SOURCE: Neary, Mary. “Flora's Answer to the Irish Question: A Study of Mary Lavin's ‘The Becker Wives’.” Twentieth Century Literature 42, no. 4 (winter 1996): 516-26.

In the following essay, Neary asserts that “The Becker Wives” provides valuable inside into the “Irish quest for identity.”

“What ish my nation?” is a question that surfaces time and again, and in various forms, throughout Irish literature. It most explicitly appears in Shakespeare's Henry V, with an answer that leaves much room for emendation, particularly considering that it originates in English, not Irish, literature. “What ish my nation?” asks an Irish captain named Macmorris. “Ish a villain, and a bastard, and a knave, and a rascal” (3.2.125-26). If this answer is not a compelling catalyst for the Irish imagination, the question is: It has driven Irish people back into the old mythology, the old language, or forward into a nation state—just as mythic...