A One Mrs. Reilly

     My last two posts have been only on the topic of the main character, Ignatius, and his various inner workings as an insecure man-child. However, I now want to discuss the main supporting character to Ignatius--his mother, a one Mrs. Reilly.

    As the novel progresses, Ignatius's larger-than-life character starts to take somewhat of a back seat to the other characters who may have been passing side characters in his misadventures earlier in the novel. People like the crew that (poorly) runs the Night of Joy club, the apathetic owner of Levy pant company, and the aunt of Patrolman Mancuso all take their turns sharing the spotlight that highlights each of their deep dysfunctions and complex personal relationships with friends and spouses. Irene Reilly, however, has been a character that has shown her rich character from very early on in the story.

    The first time we see Mrs. Reilly is when she is buying pastries while Ignatius waits impatiently for her outside of a department store shortly before an attempted arrest by Patrolman Mancuso. One of the main reasons she is buying the pastries is to please her son, an act of love on her part, but all the while that the owner of the bakery is making conversation with her she seems hesitant to mention Ignatius. This hesitation demonstrates a level of shame that Mrs. Reilly feels towards her son, as once he becomes the topic of conversation, she complains about how he is still unmarried and unemployed before quickly changing the topic. 

'I thought he was married, precious.' 

'Ignatius? Eh, la la,' Mrs. Reilly said sadly. 'Sweetheart, you wanna gimme two dozen of them fancy mix?' 

'But I thought you told me he was married,' Miss Inez said while she was putting the cakes in a box. 

'He ain’t even got him a prospect. The little girl friend he had flew the coop.'

'Well, he’s got time.'

'I guess so,' Mrs. Reilly said disinterestedly. 'Look, you wanna gimme half a dozen wine cakes, too? Ignatius gets nasty if we run outta cake.' (4)

    The majority of the time that she is portrayed, she is a kindhearted albeit somewhat scatterbrained mother, but her very first interaction that we get to see in the novel illustrates her more nuanced feeling of resentment towards her freeloading son. Irene Reilly is a widow who herself is unemployed, and she uses welfare to try and support her and necessary finances on top of Ignatius's seemingly endless and self-indulgent interests that he picks up and abandons at a whim (not to even mention the amount she must spend on children's writing practice notepads for him as well.) 

    In short, being the single mother of someone like Ignatius is a understandably very draining lifestyle, and Mrs. Reilly copes with this by drinking muscatel wine she hides in the oven. Ignatius, the everlasting lord of narcissistic manipulation, leverages this drinking habit against his mother by criticizing her for it and treating as if it were some deeply unjustifiable flaw that originates from herself alone. In the case of arguing over their finances, Ignatius says, 

...When I opened [the oven] to put in my frozen pizza, I was almost blinded by a bottle of broiled wine that was preparing to explode. I suggest that you divert some of the monies that you are pouring into the liquor industry. (43)

    In fact, it is when she is drunk in the Night of Joy club after the two narrowly escape arrest at the hand of Mancuso that begins to assert herself and create a brief outpouring of her emotions, which totally Ignatius disregards as if he was the kind of person who would think she was suffering from Female Hysteria. 

'Oh, he treats me bad sometimes,' Mrs. Reilly said loudly and began to cry. 'You just don’t know. When I think of all I done for that boy...'

'Mother, what are you saying?'

'You don’t appreciate me.'

'Stop that right now. I’m afraid that you’ve had too much beer.'

'You treat me like garbage. I been good, Mrs. Reilly sobbed. (19)

    The conversation with the baker and this conversation in the bar are both frank expressions of what one might call the 'dark side' of her relationship with her son. If Ignatius ever acknowledges these flaws in their relationship, he blames her and simultaneously infantilizes her for being upset in the first place. This 'dark side' acts as a jumping-off point for Mrs. Reilly's character, as she drunkenly crashes their car that only she knows how to drive and receives a fine high enough to make her finally push Ignatius into the workforce`to afford it. In this push, or rather stiff-arm, for Ignatius to get a job, we start to see Mrs. Reilly start to challenge her passive role in their relationship when she starts going bowling with friends and finally learns how liberating independence from her son is. She starts wearing makeup and styling her hair when she goes out on her own, she criticizes Ignatius for staying in the bathtub for hours on end, and she even goes into his sacred boudoir and violates the interpersonal boundaries he had erected to keep her under his thumb. 

    On many levels, we see that Mrs. Reilly does love her son. More layers of her character are peeled back as she starts to assert her power in their relationship, however, and forces Ignatius to leave the thick, bleary bubble he has lived in his whole life. This is isn't out of some sort of sadism--by pushing Ignatius and pushing herself, we can understand that she wants to show her love by working on their relationship as a both of them combined rather than two divided.

Bibliography

Toole, John K. A Confederacy of Dunces. Baton Rouge and London, Louisiana State University Press, 1980.