What's Up With Angela and her cousin?
Do you think she slept with him out of desperation to provide for her kids or out of lonesome want?
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Your message asks what I thought about her sleeping with her cousin. When I read the book, and this was years ago, my first thought was that she was lazy.
Instead of working to make money, she moves in with her cousin and sleeps with him. Instead of finding herself a decent man, not related to her, she sleeps with her cousin.
As I read on, it did seem that she was lonely and that added to her decision to take up with her cousin. But mostly, I think that she was lazy and morally wrong in doing it. She was given help by her mother, her sister, the state, and the church and it was never enough, but at least, she wasn't alone and there was some help.
Your response pisses me off, you dont seem to understand how incredibly poor Angela was. Laman took her in and had his way with her because he was a brute and he knew that Angela had nowhere else to go. Do you really think she got any pleasure out of it? She squashed her pride and dignity for her children. She was NOT lazy you insensitive jackass, she couldnt get a job because Laman expected her to look after his house. And she had nowhere else to go seeing as Malachy left her high and dry. And the 'help' she got was barely enough to keep any of them alive. Dont be so quick to judge her for something she did in a situation you have never been in.
shareMy thought was that he probably made her do "the excitement" in order do keep her family there, and she did it because they didn't have the money to find a new home... but I could be wrong...
sharePlus she's human. Malachy wasn't there. Yeah it's gross doing your cousin, but times were rough. She needed a place for her family. It was a very desparate time in their life. And we don't really know, but maybe she needed a man in her life or something. However, I don't think she was proud of it one bit.
shareI haven't read the book, but in the film it is 100% obvious (well, IMO) that she only did it because she had no other options. She had to provide a home for her children, and nobody was really helping them. I never thought she 'needed a man' and I certainly never thought she derived an ounce of pleasure out of it. The guy was disgusting in every possible way, physically and as a person, and his behaviour towards her and the kids was disgusting, he was a brute and treated them like scum; and the situation was indeed gross, but not because he was her cousin, but because she was practically prostituting herself. It was one of the most painful moments in the movie for me, but it's a sad truth that women are sometimes forced to do such disgusting and humiliating things of necessity, and Angela was (unlike her husband Malachy) first and foremost thinking of her family and struggling to provide home and food for her children and keep them alive.
better sorry than safe
Frank McCourt has said she had to do as he said to keep a roof over her kids' heads. She was a trapped woman.
She got out as soon as she could and moved into her late mother's house.
Frank hated what his mother was doing with Laman Griffin, and he hated the way Laman treated his mother. He moved out after the night Laman beats him. His mother doesn't move out until later. She even tries to get Frank to move back to Laman Griffin's house, but he refuses.
She slept with her cousiin cos she liked the boaby. Pure and simple.
sharePERFECT ANSWER HA HA HA !!!!!
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It was a crude answer, but it is a true observation. Frank basically makes the same observation. As a young man, when he hears his mother going upstairs with her cousin, he thinks it's because she has no choice. But after he and Laman have the horrible fight and his mother still goes upstairs to her cousin, that's when he knows that his mother has chosen to be with her cousin. Something he can no longer accept in his mind and he moves out.
I agree with your response, although, somebody got pissed off!
We're talking about unchecked aggression here, dude.
http://imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=6221274
Well, she did have the other children to consider. So sex was the only payment she could give to provide for the others. So I don't think that her ultimate decision to go to bed with Laman after his fight with Frank had anything to do with lonliness. I don't know what it's like to be that dirt poor, but when you've got kids to think about in a place with limited opportunities, I think it was out of desperation to at least keep a roof over her children's heads. And one decided he was man enough to do better for himself, so what could she do about it? She wasn't going to hold him down.
"Inuyasha! Sit, boy!!"
"Well, she did have the other children to consider." Exactly. And Frank was the eldest, if he chose to move out she couldn't stop him, but she had to think of the younger ones who were still at home. If she left with Frank, they would have had to live in the gutter.
I don't know whether what she did can be completely admired, but she was selfless in doing that to get a roof over her children's heads. I guess she thought at least they had somewhere to live as children and when they left home they would have a better start. Angela had already lost some of her children, she would clearly do anything to keep her surviving children as safe as she could manage with no money coming in.
