The Woman Who Walked Into Doors is the story of Paula who featured in Roddy Doyle’s RTE/BBC 1 series The Family.
Roddy Doyle is famed for writing about the working classes and his writing is known for its heavy use of humorous dialogue and colloquialisms.
Doyle himself is middle class and gained his insights into the working class from his years as a teacher which is probably why sometimes I found some of his writing to be a bit ‘outside in’ and occasionally a bit condescending.
Not so The Family and not so The Woman Who Walked Into Doors from which the character of Paula emerged.
I remember The Family when it was first screened. To see a working-class family on screen was rare at the time and this was a sympathetic portrait which looked at each character with understanding as well as humour.
In the TV series, Paula is married to the violent Charlo and is struggling to bring up her kids in a Dublin city suburb.
Roddy wrote The Woman Who Walked Into Doors after the series and it looks at Paula’s life from her perspective.
The first part of the book wasn’t the strongest – Paula talking about her childhood and school days made me wince a couple of times as her voice became overtly analytical: ‘That school made me rough – I wasn’t rough before I went there.’
That’s the author talking and it’s fine but since the book is written from Paula’s perspective and written in the first person I would have prefered to infer that analysis from her description of her early life rather than be told directly.
Still, this raised interesting questions for me. Do ‘rough’ people regard themselves as rough! Do ‘rough’ people see their ‘roughness’ as a negative characteristic that has been imposed by circumstances or as a positive trait – developed to survive?
That aside, the book became much stronger as Paula progressed to womanhood and particularly so as she spoke about the violence and emotional abuse she suffered at her husband’s hands.
It was here that I began to glimpse her humanity. Her description of surviving life with Charlo was utterly believable. Reading it was at times difficult – so raw was her pain.
Paula stayed with Charlo for many years and that always begs the question – why did she stay?
When it comes to domestic abuse that’s always the question.
There is no easy answer. In Paula’s case, we could say she stayed because she had no choice. She had kids and no money but there are other reasons.
Paula was married at a time in Ireland’s history when divorce was not only illegal but separate was frowned upon. Women were brought up with the phrase ‘you’ve made your own bed – so lie on it,’ ringing in their ears. Having lived in Ireland since the late 70s I know I certainly was.
Women of this era were also told that breaking up a marriage is worse for kids than staying in a bad marriage – however bad, brutal or indifferent that marriage.
This is why I understand the character of Paula – she would have been brainwashed into these beliefs throughout her life.
But another big part of Paula’s story is alcohol. Alcohol has a role both in Charlo’s violence and Paula’s inability to leave him.
She uses alcohol as an anaesthetic and later, when she is becoming aware of its effects, her struggle with controlling this addiction is vividly drawn.
If you only like reality measured out in teaspoons you won’t find this an easy read but stay with me because The Woman Who Walked Into Doors might be heart wrenching and grim.
But, it is an important read because it challenges and informs the many scanty portrayals of domestic abuse victims.
Instead, the book shows us the heart and pulse of a much more interesting woman – the flawed woman.
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