Martin McDonagh and Brian Friel are Irish playwrights. Born in London to Irish parents, McDonagh has dual citizenship. Indeed, McDonagh’s father was born in Connemara, the setting for his first play, ‘The Beauty Queen of Leenane’. Conversely, Friel was from Northern Ireland, suggesting that although McDonagh’s links to England and Ireland may have given him a more balanced viewpoint on the Irish response to oppression, Friel lived through the Troubles (1968-1998), and so had a more intimate connection with events as they unfurled.
Both writers have distinct views on how oppression can remould a society, vocalised through techniques involving the language, structure and forms of their plays, as well as through imagery created by dialogue.
One definition of ‘oppression’ is ‘prolonged cruel or unjust treatment or exercise of authority.’ In ‘Translations’, Friel characterises the British Empire as oppressive – arguably in protest to the Troubles, taking place when the play was written (1981). Moreover, many of its themes, for example violence, may be more historically accurate than his counterpart’s depictions.
In ‘The Beauty Queen of Leenane’, McDonagh leaves the oppressor open to interpretation. It could be Mag, an old woman who manipulates and imprisons her daughter, or it could be Maureen, who abuses and torments her mother. There is no outright dominator, leading to dark outcomes.
McDonagh also wrote ‘The Lieutenant of Inishmore,’ which premiered in 2001, and is deemed his most controversial play, due to excessive violence; indeed the National Theatre refused to stage it. McDonagh said, ‘This is the furthest I’m going to push this whole violence, black-comedy thing, because I don’t think I can get much blacker or more violent,’ therefore arguing that violence is a key response to oppression, although perhaps not to the extent that the play broadcasts, as he uses violence to contribute to the ‘black-comedy’, a central theme.
Another Northern Irish writer who produced works in response to the Troubles was Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney. The IRA frequently asked Catholic Heaney to write propaganda for them; he refused. However, ‘North’ is in many ways a protest against the English treatment of Irish Catholics. ‘To be a Catholic nationalist amongst Northern Ireland’s Protestant British majority was … to feel, ‘alien and second class’’.
Both Friel and McDonagh present the Irish response to oppression through the use of language. In Toni Morrison’s words, ‘Oppressive language does more than represent violence, it is violence.’ ‘Translations’ utilises this idea fully. Knowing he could not effectively reach an audience with Gaelic speakers, Friel resorts to the oppressor’s tongue; all characters, including Irish natives, speak English. Ulf Dantanus writes that the play, ‘describes the beginning of the final linguistic and cultural take-over of Ireland by the British empire and signals the virtual extinction of Gaelic civilization.’ It centres on how the English ‘translate’ or Anglicising the names of towns and locations. In Act Three, resistance is displayed as the Irish Owen still refers to places by their original nomenclature to the English captain, ‘Lancey: Where does she live? Owen: Bun na hAbhann. Lancey: Where? Owen: Burnfoot.’ What is especially poignant about this exchange is that wealthy Dublin businessman Owen is a translator for the English. His use of Irish names conveys an internal resistance to the loss of identity Anglicisation brings.
Additionally, due to the Irish characters’ Hedge-school education, nearly all of them speak Latin. That Friel chooses to make such a heavy connotation between Gaelic and Latin (or Greek) is no coincidence, the two are dying/dead languages, with no place in the imperial British world. That English characters freely use words of a Latinate origin, with no idea about the language itself, is Friel’s commentary on the loss of linguistic identity in the industrial language of English, ‘Hugh: Indeed – he voiced some surprise that we did not speak his language. I explained that a few of us did … usually for the purposes of commerce, a use to which his tongue seemed particularly suited,’ conveying the differing specialities of Gaelic and English. In Act Two, Lancey is described as the embodiment of empire, ‘The perfect colonial servant’, and when he is introduced to the audience, the following exchange occurs, ‘Nonne Latine Loquitur? [Surely you speak Latin?] Hugh holds up a restraining hand. Hugh: James. Lancey: (to Jimmy) I do not speak Gaelic, sir,’ showing an ignorance of the linguistic roots of English. England was often invaded so has words that originated in other languages, for example French, a romance language derived from Latin, or German. A tongue comprised of many languages is replacing the primal Irish one.
