Rosemary Lawlor Character Analysis

Rosemary Lawlor is a Catholic woman from Northern Ireland. As a young woman, Lawlor is forced to flee her home with her husband and newborn baby because it’s no longer safe for them to stay in their Protestant neighborhood. This takes place at the beginning of the Troubles, a 30-year conflict between Northern Ireland’s Protestant and Catholic communities (and the British military). Lawlor and her family flee to a Catholic neighborhood, where they stay with family until another Catholic woman named Harriet Carson urges people to come help the people of Lower Falls, a nearby Catholic community where a violent riot has erupted between the townspeople and the British military. Because the residents of Lower Falls have been forced into their homes and aren’t allowed to come out, they’re running out of food, so Lawlor, Carson, and a number of other women fill their baby strollers with bread and make their way to the neighborhood, where the British forces don’t know how to respond to the vast number of young women. After trying to fight them back, the soldiers eventually give up and leave Lower Falls. This, needless to say, is yet another manifestation of the David and Goliath story in which an unlikely minority upsets a more powerful opponent.