Humouring quiet, sour men was a skill many a woman had to develop
The sullen, silent man is a brooding presence in a lot of Irish and international literature and film. He is personified in ‘The Man with No Name’ as played by Clint Eastwood in a set of spaghetti westerns known as the Dollars Trilogy, directed by Sergio Leone between 1964 and 1966.
Eastwood plays a poncho-wearing, steely and almost silent stranger stoically holding the moral high ground with a six-gun, a Winchester and a cheroot stuck in the side of his moth. The cheroot makes sure he doesn’t say too much.
I’m currently rereading John Mcgahern’s Memoir in which he paints a picture of his father as a man who carries around a heap of unresolved issues hidden behind a wall of brooding disagreeability.
He’s an archetype whose likes can be found all over the place, who is not only tolerated but indulged. There are more than a few houses like that, where everything is done to ‘keep himself humoured’ and where he is the last to be told anything in case it puts him into even worse humour.
He’s not the kind of man you’d expect to be jumping for joy when you get engaged, unless the intended is well-heeled, with plenty of road frontage and a load of Kerry shares.
If you’re announcing a pregnancy without a wedding band you should only expect a thermobaric eruption. If you’re gay and you’re thinking of coming out, the best advice would be to stay in the closet until he’s in the coffin.
Humouring quiet, sour men was a skill many a woman had to develop if they wanted to make life tolerable for themselves and the children.
A woman I knew recounted the story of a conversation she had with a neighbouring woman whose husband had died a few months previously. In the course of their chat, she said: “I’m sure you miss him; he was one quiet man.”
“He was that alright,” the neighbour replied, “he liked to listen to the grass growing, but the rest of us had to stay quiet so he could hear it. We haven’t stopped talking since the good Lord took him.”
I think it’s important to say here that I’m not referring to coercive control — it might be a cousin to it — but a key question to be asked is, why are these men so silent and what are they carrying inside that makes them almost allergic to joy?
The scoping report published by the Government detailing the scale of sexual abuse in religious-run schools over a 30-year period put me thinking about this.
The contents of the report are
What are they carrying inside that makes them almost allergic to joy?
shocking and the numbers huge and while sexual abuse was rife the stories of physical abuse, emotional abuse and degrading treatment from the days when corporal punishment was permitted are legion.
I remember a number of years ago being involved in the delivery of a programme for older people designed to take the taboo out of facing and embracing old age. Part of the programme involved inviting the participants to go beyond the negative messages they had internalised from their childhood.
When this session came around there were always significant numbers with heartbreaking stories about their treatment at school or the treatment they witnessed being meted out to other children.
It left many men and women with huge self-esteem issues and loads of hurt which they carried from childhood. Some of the men could get quite upset because they may ever have talked to anyone about these things before. More often than not, the women had talked about them and as a result their burdens were lighter.
I notice that the Samaritans and the GAA are marking the 10th anniversary of their partnership in tackling mental health struggles, and this was another thing that put me thinking about the silence at the heart of many men. One of the articles written about the initiative had as its heading a quote from Limerick hurler Dan Morrissey, who said, “Men don’t talk enough”.
The Men’s Shed movement founded in Australia was built around creating a space where men can talk. It is based on the premise that men are more likely to talk shoulder-to-shoulder while engaged in a task rather than face-to-face in a formal setting. The movement has struck a chord, and Men’s Sheds have sprung up all around the world.
There remains a sneaking regard for the strong silent type, and we should be careful not to conflate silence with strength — it may be masking a whole heap of history.