The Irish resistance to this form of oppression is belligerence. They converse in ‘Gaelic’ in front of English characters, such as in Act Two, when Owen scolds Manus in front of Yolland, ‘Owen: Where (now aware of Yolland) Come on, man – speak in English. Manus: For the benefit of the colonist? Owen: He’s a decent man. Manus: Aren’t they all at some level,’ This not only illustrating Manus’ unfavourable attitude to the ‘colonists’, but that he acknowledges it is the imperial system, rather than individuals, that causes conflict. Friel displays the two cultures as completely different, using romantic imagery to depict the Irish. He associates motifs such as fertility and new life with Ireland, such as Nellie Ruadh’s baby, whose unknown father implies less sophisticated prejudices than the British. In Act Three, the audience discovers her baby’s death, representing the death of romanticism as the English subdue Ireland, ‘Nellie Ruadh’s baby died in the middle of the night. I must go up to the wake. It didn’t last long, did it?’
English ideals of classicism are displayed through their rigid, organised nature, as well as diction that clashes with the Irish tone and language, for example, ‘theodolite,’ an analytical, mathematical mapping tool, the antithesis of romanticism.
Other characters accept the change the English language brings, specifically Owen. A key motif is that the English call him ‘Roland’, Anglicising his Gaelic name, again displaying the intangible barrier English creates. Manus confronts him at the end of Act One, saying, ‘Easy, man, easy. Owen – Roland – what the hell. It’s only a name. It’s the same me, isn’t it? Well, isn’t it?’ This shows Owen’s conflicting philosophy: that loss of language does not take with it his country’s identity: the names are just labels. However, the audience is then shown in Act Two that it angers him more than he shows, when he exclaims to Yolland, ‘‘(explodes) George! For God’s sake! My name is not Roland!’ Friel’s incorporation of this stage direction illustrates his pent-up rage; it is a loss of identity.
This matter is explored in ‘The Beauty Queen of Leenane’ in Scene One, when an argument sparks up over whether Gaelic is still necessary in Ireland, with Mag saying, ‘It sounds like nonsense to me. Why can’t they just speak English like everybody?’ Maureen, who resents the English after being treated poorly in London for years, responds, ‘If it wasn’t for the English stealing our language, and our land, and our God-knows-what, wouldn’t it be we wouldn’t need to go over there begging for jobs and for handouts?’ This portrays her distaste for the English machine, and dislike that England is responsible for the loss of Gaelic, and if Friel is to be believed, tradition as well. She argues Ireland depends on England, which is especially intriguing as Leenane is a separate Republic. This conveys the two different opinions of the Irish: Mag accepts this change, seeing no use for Gaelic, ‘Except where would Irish get you going for a job in England? Nowhere,’ Maureen’s philosophy is that the Irish shouldn’t have to resort to speaking the oppressor’s tongue, and Ireland shouldn’t have to adopt the language and hence identity of England. Mag’s belief is shared by Irish Nationalist, Dan O’Connell, who said, ‘the old language [Gaelic] is a barrier to modern progress.’ This is characterised by Maire in ‘Translations’: she wants to learn English to move to America; for her it’s the way forward.
McDonagh acknowledges the suppression of Gaelic by the English language; when asked about the peculiar syntax of his Irish characters, he says, ‘Gaelic was my dad’s first language and there are a lot of words in Gaelic that don’t have any English equivalent and when they speak in English, the syntax is sort of back-to-front.’ This is the same for ‘The Lieutenant of Inishmore’: ‘Donny: Aye. No guts for the job. I knew well.’ McDonagh shows Gaelic has left its mark on the Irish, and this is a response to oppression, for the English haven’t eradicated the underlying Gaelic syntax.