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Ha, ha, yeah, the girl's pissed off probably feels like they're talking about her mom.
shareJust because The cousin and frank have a horrible fight DOESNT MEAN she could just stop what she was doing. She had her other children and herself to think about shelter and foodwise. She doenst choose that, its forced upon her.
I'd rather spend a minute in your arms than a lifetime knowing I never could.
Imagine yourself in 1930's Ireland? A woman whos husband has left (and because of it still married and divorce was never an option then) and is trying to raise her young boys. She obviously battles with depression due to being put down for so many years. she was desperate to have a place to stay and even back then marrying your cousin wasnt so far off.
shareI am not quite as angry about this but agree that she was poor and desperate, not lazy or conniving.
shareIf you listen to the commentary by Frank McCourt himself, you'd hear him say that there was nothing at all a woman could do except be with her children and run the house.
The issue was the husband. He is the one who did not fulfill his obligations.
Staying with the cousin is the only thing she could do, besides putting the kids in an orphanage where they would have been abused.
No, Angela staying and having sex with her cousin wasn't the only thing that she could do. If that is what you believe, fine, but it's not what I got out of the story. Frank tells about other women in the book and they were not doing what Angela did. Even Angela stops living with her cousin and survives without living immorally.
After the fight that Frank And Laman have, Frank moves out. Frank couldn't take the abuse from Laman any more. And added to the abuse he got from Laman, was having to hear his mother having sex with his abuser. Frank moves in with Uncle Pat and he gets a job. His mother stays with Laman for a while longer, with two of her sons, until eventually she also moves in with Uncle Pat and Frank, and there she has her own room.
In the book, Frank doesn't say that women at that time only had the one option. Angela wasn't always in that situation she was in with cousin Laman. I think it was something Frank had to put up with, but he certainly didn't like it. The OP asked what I thought about Angela taking up with her cousin, not what I thought about Frank's father. Malachy wasn't much good as a father, but that doesn't excuse what Angela did for those years.
If you own the DVD, play it with Frank's commentaries. He says EXACTLY just that. That women back then had no jobs, in Limerick. Her only way out was to put them in the orphanage and to take the boat to England, to work in the war factories like her husband did.
I am not making that up, get the DVD if you don't have it and listen to his commentaries.
It was still ironically hypocritical of Angela--- After the last son's birth, she refused to have sex with her own husband because she was finally fed up with bearing more children into poverty, without, it seems, considering smuggling some condoms (forbidden by the Church in Ireland, but apparently available to those determined to get them anyway.) Yet, after Malachy leaves her (driven, IMO, in part because of her sexual rejection of him--- he may have been a drunk but apparently was a faithful husband) Angela is more or less coerced into sleeping with her own cousin.... And "miraculously", in spite of her previous fecundity, never seemed to get pregnant! Laman MUST have been doing SOMETHING to prevent such a scandalous outcome, too bad Angela didn't see fit to try some method with the father of her children, who might then have remained with her.
"Shake me up, Judy!"
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As I say again, you are all pissing me off. It seems clear all the tossers on this board have no idea how bad life was like in Ireland at the time for people, especially catholics and especially women. The McCourts often were denied work etc because if their Northern name and anyway shutup as if you guys actually undersstand what Angela gad to go through. Try losing three kids,a father, a mother, a husband, live in extreme poverty, forced to rely only on your body to get fedetc then make your crappy judgements. She did the best she could and thats all you can ever do.
shareGoing to that fatso cousin was an act of heroism. She took the indignity for her children. Because whoring outside the house is so much more riskier, I think she took the right decision.
Loved the movie. Absolutely perfect title - "Angela's Ashes"
even monkeys fall from trees
I for one would not want to be having sex with a man who couldnt support his family, who would rather see his children go hungry than give up the pub, and go to Englad for factory work so he could send home money, and then doesnt send anything. He was never really with her, and the fact that so many of their children died makes me wonder what the outcome would have been if he had been able to support his family. He needed to man up and he never did.
