Land of Spices Part II

When the novel starts, we learn that Mother Helen is increasingly unhappy working in Ireland... and one day, she is drawn to the little Anna, when the child seems to like one of her father’s favorite Poems…”My soul there Is a country..” 

For many years Helen has used her vocation, genuine though it is, to avoid the messiness of human love.   Over time she came to forgive her “pagan minded” father for his love for men, but she still can’t bring herself to love other people.  Gradually however she becomes fond of Anna, who is highly intelligent and unusual.  She tries to avoid showing any favoritism toward her….but encourages her to learn English poetry.  

Over several years, she rules the school and convent.   She tries to steer a middle course between  tolerating the snobbery of many of the older nuns, who are proud of their upper class background and who cling to the European based ways of the past, and the younger nuns and parents who are in favor of Irish Nationalism, which Mother Helen regards as narrowing and limited.

  Anna grows older – and shows a talent for reciting poetry and for literature.  Her family however has many problems… Her father is drinking more heavily, and the farm is not doing so well. 
Anna’s mother is forced to turn to her own domineering mother for financial help.

Mother Helen remains in touch with her father, who still lives in Belgium, but she gives up the idea of a transfer and does her best with living in Ireland.  She still feels something of an alien there, but has developed an attachment to the place springing from her fondness for Anna.  She knows that religious vocation does not mean a withdrawal from human affections but her hurt over her father’s illicit love for men made her shy away from showing and feeling human love.

 As Anna grows older, she does well at school, but is distressed by the strains of home life.  Then a tragedy occurs.  Her brother Charlie, the one person she has always loved and been close to, drowns while swimming, on a summer holiday.   She is distraught, and coupled with the family’s money troubles, her life becomes very difficult.  Her grandmother is rich but arrogant and does not believe in women’s education.  She is unwilling to help her granddaughter to find a career. 

Her grandmother feels that it is up to Anna to take some kind of “ladylike” job, to add to the family’s income... but that it is a waste of time to educate girls because it costs too much and they only marry.   However Anna wins a scholarship and attracts the admiration of the Bishop, and Mother Helen uses this to persuade and push her grandmother into agreeing that she should take up the scholarship and be able to train for a career.   

Mother Helen’s father has just died in Brussels, and she reflects that she is glad she had come to an acceptance of him before he died but now, even if she goes back to Belgium, he won’t be there.  She is pleased that she has been able to do some good for Anna, and helped a young girl on a path to an independent career.  

This is always a very important theme in Kate O’Brien’s fiction.  Even in her love stories, there is an emphasis on women being educated and having some work to do.   Flower of May ends with Fanny and Lucille, the 2 young women of the book, also preparing to go to University and get an education which will enable them to work at something better and more meaningful than an ill paid “ladylike job”.   

 In “As Music and Splendor”, the 2 co heroines, Rose and Claire are professional opera singers…

At the time O’Brien was writing – and even more so because she set some of her novels in the Victorian past - the careers available to women were relatively few, most notably teaching and writing...

 But she did focus on the idea of work for women...   By setting some  of her books in convent schools, she was able to depict nuns as professional teachers and women who ran an enterprise, (such as the lay sisters managing the convent’s farm) rather than as housewives or idle socialites.    One of her early works,   "Mary Lavelle" is a love story, but the love is between Mary and a married man and  it ends after one day of love making.  Mary’s job as governess to the Spanish girls is not very demanding but she decides to go home to Ireland, to take her small inheritance and go away, to find some other kind of work…

In “Land of Spices” there is no love interest at all.  The only love affair in the book is the briefly mentioned one of Helen’s father and his young male student…Mother Helen, the main character is a nun, and Anna is very young and not interested in men as yet.  She sympathizes with Votes for women, and wants to have a career, but there is no sign of any romance for her.   Growing up in school, she is in a world of women... who do form a supportive network for each other. The book ends with Anna preparing to go to University and Mother Helen being told that she has been elected Mother Superior of the Order... Which will entail a return to the main House in Brussels.