BellaOnline Forums Travel and Culture Irish Culture Lace Curtain Irish

Lace curtain is as evocative of a certain style of family value as any I can imagine. Dublin, I suppose, is the capital city not only of Ireland, but of the phenomenon. <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> In the U.S., there are many gracious Irish homes that boast the very best of lace curtain in the front window, but there's a bit more to it. It's a social phenomenon that includes choice of grammar school for the children, and whether the family lived in Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Chicago, San Francisco, or (double points) Spring Lake. <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> More than one marriage stood the stead of time, more, the choice of wife, based on the perceptions conjured by the what hung from the curtain rod in the front window. Lace curtain...what does it say to you? Was it made by Irish nuns, by hand? Thinking about it for a second, in how many homes was the "wrongness" of the six counties illustrated by the flax industry being homed "up there?" (Is this still so in some quarters?)

Can't speculate about the meaning of lace curtain. We knew that family was so far from our reach that we saw it only in novels. My one social-climbing aunt chose to study and emulate the WASP culture. I think she passed this on to me. That was kind of a neat thing, since it made rediscovering my Irishness that much more piquant.

I believe you hit the nail on the head. Lace Curtain Irish were considered "middle-class" or those that were considered to be middle class posers. I would not consider it a compliment to be called "Lace Curtain Irish" nor did my great grandmother.

I'd never heard the expression "lace curtain Irish" at all, until my (all Irish) mother-in-law mentioned it. In her eyes, it was those Irish who were putting on airs and pretending they were better off than they were, as Roni says. I think Mary Ellen's reference to part of the "wrongness" being related to the association with the North is an interesting point I would never have known.
I'd like to hear Dunesbury say more about "rediscovering her Irishness"....when and how did it happen for you???

Aha! We seem to have a consensus here; lace curtain as a looking-down-the-nose, two-faced cat. It's interesting. So many people working so hard to be respectable that they would abandon their daughters if they had been soiled. What's with that?
Mary Ellen

There are still HUGE numbers of people and cultures that abandon "soiled" daughters. It is hardly a new agenda. Re-hymenizing is a surgery long clandestine but booming in Japan and I recently saw it on one of the "cut and go" TV shows...Tis a sad world afterall;Tis a sad sad world...to bastardize a phrase...

Hi, Jeri. Don't recall when my self-image resumed its Irishness. It may have been when I met our Madame Editor on another forum several years ago and we discovered our many common roots and experiences. Haven't really done any thorough study, but I think it's mostly the Irish who have this fascination for our heritage. In my sisters it's developed along entirely different lines from mine, one through marriage and the other through friendship. I can't think of a non-Irish friend who has gone through this searching and examination.

On a different tack, this whole idea of soiled daughters is a gripping one. We never get over it, do we? That's not necessarily a bad thing. It keeps us honest in understanding ourselves and what makes us us, and impels us to look at others without judgment, but with an openness to understanding. Not a bad thing at all. The best positives come from the deepest negatives.

Jeez, Roni, you are absolutely right. I've had my nose up too close to it. It's everywhere! (Except maybe Ireland now. The latest stats there re illegitimacy are unbelievable to those of us who were raised to believe that people over there didn't behave in that manner. Yeah, I know. Duh...but believe me...there's a whole generation that believed that the mores of 1940s Ireland was still practiced well into the 80s...then, there was an influx of illegal alien Paddys into our small town and we all found out different, Thanks be to...)
MES

And on a cheerier note...I have never considered my "Irish" at all; although I have in abundance on both sides of the family. Maybe it is different when one's Irish forbears were here since before the Revolution as opposed to coming over and thru Ellis Island...My family was soooo invested in staying alive they kinda lost their ethnicity along the way!

I remember dating an Italian boy in college who asked me "what' I was. I was astonished as I thought it beguilingly obvious. I replied,
" Uh, a girl!" He said, "NO! Are you Irish or Spanish or Italian or what?" I asked my mom the next time I was home as I had no clue,
"Mom" I asked, "What am I?" She looked at me me in wonder and said, "I think it is rather obvious you are a girl..." See an hereditary condition that I got it from my Grammy who is still with us at 98. Last fall I asked her what her great grandfather's mother's maiden name was...she looked at me and said." Honey they are all dead what do you care...I certainly could care less." So, there you have it; heredity! You get it from you parents... :rolling:

Proves the whole point. Your family couldn't have cared less. They were All-American, true blue Yanks. My family, otoh, left Ireland only in the flesh. The spirit stayed over there. Boy, did it ever. That's why I'm here on this forum. I was steeped like a Barry's teabag.
What was a real hoot was the way the former generation pulled the wool over the eyes of their offspring. They had us all convinced that our Irish cousins were perfect little convent- and Christian Brother-raised (no cussing, etc.) pre-saints (like they said they were.)

Now, I'm willing to believe that the parents were actually as well-behaved in certain ways as they claimed, especially with what I've read about Ireland between Victoria and JFK, but post JFK, no way Jose! The Irish kids may have been just a little bit behind the Beatles, but they caught up, with a vengeance! And here we were in the US, still being brain-washed about things...well, just things. It wasn't just my family, either. There's a whole generation of 1st and 2nd generation Irish-Americans who were fed a steady diet of comportment based on how it was in Ireland the day the parents emigrated.
The best thing that happened to the "kids" in our family was the arrival in town of a 50-year-old former hippie from Kerry! :rolling: Set the record straight, so to speak.