ABSTRACT
What Frank McCourt (1997) is saying on the very first page of Angela’s Ashes is that an Irish childhood was a wet childhood. Now, I feel pretty sure that quite a few fellow sociologists and anthropologists would immediately present to him a sample of children who were not wet, only half wet, or merely wet during the night. Yet, McCourt gives us an impression of Irish childhood, which is quintessentially real: its Irish-ness, its Catholic-ness, miserable-ness, and above all, its wet-ness. Although not applicable for each and every child in Ireland, it conveys a picture which Irish children at the time could recognise and therefore justified talking – as McCourt does – about an Irish version of childhood. This Irish version achieved its distinction in comparison with what childhood was like in other countries; no one other childhood possessed the features which brought about the Irish childhood. Did one find a wet childhood elsewhere? If so, not one that was Catholic and wet, and for sure not Irish and Catholic and wet. Though McCourt did not think of it, he is actually using a particular method for coming to terms with his childhood, indirectly comparing it with other (national or cultural) childhoods so as to make it as distinct as possible (see quote by Braudel in the conclusion of this chapter).
