Delia Fortune

Delia Fortune is Angela McCourt’s cousin, a married MacNamara sister, and a decisive force in the family’s early history. She helps confront Malachy over Angela’s pregnancy, insists that he marry her, and later joins the effort that sends Angela and her children away from Brooklyn. Delia’s authority is both social and practical: she invokes Catholic propriety to judge the couple, then helps turn that judgment into action.

Identity and Family Authority

Delia is married to Jimmy Fortune, and her sister Philomena Flynn is married to Tommy Flynn. The sisters are portrayed as physically imposing and commanding figures whose passage along Brooklyn sidewalks makes lesser creatures step aside. They believe the Roman Catholic Church supplies clear answers about right and wrong, and they regard Angela’s unmarried pregnancy as a violation that demands intervention.

That combination of religious certainty and family power shapes Delia’s conduct. She does not approach Angela’s situation as a private matter between the couple. With Philomena and their husbands beside them, she goes to the Atlantic Avenue speakeasy where Malachy can be found on payday. Their intervention brings the family’s judgment directly into the place associated with his drinking and employment, making the confrontation a public demand rather than a quiet conversation.

Confronting Malachy and Requiring Marriage

At the speakeasy, Malachy turns pale, offers the sisters a drink, and receives no softening in return. Delia challenges his background, saying they do not know what class of tribe he comes from in the North of Ireland. Philomena suggests that a Presbyterian strain in his family might explain what he has done to Angela. The sisters’ suspicion is not evidence about Malachy’s religion; it is the language through which they express regional prejudice and condemn his conduct.

When Malachy jokes about his teeth, Philomena calls his smile Presbyterian. Delia and her companions do not allow his odd manner or deflection to change the subject. Tommy states that Malachy is going to marry Angela, and Delia makes the ultimatum unmistakable: he is to go up the middle aisle. Malachy says he had not planned to marry and has no work with which to support a family. Delia’s answer is that marriage is what he will do. The exchange converts the sisters’ moral disapproval into a concrete outcome: Malachy is pressed into marriage despite his stated reluctance and financial insecurity.

Judgment After the Baptism

The sisters’ intervention does not become lasting confidence in Malachy. After the baby’s baptism, Philomena offers tea, ham, and cakes at her home, but Malachy leaves for the speakeasy, claiming he must deal with the godfather. Angela accuses him of seeking an excuse to drink and cries over his drinking on their son’s christening day. Delia calls him a disgusting specimen and again connects his behavior to his Northern Irish background, saying that little can be expected from there.

At Philomena’s house, Delia and the others eat and drink while Angela sits in a corner nursing the baby and crying. Philomena reproaches Angela for falling for a drunkard; Delia joins in, telling her to stop crying and blaming her for getting into trouble with a man who, in their view, does not even look Catholic. Their criticism is harshly directed at Angela as well as Malachy. Delia’s moral certainty therefore has a double edge: she condemns the husband’s drinking, but also treats Angela as responsible for the predicament and participates in shaming her when she is newly a mother.

Help, Departure, and Narrative Significance

Years later, Delia’s role shifts from enforcing a marriage to helping Angela’s family leave Brooklyn. With money sent by Grandma Sheehan, Delia and Philomena buy tickets, find a steamer trunk at the St. Vincent de Paul Society, and hire a van to take the family to the Manhattan pier. They put Angela and the children aboard the ship, say goodbye, and leave. The practical details mark a substantial act of assistance: Delia helps convert the family’s departure from an intention into a journey, even though the passage is painful and Angela becomes ill as the ship pulls away.

Delia’s appearances frame a sharp change in the family’s circumstances. At first she helps impose a respectable marital solution on Angela’s pregnancy; later she helps arrange the family’s transatlantic separation from Brooklyn. The evidence does not explain her private motives or establish how she felt about either intervention. What it does show is the reach of her family authority: she can confront Malachy publicly, participate in humiliating Angela, and then take part in the logistical work of sending Angela and her children on their way. Through Delia, kinship is both judgment and material aid—neither sentimental nor detached from the pressures of poverty, religion, and migration.