Heaney also uses language to provide a commentary on how English has dominated Gaelic, highlighting that it is a hybrid of other languages in ‘Bone Dreams’, ’I push back through dictions, Elizabethan canopies. Norman devices, / the erotic mayflowers of Provence and the ivied Latins of churchmen to the scop’s twang.’ Here he is saying that the true identity of English is lost long ago – the ‘scop’s twang’ and that it is mostly composed from the other cultures, ‘Norman devices.’ However, underlying English is the language of the Anglo-Saxon bard, the scop, and this is the type of verse Heaney writes his poems in, a protest against writing in English, since Gaelic was rendered obsolete.
Structure is also used by both playwrights to present the Irish response to oppression. ‘Translations’ is a three-act play and it could be implied from this that as Friel is writing in English as a protest to Gaelic suppression, he has also chosen a traditionally classicist structure, demonstrating once again a compliance with English tradition, and that this echoes his theme of the English imposition of rigid classicism on the Irish. However, ‘The Beauty Queen of Leenane’ has nine scenes and McDonagh’s structure defies strict definition, with elements of both naturalistic and episodic structures. This free-flowing arrangement is arguably rather ‘Irish’ as it recalls the experimental writing of Joyce, for example his ending to ‘Ulysses’, ‘and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.’ ‘Ulysses’ is highly innovative prose, using repetition to imitate Leopold Bloom’s thought processes. This is itself a response to oppression, as he is challenging English motifs, due to its more experimental nature , and is therefore besewing tradition. ‘Translations’ opens peacefully, with characters exchanging jovial remarks, and Manus finally getting the mute Sarah to speak, ‘Sarah: My name is Sarah. Manus: Marvellous! Bloody marvellous!’ Friel suggests that the Irish, without the presence of authority, live happily and have freedom of expression. This changes when the English arrive at the end of Act One: for characters such as Manus there is immediate uncertainty, ‘There was nothing uncertain about what Lancey said: It’s a bloody military operation, Owen!’ He implies that the Irish worked well without this classicist imposition.
However, McDonagh chooses to have conflict from the outset, with the opening portraying Mag complaining to Maureen about how she had to make her own food, providing McDonagh’s characteristic black comedy, ‘Mag: I did get me complan. Maureen: So you can get it yourself so. Mag: I can. (pause) Although lumpy it was, Maureen.’
The play is set in the late 20th century and is rife with conflict, allowing the audience to associate it with the Troubles. Maureen clearly hates the English, due to her experience in London, where she was put in ‘Difford Hall’, a ‘nut-house’ which caused a breakdown, with, ‘In England I was, this happened,’ illustrating this.
Both plays end similarly, however. ‘Translations’ ends with a sense of the unknown, as Yolland’s whereabouts are unconfirmed, and it is unclear whether the English will enact the threatened ‘punishment’, ‘Lancey: Commencing twenty-four hours from now we will shoot all livestock in Balleybeg. … If that doesn’t bear results, commencing forty-eight hours from now we will embark on a series of evictions and levelling of every abode in the following selected areas…’ Friel chooses to end with the looming threat of terror, evoking sympathy for the Irish.
McDonagh also ends ‘The Beauty Queen of Leenane’ in an ominous way, with Maureen depicted behaving like her mother, ‘The exact fecking image of your mother you are, sitting there pegging orders and forgetting me name! Goodbye!’ The play finishes with her leaving the house, seemingly for good, ‘when she quietly gets up, picks up the dusty suitcase, caresses it slightly, moves slowly to the hall door and looks back at the empty rocking chair a while. … Slight pause, then Maureen exits into the hall, closing its door behind her as she goes.’
The difference between the two is that whilst Maureen has been freed from her oppressor, Baile Beag has been left subjected to inevitable torment, including the ‘sweet smell’ of the potato blight highlighted by Bridget in Act Three, ‘Smell it! It’s the sweet smell! Jesus, it’ the potato blight!’ This isn’t historically accurate, as the play is set in 1833, and the blight didn’t occur until 1845, but Friel uses it to foreshadow the blight and Ireland’s suffering. ‘North’ is a collection of poems, and therefore isn’t under the same restrictions as a play, but Heaney tends to have a rigid ‘columna’ structure for his stanzas, representing an archaeological test pit. These are most notable in the bog poems of part one such as ‘Bog Queen’.