I'd rather spend a minute in your arms than a lifetime knowing I never could.
Lord knows there is no way in hell I would have sex with a drunk good for nothing jerk off, faithful or not. Who'd want to stay with someone like that?? As for her sleeping with her cousin. I cant comment on that as I have never been put in a situation even CLOSE to resembling that.
Instead of working to make money
How could she work when she had two young children [Michael, Alphie] to raise, one of which was still a baby?
Not to mention she had zero working skills and and physical ailments and other health problems?
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Scannon you are an ignorant fool. Did you not see in the movie Angela resisting Malchy in bed because she didn't want more children. Sex was the "wifely duty" wives were damned for not fulfilling it. Tea and cigarettes? She was hardly wiping her arse with fifty quid notes. Those things were small luxuries for poor people. My grandparents were poor as sh!t but they had their tea and smokes and who should begrudge them that when they had so little? You say you would sacrifice everything scannon but are you actually a parent? You seem to really romanticise the role of the parent as if one should give up every part of oneself in order to raise the kids. Feck off. Angela couldn't have prevented her children's deaths, that was the way it was. Families commonly lost four or five kids, sometimes as many as nine.
Anyway none of you lot were her kids and McCourt doesen't seem to feel as bad as you do towards her, in fact he seems to respect her alot as he named the book after her and I saw him recently in an interview and he only had good things to say of his late mother. Everyone here seems to have really have been drawn into McCourt's martyrdom.
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Well aren't you great. Really I wish I was as selflessly perfect as you. I'm sure your child will grow up dedicating books to you. I mean I'm sure you live in the same state of poverty as Angela did otherwise you'd be a moron to compare yourself to her.
You are right though, she already had no heat, hot water, her own toilet, lost 3 kids, had a feckless husband, had to beg for priest's leftovers, no education, no prospects other than survival what were some tea and cigs? What a bad mother, seriously what a b!tch.
she's not lazy, by god! she couldn't work. take a look at the movie again and you'll see that there are very very few women working. it was the men who were employed and the women were to tend the family and the home. that's just the way it was in those days. at one point, angela says" if i could work, i'd be in english factories'. this statement shows you a few things:
1) women could not work
2) there wasn't much work in ireland
The tragedy of the situation is marked by the fact that she seemingly put her cousin first in order to keep a roof over her children's heads. Women have a more nurturing nature than men and she would do anything to keep give them shelter and provide a place for them to live. What she did may seem morally questionable, but do you not think it demonstrates the lengths she went to make sure they could all survive? She went to him after the argument to keep him sweet. It was obvious she didn't sleep with him out of lust. Simply because he doesn't really strike me as the type who would go to any lengths to satisfy a woman before himself.
Oh, jerry, don't let's ask for the moon. We have the stars.
Why didn't she work?
She did work - she worked in the home which is *unpaid work*.
Isn't it funny how no one respects work in the private sphere... Anyway, I suppose that's getting off the point. As others have already stressed, women could not get jobs in pre-war Limerick. And even if they could have, her surname, impoverished background and lack of education/training wouldn't have helped.
Life was bloody impossible in those days. Talking about morals is all fine and dandy when you're not the one living on the breadline. In the past and in some places still today, people do whatever they can to survive. This often involves a huge amount of self-sacrifice (especially for women) and sadness.
Many people on this board seem to have difficulty empathising with Angela and her hellish life. However, in reality, she had it far worse than Frank.
<<<<Your message asks what I thought about her sleeping with her cousin. When I read the book, and this was years ago, my first thought was that she was lazy.
Instead of working to make money, she moves in with her cousin and sleeps with him. Instead of finding herself a decent man, not related to her, she sleeps with her cousin.
As I read on, it did seem that she was lonely and that added to her decision to take up with her cousin. But mostly, I think that she was lazy and morally wrong in doing it. She was given help by her mother, her sister, the state, and the church and it was never enough, but at least, she wasn't alone and there was some help. >>>>
How the fck was she supposed to get a job? Her husband couldn't even find one- and he was a man. A women had even less a chance. You're an idiot.
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