Review: The Judge's Wife by Ann O'Loughlin

A spellbinding, haunting, heart-wrenching tale told in three narratives - Grace, Emma, and Vikram.

Wicklow 1954: a woman is sent away to an asylum days after giving birth.

Dublin 1984: a woman goes in search of her lost mother.

India 1984: a man looks back on a love lost.

This is a tale of conspiracy, hypocrisy, and passion with a deadly secret binding all together. But it is more than that. It is also a social history of the times, when a man, in this instance a Judge, could put away his wife not for being insane but for a social indiscretion.

In Ireland, the asylums reflected broader society. They were not the creation of doctors or asylum managers. They served a very real social purpose at a time of great change in Ireland, especially in the 1950s which were marked by economic stagnation, world wars, trade wars, religious change, declining population and emigration. The change to the family structure with the growing industrialisation of the country as a whole saw fewer families living off the land, where in the past an individual with a disability, or possibly a mental illness, might find a role. 

But in Ireland, asylums also became a convenient solution for many difficult societal problems, wherein communities and families used mental hospitals in complex and often subtle ways, according to their needs. You only have to look at the fallout from the Magdalene Laundries scandal today, which, for more than two centuries, saw women in Ireland sent to institutions as a punishment for having sex outside of marriage. Unwed mothers, flirtatious women and others deemed unfit for society were forced to labor under the strict supervision of nuns for months or years, sometimes even for life.

By the 1950s, the asylum system had expanded to such an extent that Ireland had the world highest rate of asylum residency per 100,000 population with over 21,000 residents or 0.7% of population (WHO, 1958.) This alarming increase happened within a society who had got used to locking away the undesirables, the non-conformists, the disabled, the perceived immoral. This then is the tragic backdrop to the story of The Judge's Wife.

Mental Treatment Act of 1945 - Brendan O'Kelly