As history shows, oppression breeds violence. Both McDonagh and Friel display it thus. McDonagh is renowned for staging very gory plays, such as ‘The Lieutenant of Inishmore’ and ‘The Beauty Queen of Leenane.’ Imren Yelmis said, ‘Alfonso suggests that since the characters cannot feel a sense of belonging to their country Ireland, they resort to violence.’ This is the crux of the issue, a loss of identity through the behaviour of the English in ‘Translations,’ or the violence enacted upon them by Lancey leads to aggression; when they are stripped of their language, they resort to primal behaviour.
In ‘The Beauty Queen of Leenane’, physical violence only occurs twice in the play, yet is continually threatened. In Scene Two, as a form of interrogation Maureen forces Mag to drink a whole mug of ‘lumpy’ Complan which she detests, ‘The whole of that Complan you’ll drink now, and suck down the lumps too, and whatever’s left you haven’t drank, it is over your head I will be emptying it.’ This conflict is unique, as the oppressor, Mag, who is trying to keep Maureen as a spinster (not a ‘Whore!’) is dominated by physically stronger Maureen.
Heaney too postulates that Ireland and England have a violent relationship. In ‘Act of Union’ he has a personified, ‘imperially male’ England ‘raping’ Ireland, ‘leaving you [Ireland] with the pain, / the rending process in the colony,’ impregnating her with Northern Ireland, ‘His heart beneath your heart is a wardrum mustering force’. Moreover, he correlates a constable with an executioner in ‘A Constable Calls’, integrating imagery that transforms his appearance as sinister, for example comparing his bicycle to a gun, ‘the ‘spud’ of the dynamo gleaming and cocked back.’ All three portray an Ireland rebelling under ‘the boot of the law,’ resulting in bloodshed. After reading ‘North’, Conor Cruise O’Brien said, ‘I had the uncanny feeling, reading these poems, of listening to the thing itself, the actual substance of historical agony and dissolution, the tragedy of a people in a place: the Catholics of Northern Ireland.’
The key moment representing this response to oppression in ‘The Beauty Queen of Leenane,’ is in Scene Seven, when Maureen kills Mag, ‘Maureen slowly and deliberately takes her mother’s shrivelled hand, holds it down on the burning range, and starts slowly pouring some of the hot oil over it, as Mag screams in pain and terror.’ That McDonagh describes these stage directions in such detail, ‘slowly and deliberately,’ communicates the importance of this; it must be done in a particular way to illustrate it is the most violent scene in the play; the climactic response to Mag’s oppressive relationship with Maureen. Irish Times journalist Peter Crawley said the following about ‘The Beauty Queen of Leenane’, ‘In this story of tyranny and vulnerability, passive-aggressive bonds and fantasies of escape, violence is something best kept in the family.’
There are several allusions to a violent response to English oppression in ‘The Beauty Queen of Leenane’, mostly including Pato’s brother, Ray, with his stories about altercations with the law. He is particularly entranced by a poker, ‘Good and heavy and long. A half a dozen coppers you could take out with this poker and barely notice and have not a scratch on it and then clobber them again just for the fun of seeing the blood running out of them.’ This bloodthirsty imagery, contrasted with his almost playful Irish syntax, adds to the menacing atmosphere, and shows his irrationality: Ray doesn’t seem to be fighting for a cause, he just wants to see, ‘the blood running out of them.’ This can be compared with Padraic, McDonagh’s psychopathic rebel in ‘The Lieutenant of Inishmore’, who very nearly kills his father, Donny, ‘Christy! What the feck are you fellas doing out this way? Come on in ahead for yourselves. I’m just in the middle of shooting me dad.’ His matter-of-fact behaviour shows a lack of empathy, a psychopathic trait. Moreover, it is intriguing that McDonagh would choose to have familial violence in two of his plays, and it can be inferred that he believes that the Troubles have created conflict in families, dividing them. On the subject of McDonagh’s heritage, Heath A. Diel said, ‘While many critics acknowledge the tensions between McDonagh’s Irish heritage and his rootedness in London, few seem willing to nuance these tensions in order to examine their influence on how Irish identity is articulated in McDonagh’s plays.’
