Land of Spices Part I

Land of Spices (published 1941) is another of Kate O’Brien’s novels about Ireland.  Most of her novels are about the Irish middle or upper classes.  Most of Ireland’s landed aristocracy was “Anglo Irish” and Protestant, but there were some Catholic Gaelic families that had managed to hold onto some of their ancestral land or to buy up estates.   Her own family had come to wealth and prominence in the 19^th century in Limerick, having set up a prosperous business, trading horses. 
In one of her later novels, "The Flower of May", the heroine’s family owns a small estate, in the country, and her aunt leaves it to Fanny, the heroine, to give her financial independence.

     In O'Brien's books she called Limerick “Mellick”.  Her first novel Without My Cloak was set there, in a Forsyte like middle class rather smothering family.   It is based partly on her family history...

 Many of her heroines are educated, as she was, in a convent school.   She went to school as a boarder at the age of 5 because her mother had died and her father wanted her to be looked after.  The convent gave an excellent education and Kate was able to go to University.  There was also training in “politeness” and good Catholic  ladylike behavior.

In "The Land of Spices," the heroine Anna Murphy goes to school as a boarder, at a very early age. 
In her case the reason is that her father, a gentleman farmer, drinks and seems to be having an affair with his children’s governess… Her mother is a rather silly woman, who complains continually. So  Anna goes to the school, though she is much younger than the other pupils, and misses her favourite brother, Charlie...

 The Headmistress of the School Mother Helen Archer is an Englishwoman, who feels out of place in Ireland at this particular time.  It is Edwardian Ireland, when the Gaelic League had come into prominence.  She finds the narrow emphasis on nationalism, on the Irish language, and the Irish nuns'  dislike of English ways off-putting.  The Irish sisters and priests whom she works with however are not fond of Mother Helen, and they think of her as typically English, cold and arrogant.   She is not popular and at the beginning of the novel, she is seriously considering asking for a transfer from her convent, to go to Europe where the order has houses. 

We learn gradually what drew Helen Archer into being a nun, and what has happened in her life to make her seem cold and withdrawn.  She is the daughter of an English teacher, who married.  He loved English literature and culture –but he and her mother settled in Brussels. where he worked as  a tutor.
 Helen was sent to a convent school but was not at first interested in being a Nun.  However in her teens –she discovered why her father has settled abroad and why his marriage to her mother has not been very successful.  She comes home from the convent one day, unexpectedly  -and finds her father in an embrace with a young man who is his pupil and protégé.   The shock of this drives her into withdrawing from human love and deciding to go into a convent.