Long Island

The new appliances that Eilis buys her mother are symbols representing the modernization that comes with Eilis’s status as an American. In Long Island’s predecessor, Brooklyn, Eilis is a young Irish immigrant unsure of herself and her life in America. However, in this sequel, decades have elapsed, and her time in America has given her a new confidence. Knowing how hard her mother works, Eilis buys her new appliances in a well-intentioned effort to ease her workload: “Her mother had the sheets and towels done at the laundry but washed her own clothes by hand, using a washboard that could, Eilis thought, more usefully be put into a museum or maybe just thrown out” (73). Eilis’s purchase of these new appliances shows how much she has changed. Even though she is from Enniscorthy, she is more of an outsider now than she is a local. To her, the washboard is an artifact of the past, but to her mother it remains a vital tool of daily life. Meanwhile, the refrigerator she gives her mother only deprives Mrs. Lacey of a reason to go into town and socialize every day. In America, Eilis has developed an uncritical faith that modern technology will improve life for everyone, and this faith prevents her from seeing her mother’s life clearly.