Seamus Heaney argued that due to Ireland’s oppression, invaded as far back as AD 795 by Vikings, violence is embedded in Irish culture. Conor McClosky writes, ‘The conflict in ‘North’ finds representation in the excavations and sacrificial myths of a range of ancient Scandinavian civilisations.’ One example of this is in ‘Punishment’ where Heaney compares a woman who was hanged and preserved in an Irish peat bog with a tarred and feathered Catholic girl – a punishment for adultery, ‘her shaved head / like a stubble of black corn, / her blindfold a soiled bandage, her noose a ring/ to store the memories of love.’ By associating contemporary events with those of the distant past, he insinuates Ireland has long been violent.
‘Translations’ also characterises this response to oppression through the use of the Donnelly twins. As aforementioned, in Act 3 Yolland’s whereabouts are left ambiguous. It is suggested by Bridget that the twins may be connected, ‘If you want to know about Yolland, ask the Donnelly twins.’ A clear reluctance to say anything that might compromise the pair is illustrated by Doalty saying, ‘Didn’t see them if they were. (begins whistling through his teeth.)’ This correlates with Heaney’s poem ‘Whatever you say, say nothing,’ which conveys the allegiance between Irish rebels and civilians.
McDonagh argues the response is primarily brutal, as demonstrated in ‘The Lieutenant of Inishmore.’ However, it is important to recognise that the play is a black-comedy, and he amplifies the violence for humour. For example, in Scene Two, this exchange occurs, ‘Whichever’s your favourite nipple I won’t be touching that fella at all, I’ll be concentrating on the other. I’ll be giving him a nice sliceen and then probably be feeding him to ya.’ Whilst the action is itself violent, McDonagh chooses to make it comical through Padraic personifying said ‘nipple’. This does not mean he hasn’t provided an apt social commentary, ‘so all this terror has been for absolutely nothing,’ is an especially poignant, sobering moment in the final scene, as through using pathos he suggests that all of the horror brought about was needless, and so he parodies the Troubles.
Another alternative both playwrights present as a response to oppression is escapism, primarily through love. ‘Translations’ has a romance between Yolland and an Irish citizen, Maire. This inevitably is laced with difficulties, the worst being the language barrier, which Friel explores in Act Two, Scene Two, where they have left a dance, leaping over a ditch, ‘Maire: O my God, that leap across the ditch nearly killed me.’ This ‘ditch’ serves as a metaphor for Maire leaping the language barrier to communicate with Yolland. Friel uses this barrier to mislead the audience at times, making them believe that they can understand each other, and this is most effective in the following excerpt, ‘Always’? What is that word – ‘always’? Yolland: Yes-yes; always. Maire: You’re trembling. Yolland: Yes, I’m trembling because of you. … Yolland: ‘Always’? What is that word – ‘always’?’ Friel intends the audience to believe that Yolland’s response was to what Maire says, but shatters this assumption by reflecting the same question that Maire asks him, ‘What is that word – ‘always’?’
