Power shifts, the politics of sexuality, trust and, above all, rage - the rage of the disempowered - are the dynamics at work in this stark quartet of prose poems. McCabe has returned to the Ireland of the 19th century so brilliantly evoked in Death and Nightingales (1992) now deservedly acknowledged as a major achievement of modern Irish fiction. Tales from the Poorhouse travels further back in time, to mid century and the compromises endured by those surviving the "hard hunger".
It is a brave work in which four speakers tell their interlinking stories. Contrasting - and indeed, conflicting - tones emerge from within monologues which range from defiant protest to heart-crazed lamentation. The quasi-poetic language moves from the vernacular to formal speech. In a narrative constructed upon a series of complex, often violent, tensions, McCabe explores these individual dilemmas while also placing them in their historical context. Class and culture, peasant and landlord, male and female, mother and daughter, youth and age; and death is juxtaposed with survival and flight.
In the opening sequence, "The Orphan", young Roisin describes a family life devastated by her mother's relentless anger, invariably voiced at their weak father. "Betimes there were screechin' matches so awful me and Grace my twin sister put our two fingers in our two ears and ran away from the house and hid in the sleugh that divides our ten-acres from Noel Callaghan's land." The girl's story unfolds with equal measures of laconic reserve and exasperation. Her mother is presented as a monster, who greeted the disappearance of her husband not with tears "but bad temper out of her mouth" and is capable of the greatest of crimes, that of killing a child. But Roisin is also aware of her own rage and, above all, of her strength - which exceeds, by far, that of her twin, gentle, doomed Grace. "I was the first born and had a hard time comin' into the world or so I was often told. Maybe that's what made me harder than Grace in my head and heart or so I imagine."
Various resentments come tumbling out. The mother's hectoring accusations about loose behaviour reap predictable results as Grace becomes pregnant. Yet somehow, beneath the complaints, Roisin conveys the reality of her mother's furious love for her children and the sense of pride she tries to instill in them. There is no sentimentality. Almost as an aside, Roisin describes the day she raced a rich man's carriage "and braved Clancy's whip" as a way of getting money without resorting to begging.
It is a vivid, dramatic sequence. "There was a taste of blood and sweat in my mouth. I went straight off the avenue . . . and sat on the ground. I realised then I could hardly breathe. When it got easier I was cryin'." This hard-won triumph contrasts with her sister's passive slide into death as her stillborn baby is pulled from her body.
The harsh extremes of Grace's death and the burden of their mother's "fear of shame" free Roisin, preparing her for the compromise which will secure her escape. Her rage and defiance yield to the horror of guilt, which has reduced the master to a state of apathy. Having long exploited his position in the poorhouse as a way of enjoying the favours of any female catching his eye, his power evaporates when he is confronted by his sister and her child. The experience unnerves him, and his failure to help her results in her death. While the Orphan's story is a report, this monologue is the confession of an ambitious man who has previously evicted the poor and is aware now, as master of the poorhouse, that he sold his soul for power. "I knew also that the position itself tends to inspire a kind of awe akin to gentry or clergy."
Although lacking the raw, powerful imagery of Roisin's speech, McCabe's achievement here lies in sustaining the rueful meditation of slow realisation as self-knowledge dawns on the master. In the least personal account, the Landlord reveals a great deal about the society which made him, and the new order which is now rejecting his class. Observation and memory dominate his journal entries: he happens upon a young man taking leave of his family, and realises he is witnessing an "American Wake". Particularly telling is the Landlord's chance recollection of his own father once advising him to "learn every inflection, son. . . More practical than going about armed to the teeth with body guards you can't trust." Elsewhere the Landlord concedes, "the longer I live the less I understand the human heart."
Vilified by her daughter, the Mother, broken by shame, madness and sorrow, vindicates her anger in the closing speech, a soliloquy of extraordinary simplicity and passion. "Aye, surely, but the Devil's know'd my story and where do you look for two lost angels in the dark when that's what you're up agin?" These stories, from which recent television dramas in Irish and English have been scripted, are virtuoso performances in which McCabe explores layers of language demonstrating a richness, subtlety and a range of textures and emotions seldom achieved in fiction.
