nonsectarian, although the women were, once admitted, separated by class. Do Penance or Perish does make a solid contribution to the institutional history of the Magdalen Asylums, but a different structure and more attention to the religious ethos of the asylums would have made it a stronger work.