Maire is one of the characters who want to leave Baile Beag to travel to America so she needs to learn English. However, the reason for her desire to learn the language changes when she meets English Yolland, as he represents a life another form of escape. The audience are shown how desperately she wants to leave Ireland at the end of the play, ‘Hugh: Yes, I will teach you English, Maire Chatach. Maire: Will you master? I must learn it. I need to learn it.’ The use of short phrasing demonstrates that for Maire it is a matter of necessity to communicate with her lover. The issue of interrelations between the Irish and the English is raised at the end, when Jimmy says, ‘Do you know the Greek word endogamein? It means to marry within the tribe. And the word exogamein means to marry outside the tribe. And you don’t cross those borders casually – both sides get very angry.’ This is, in regard to Ireland, true, not just for relationships with the English. Throughout the 19th and 20th century, Irish Catholic girls were tarred and feathered if they were seeing a Protestant (as in Heaney’s poem ‘Punishment’). This illustrates that Irish culture was, in some respects, quite insular, and Friel acknowledges this through Yolland, who desperately wants to be accepted, but knows he will not, ‘I may learn the password but the language of the tribe will always elude me, won’t it? The private core will always be – hermetic, won’t it?’ By Maire reaching out to Yolland, she’s trying to break away from her culture, and this highlights her as an outsider. In some ways, her life can be viewed as oppressive, as Manus tries to enforce his lifestyle upon her; although she wants to travel to America, her relationship with Manus initially holds her back, as there is tension about her leaving, ‘Maire: Map of America. (Pause.) The passage money came last Friday. … Manus: You don’t want to go. You said that yourself.’ We can infer that Manus doesn’t want Maire to leave Baile Beag, but is reluctant to say so.
In ‘The Beauty Queen of Leenane’ love is also used as a form of escapism (3442), through Maureen’s romance with Pato. He offers, arguably more than Yolland, an escape from an oppressive situation, as Maureen has to stay with Mag due to her mental state, ‘Mag: It’s a nut house! An oul nut-house in England I did have to sign her out of and promise to keep her in me care. Would you be wanting to see them papers now?’ Maureen confirms this, saying her treatment by the English in London caused her great pain, due to the way that they spoke to her, ‘A whole group of us, only them were all English. ‘Ya oul backward Paddy fecking… The fecking pig’s backside face on ya.’ The first time out of Connemara this was I’d been.’ She then says, ‘It all just got to me,’ implying that she had a breakdown.
Therefore, Maureen is a circumstantial prisoner, she knows this, and recognises from the outset that Pato offers an escape. This is illustrated during Scene (4) when she says, ‘Don’t I have to live with it? (Sadly.) Don’t I have to live with it? (Looking straight at him.) I suppose I do, now.’ The eye contact conveys her pleading to let her live with him. He in fact offers her this, when in Scene Five he writes her a letter, and the audience see that he has been offered a job in Boston, ‘I have been in touch with me uncle in Boston and a job he has offered me there,’ and he invites Maureen to come with him, ‘Back in Leenane two weeks I’ll be … , and the thing I want to say to you is do you want to come with me?’ This is the opportunity Maureen has been waiting for, but this is denied her by Mag, who tricks Pato’s slightly unstable brother Ray into leaving the letter with her, and she burns it, ‘Mag listens to his footsteps fading away, then gets up, picks up the envelope and opens it, goes back to the range and lifts off the lid so that the flames are visible, and stands there reading the letter. She drops the first short page into the flames as she finishes it.’
Maureen’s mental state catches up with her, and she becomes delusional. This is first alluded to when McDonagh describes her as dazed, ‘(in a happy daze.) He asked me to go to America with him?’ The fact that he describes her as such implies that she is not thinking clearly, and due to the intensity of the situation (she has just poured boiling oil over her mother’s hand), it is likely that she isn’t in touch with reality. McDonagh then confirms this when Ray reveals that Pato ran off to Boston with Dolores Hooley, the, ‘Yankee girl’ who he had his, ‘hands all over.’ This shatters Maureen’s illusion that she had met Pato at the station, and they had agreed she would come to Boston a few weeks later, which is confirmed when Ray says, ‘Be taxicab Pato left, and sad that he never got your goodbye, although why he wanted your goodbye I don’t know.’ McDonagh suggests that love is such a powerful form of escapism, it can distort one’s own reality.
Love is also a theme in ‘The Lieutenant of Inishmore’ in which Padraic and Mairead, the boyish sister of Davey, form an unlikely romance. However, McDonagh twists this into a rather perverse relationship, interwoven with the violent acts they commit. ‘Padraic double-shoots Christy in the chest. Christy slumps back on the floor, dying, but not actually dead. Padraic and Mairead move up to each other and kiss,’ conveys the almost bipolar nature of their relationship, one moment commiting an act of hatred, and the next one of love. In this circumstance, McDonagh may again be suggesting that love distracts the two from the situation at hand, once again acting as escapism.
