Women's Voices in Ireland by Caitriona Clear

Author:Caitriona Clear [Clear, Caitriona]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Europe, Great Britain, General, Modern, 20th Century, Social Science, Women's Studies
ISBN: 9781474236690
Google: wIAmCwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2015-12-17T01:12:25+00:00

6

‘And Then They Wonder Why Their Wives Are Cold’: Woman’s Way Problems 2: Courtship and Marriage

Courtship

As we have seen in Chapter 5, questions about sex, because they concerned respect, affection and, not least of all, attraction, shaded naturally into questions about courtship. But there were problems about relationships with boys and men that had nothing to do with sex, as such. Many young teenage girls were anxious to embark on courtship. ‘I am 15 and would like to know how to go with a boy’, ran a typical letter from a young hopeful in 1967; other teenagers wondered ‘what to do’ on a date and how to talk to a boy and how to kiss (not how much kissing was ‘permitted’ – Macnamara, however, soon told them). Quite common were letters from ‘two girls’ who were looking for boys, or were hoping particular boys would notice them, or were in love (unrequited) with two boys, or were hoping to break off with two boys without hurting their feelings, or who did not know what to ‘do on a date’ or who never got dances. Girls and boys under eighteen were constantly advised not to go steady but to make as many friends of the opposite sex as possible. There were also many of the mad about the boy/he does not know that I exist love problems, which had featured in Woman’s Life and the British magazines also and were a staple of the teen magazine Jackie’s Cathy and Claire page and have been a feature of problem pages since they began. With these, Macnamara was both sympathetic and firm. A correspondent who asked if it was wrong to send a boy she loved cards without signing her name (helpfully adding that she knew all the facts of life) was advised that it was not wrong but was a little foolish, and elsewhere the agony aunt expressed shock that girls were telephoning boys they did not know and asking them out. When a correspondent criticized her in 1969 for her callous dismissal of young love, citing Romeo and Juliet, Macnamara gave the irresistible response that those two lovers were hardly an example of a happy outcome. Maura Laverty in her brief tenure as agony aunt in 1963 advised a nineteen-year-old, unsure about which boyfriend she loved most, that she obviously did not love either of them. Angela Macnamara was not quite as brutal. A very typical problem came from a 28-year-old woman who had ‘two prospects’ – a 29-year-old ‘lovely fellow’ in the city (where, presumably, she was working) and a 37-year-old businessman ‘at home’. Beyond advising her not to marry without love, there was little that Macnamara – or indeed, anybody – could tell her.1

Readers could not be told what their own feelings were, but both Laverty and Macnamara, like Mrs Wyse before them, had no doubts about what constituted bad boyfriend behaviour. The boyfriend of two years who had never asked his girlfriend to meet his family should be

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