It would be a tad facetious to suggest that Ciaran Cassidy’s fine documentary on a sketchily remembered institution acts as a neat companion piece to the recent hit Small Things Like These, but thematic tendrils certainly hold them together. The Housewife of the Year competition ended in 1995, 10 years after the events depicted in the Claire Keegan adaptation. We are quaintly alerted that a gender-neutral affair called Centra Homemaker of the Year briefly followed. There was, then, nobody around to call it “woke”.
To that point it seemed largely uncontroversial to award £300 and a gas stove to the woman who could present the best case for her skills as cook, cleaner, comforter and child carer. The competition survived for another five years after Mary Robinson praised the women who “instead of rocking the cradle rocked the system”.
Cassidy’s purpose is, plainly, in part to stand up for the cradle rockers. This is a film filled with much sadness. Women abandoned. Women who survived institutions. But it also allows a fair degree of celebration. Nobody here is wagging figures at surviving contributors for participating in a competition that allowed them a smidgen of recognition and renown. (Being on telly then was really something.)
The concept of the show is, in its assumptions about the role of women, now utterly unthinkable as an entertainment. What is most remarkable is the tone of condescension. “Are you a women’s libber?” Gay Byrne, the event’s host, asks one woman archly. There is no sense of threat. It is more as if he’s suggesting she were a batty eccentric rather than a radical upturner.
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What we have here is a celebration of a generation concealed within a humorous disinterment of a now-inexplicable artefact. The women return to the stage and fight misty eyes as they peer over a fence at the unattainable past. There is inevitably a degree of nostalgia at work. Who would not smile at the brown velour and the clunky staging? But, skilfully edited by Cara Holmes, Housewife of the Year is always aware of sadnesses not yet fully alleviated. After all, nostalgia derives from the Greek for the pain of returning.
The Rose of Tralee competition is now 65. Apropos of nothing.
Housewife of the Year is In cinemas from Friday, November 22nd