In the first part of ‘North’ Heaney writes poems about the bodies in ‘The Bog People’ by P.B. Globb, and a common theme of these is love, and a perverse attraction towards them. In Punishment, he says, ‘I almost love you / but would have cast, I know / the stones of silence.’ This in particular demonstrates the power of escapism that love provides. Here Heaney imagines the hanged body to be a ‘little adulteress’ who was, ‘flaxen-haired, undernourished.’ This is then betrayed by reality, as he then writes, ‘your tar-black face was beautiful.’ Once again, this shows the powerful distortion that ‘love’ can have on something, a dead body preserved by peat fascinates Heaney, and consequently he sees past her appearance to how she used to look.
Physical escapism is also used as a response to oppression. In both plays, America represents a way out of oppression. In ‘Translations’ Friel uses Maire to embody this, as she wants to start a life somewhere else. America has a large population of Irish immigrants, which Maire represents. Her reasoning for emigrating is shown in Act One after she defends Daniel O’Connell, saying, ‘I don’t want Greek. I don’t want Latin. I want English. Manus reappears on the platform above. I want to be able to speak English because I’m going to America as soon as the harvest’s all saved.’ This allows the audience to see she is tired of the Irish lifestyle, and that she believes that they are stuck in the past by fixating on ‘dead’ languages. Hannah Green describes Ireland as ‘a nation that retreats into the past to regain national identity.’ In such a way, Baile Beag can be construed as oppressive: they are denying her departure by not teaching her English.
In ‘The Beauty Queen of Leenane’, Pato is offered a job in Boston, and he invites Maureen to go too. Again, America is the way out, and in Scene Eight Maureen even says it will be better than England, the characterised oppressors of Ireland, ‘Boston. It does have a nice ring to it. Better than England it’ll be, I’m sure.’ McDonagh contrasts the countries, highlighting America has a friendlier disposition towards the Irish.
McDonagh and Friel present a multiplicity of responses to oppression. From echoing the Troubles to satirising them in ‘The Lieutenant of Inishmore’, the writers show the actions of the English impacting the Irish, oftentimes negatively. However, interwoven with the characters’ extreme responses is an aspect of forfeit – for many of the Irish, there is no point in fighting, they accept the change the English provide, the most notable being Owen and Mag,‘ Mag: Except where would Irish get you going for a job in England? Nowhere.’ These themes are embedded in the language and structures of their plays, depicting similar messages, but from different time periods. Friel’s Ireland of 1833 was relatively peaceful in contrast with McDonagh’s 1990s setting, where violence is not just directed at the English, but at each other, even within families. This mistrust and conflict is powerfully represented in many of Heaney’s poems in ‘North’ – part one and two – offering an account of an Irish Catholic witnessing the bonds of a country break apart, forming the ‘parasitical and ignorant little fists’ of Northern Ireland that ‘beat at your [the spirit of Ireland] borders.’ Tormented generations preserve this cycle of violence, each remembering the horror enacted upon them by oppressors, ‘memory incubating the spilled blood.’ (North). This runs true in ‘The Lieutenant of Inishmore’ – with ‘spilled blood’ as a key theme, and what makes it so controversial. Escapism is also a universal theme for all, be it from reality, through love, or even Ireland itself, such as Heaney fleeing to Madrid, leaving Ireland as Joyce did, as described in ‘Summer 1969’, ‘While the constabulary covered the mob / firing into the Falls, I was suffering only the bullying sun of Madrid.’ As such these works are immensely saturated studies of oppression, and the inevitable Irish response to it.
Bibliography:
Gradesaver.com. (2018). The Beauty Queen of Leenane Background. [online] Available at: https://www.gradesaver.com/the-beauty-queen-of-leenane [Accessed 25 Nov. 2018].
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