Ok so forgive my ignorance, I know very little on this subject but I had a couple of questions
There are a lot of older women there. Are they women that have been there for a long time, or were just committed recently? Also at that age would they have more of a choice about going or again would it have been against their will?
It may sound stupid, but even if you were over 18, or 21, would you still have no choice about going there?
In the movie, one of the women said she had been there for 40 years.
I think there was a lot of abuse of the free labor involved in these asylum/laundries and there would be no incentive to release a woman who was still strong and able to move large loads of laundry.
I'm not an Irish historian but even in our own country in the 50's (the era of this film), there were pretty strict standards as to what made a girl not-nice. Sometimes it was simply flirting; other times it was being raped; then there is always the unwed mother. It would be truly a family tragedy and embarrassment to be pregnant or a loose woman. We had a lot of homes in the US for unwed mothers where they were forced to give up their children.
“One never quite allows for the moron in our midst.” Agatha Christie, The Mirror Crack'd
I would think some of the older woman were maybe caught selling themselves, or even if they went out for drinks I suppose they would be seen as scum and carted off, mental health issues especially.
shareNo they would have no choic but to be there, the nuns had detention power very much like a reformation school or a mental asylum, they had authority even to get you commited in to an mental institution without the knowledge of the family,
shareBack then there was no way to fight the church. I heard this story. This woman had many children and her husband died. Her neighbor would come over at night and have a meal and talk in the parlor. Of course the children were there. This went on for a while and when a priest heard of it he went to see her. He told her they had to get married or else. She didn’t and the church had her kids taken away from her and had her sent to a laundry.