Essay on Mary Beckett's Belfast Woman In Dublin,Ireland

Belfast Woman is a short story of an elderly woman, Mrs Harrison, who lives as a Catholic in a street where mainly Protestants own most of the houses. She has to face many difficulties to live on in a country where religion has such a great effect on people’s life. The first of all, she recalled her first negative experience of the Catholic Protestant opposition, when her family were burned in 11 ”I ran down in my nightgown and my mother was standing in the middle of the kitchen with her hands up to her face screaming and screaming, and the curtains were on fire and my father was pulling them down and stamping on them with the flames catching the oilcloth on the floor.

Then he shouted, �Sadie, the children,� and she stopped screaming and said,�Oh, God, Michel, the children,� and she ran upstairs and came down with the baby in one arm and Joey under the other, and my father took Joey in his arms and me by the hand and we ran out along the street.” In the background of these rebellious movements were that the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed in 11, giving Ireland the statys of Free State within the Commonwealth. It was unaccaptable to the Irish since they were just symbolicly a Free State due to the Brithish control and military dominance over them. Moreover, the Irish had to accept that six counties of Northern Ireland did not belonge to them anymore. (In three out of six counties Catholics were in majority.) These bad news caused havy tension and hundreds of people were killed and made homeless.
The protagonist’s family got a threatenig letter to burn them out again and had to move again. They went to an office where showed their �Get out or we’ll burn you out� note a house and new jobs. There she (Mary-the protagonist) got to know a man, called William, who was a Protestant, got married and moved into a Protestant street. Mary had not got any objections against it although her mother was afraid of what will happen if the neighbours get to know she is a Catholic, ” �Don’t go into a Protestant street, Mary, or you’ll be a sorry girl� ”. The second night after they moved into there was trouble in the Catholic street ” We heared shots first and then the kind of rumbling, roaring noises of all the people out on the street. I wanted to get up and run out and see what was wrong, but William held on to me in bed and said, �They don’t run out on the street here. They stay in.� And it was true. ” Things were different in her new home but something never changes troubles, riots, shots and violence. An example for police violence in the text ”... a poor young lad had stayed at home when he should have gone back to the Brithish Army... the police ran after him and shot him dead. They said their gun went off by accident but the people they beat him up.” I think it can also suggest the bad Anglo-Irish relationship as well.