The Woman in the Wall (Season 1), Episode 1: BBC’s latest mystery drama series ‘The Woman in the Wall’ is a reminder of the horrors of the Magdalene Laundries of Ireland lest they get pushed behind in the face of the force of the ever-proliferating public memories. It also attempts to introduce the world to it as this tale is not from a bygone century. The last laundry shut its shop in 1996. This perhaps is an indication that human ignorance might have led to the prolonged existence of this seemingly medieval but proven otherwise torturehouse.
The Woman in the Wall (Season 1), Episode 1 Recap:
An epitaph is read out for a woman who seems to be lying dead on a rain-washed, deserted country road of Kilkinure, Western Ireland, with a herd of cows trying to nudge her. However, just when the poem reaches its final line– “I am not dead”– the woman too wakes up and parallelly confirms that she is alive. Having no recollection whatsoever of the circumstances that have led her there, she walks back home shivering.
At her home, the woman, Lorna Brady, finds a knife plunged into a portrait of Jesus. Lorna overhears a radio announcement stating that an official investigation has been flagged off in the Catholic-run mother and baby homes of Ireland. This sends Lorna down a spiraling memory involving a mother and a child.
She returns to work and finds someone has left a letter addressed to her. She also bumps into her friend, Niamh. Niamh says she has heard people talk about Lorna roaming around the town in her nightgown. She is concerned about Lorna’s well-being hinting at the resurfacing of the news pertaining to the convent homes. She informs Lorna that all the other women who have survived the Kilkinure convent are meeting at her place to discuss something important but Lorna refuses to join.
Later in the evening, Lorna opens the letter and finds the words “I know what happened to your child”. This confirms that the memory of the mother and child is actually Lorna’s own memory of being a mother with her newborn child who was taken away. The sender also asks Lorna to call a number. When Lorna calls, the phone is disconnected from the other end. Within seconds, she receives a text that asks her to meet instead at the Thin Man Pub.
A flashback shows that young Lorna was pregnant when her parents decided to send her away to a convent against her will. A priest came and took Lorna away.
She goes to the pub but finds no one. A man named Michael arrives but Lorna suspects him to be the sender of the letter. She gets into a scuffle and passes out. The next morning, she wakes up at her apartment. When she walks downstairs, she finds a dead body of a woman.
In Blackrock, Dublin, Detective Sergeant Colman Akande investigates the death of his childhood parish priest, Father Percy Sheehan. On the other hand, about two miles outside Kilkinure, the priest’s green Triumph car is discovered.
Lorna arrives where the ladies have assembled to talk about their torturous past lives and all of their suffering can be attributed to the Kilkinure convent. The Kilkinure convent operated both as a Magdalene laundry and a mother-and-baby home. Niamh says she has been meeting one Atherom Group that has promised to support them in their fight. The women have been demanding the State’s recognition of the convent having operated as a Magdalene Laundry in the past. She mentions one James Coyle who might be helpful in getting them the justice that they rightfully deserve. The ladies talk about how the convents have used them as slave labour. The nuns tortured them and reaped benefits from the hapless condition of the women. Lorna, however, is uncomfortable and just not ready to take part.
Sergeant Akande arrives at Kilkinure to carry out his investigation. He finds the priest’s car and decides to ask around to find the person who has disposed of the car there. Akande asks a policeman, Massey, the reason behind the ubiquitousness of hairbrushes in Kilkinure. The latter explains that the hairbrushes are attached to the myth of the Wailing Woman who screams and wails when a loved one dies. The only way to pacify the spirit is to offer her a hairbrush which she can use to brush her hair. The officers arrive at the store of Amy, one of the women who were meeting Niamh, to inquire her about the deceased priest. Amy tells them that he was the one who put all the women in the Magdalene Laundry. Despite Massey’s clear objection, Akande is committed to meeting the women who have been in the laundry.
A woman informs Lorna that after she passed out in the pub, an unknown woman took her back into her apartment. Their conversation gets cut short when Conor, the policeman in charge of looking out for the priest’s car, arrives and blurts out the death of the priest in front of Lorna. Lorna watches the green car being taken away in a car hauler. This brings back her old memory of Father Sheehan forcing her inside the car and taking her away from her parents.
Later, Massey slips in the information of Lorna breaking into the convent grounds and desecrating a shrine of the Virgin Mary with an axe to Akande. Akande, resolute about finding Lorna, arrives at her place but she hides from him. After he leaves, Lorna goes out of the apartment with an axe and burns the priest’s car down. Akande is convinced that someone, perhaps Lorna herself, is trying to wipe out the trails left.
The Woman in the Wall (Season 1), Episode 1 Ending Explained:
Who could be the woman in the wall?
Akande and Massey try to talk to Lorna but that does not bear any fruitful result. Disturbed by all the recent developments and her haunting memories of her baby being snatched away at the convent, Lorna fails to compose herself and destroys her customer’s wedding dress in the process.
The episode ends with Lorna hacking down a part of her drawing room wall to fit in the dead body of the unknown woman. She puts back all the pieces in order to conceal the presence of the body. All this happens with the ABBA song ‘The Way Old Friends Do’ being played in the background. The identity of the woman who gets encased is likely to be revealed in the upcoming episodes.
What is the history of Magdalene Laundry?
The Irish State in collusion with the Catholic church erected the Magdalene Laundries in the eighteenth century as a punitive measure to correct women who were considered ‘wayward’. Justice for Magdalenes Research states “[the laundries] were carceral, punitive institutions that ran, commercial and for-profit businesses, primarily laundries and needlework”. In fact, the laundries not only held captive women charged with ‘promiscuity’ but also those who were at large deemed as burdens to their household – this even included women who were sexually abused.
Behind the seemingly frivolous enterprise of laundries and needlework, the women incarcerated here were subjected to unspeakable tortures.
