At the moment of the greatest tragedy in her life Juno reveals her strength and affirms her faith in God, correctly placing the blame for the tragic events where it lies. After her son’s killing, she leaves with Mary to form a new home in the city. When the pregnant Mary bemoans the fact that her baby will have no father, Juno replies “It’ll have what’s far betther – it’ll have two mothers”. Juno’s departure from the home that she alone has kept together leaves Boyle to the chaos of his own creation. The furniture bought on credit on the expectation of money from the will has been repossessed, and Boyle’s return to the empty tenement room with Joxer, both of them in a deeply drunken state, provides the play with its great tragic-comic climax. Joxer has become almost a surrogate wife and as the two drunks survey the emptiness of the room, Boyle’s slurred speech delivers the climatic closing lines: “I’m telling you…Joxer…th’ whole worl’s…in a terr…ible state o’ chassis! ” Finally abandoned by his wife, his son murdered, his unmarried daughter pregnant, all that remains in Boyle’s world is his supreme self-pity.
In The Plough and the Stars there is no single heroine dominating the action and holding a family together as in Juno; but the women in the Plough are as significant as their menfolk, and in some cases more so. Nora Clitheroe, the pretty young wife of Commandant Jack Clitheroe of the Citizen Army (one of the groups secretly preparing for a rebellion against the British), is discontent with the limitations imposed by tenement life and is stated to have “…notions of upperosity…”. Mrs. Gogan is a mouse-like busybody and is obsessed by the notion of death and its paraphernalia; Mollser is a terminally ill consumptive child; Bessie Burgess is a magnificent, fearless, powerhouse of a woman; and the prostitute Rosie Redmond displays, not a ‘heart of gold’, but a great deal of common sense.
O’Casey describes Nora Clitheroe as being swift, alert, full of nervous energy, and a little too anxious to get on in the world. However, Nora’s anxiety for advancem
ent is seen to clash with her husband’s desire for patriotic glory. Nora sees this as a product of Jack’s vanity, not patriotism; Jack’s fading enthusiasm for the Citizen Army is re-kindled by the discovery that he has been appointed to the rank of Commandant. The notice of Jack’s appointment had been delivered to Nora who had concealed it from him, and this creates the first major rift in their marriage. To Nora, the rebels are motivated either by vanity or by fear of being considered cowards.
Like Juno, Nora sees life in pragmatic terms and asserts that: “An’ there’s no woman gives a son or a husband to be killed – if they say it they’re lyin’, lyin’, against God, Nature and against themselves!…”. But Nora lacks Juno’s strength in adversity; the trauma of her husband’s danger, and her rejection by him, drives her into insanity.
Mrs. Grogan is mainly a comic figure; her lingering, lyrical description of the panoply of death is a recurrent theme. Comical though it is, it may represent no more than an innate understanding that it is only in death that she or any other members of her class will receive any attention from either church or state. Mrs. Grogan’s daughter Mollser is shown as dying of consumption. Mollser has no illusions about the world and regrets only that her illness will prevent her from becoming like Nora and “keeping a home for a man”. At the end of Act One, O’Casey gives Mollser one of the great lines of the play, when, in a comment on the turbulence and arguments of that Act, she asks Nora, “Is there anyone goin’ Mrs. Clitheroe with a titther of sense?”. Mollser’s rhetorical question is a perfect introduction to Act Two, where the main antagonists will display a great lack of sense.
The prostitute Rosie Redmond is no heroine or home maker; she is a matter of fact girl, aware that a better class of dress will get her a better class of client who will be able to pay a higher price for her services. Rosie is not troubled by principles or ideals; she is willing to agree with any potential client. In the pub scene, her earthiness is contrasted with the high-blown idealism of the ‘figure-in-the-window’ addressing the political rally outside, and with the officers who enter the pub to toast their prospect in the forthcoming Rising and drink to “wounds, imprisonment, and death”. When the spouting socialist theoretician, the Covey, denies Rosie the right to enter the discussion in the pub because she is a prostitute, her anger is focused less on that insult (she acknowledges that she is a prostitute) but rather on the idea that this is used to exclude her from participation in conversation and the right to express her views. As said above, Rosie is no ‘whore with a heart of gold’; she has no hesitation in hooking her ‘defender’, Fluther, even though she must know that in his inebriated state, he is unlikely to make any great demand on her services.
In both plays there is a female character that has something in common with O’Casey’s mother. In Juno it is Mrs. Tancred, and in the Plough it is Bessie Burgess. They are both Protestant, Dublin working-class women; but there the resemblance ends. Mrs. Tancred is shown as a mild-mannered woman provoked to outrage only by the killing of her son.
Bessie Burgess is shown as a violent character both verbally and physically; she abuses Mrs. Grogan, sweeps Uncle Peter from her presence, and collars Fluther to “trim his tricks of drunken dancin’!”, Bessie is also violently anti-republican and is a champion of unionist orthodoxy, i.e. Ireland’s connection with Britain. Her son is serving with the British Army in France. But despite her argumentativeness, and her rejection of her neighbour’s politics, Bessie never rejects her neighbours. She shows compassion to Mollser, and she braves the gunfire in the city to bring a doctor to Nora. Bessie’s hymn-singing, associated in Act One with drunkenness, is at the moment of her death associated with the affirmation of her faith in Christ. Bessie never rejects or questions God; after a brief flash of anger at Nora as the author of her misfortune, she quickly resigns herself to death and dies asserting her belief in the Redemption. Bessie is shot by the British soldiers as she tries to drag the crazed Nora away from the window; the soldiers are being sniped at and are shooting in response to any movement they see. (During the 1916 Rising, in the week’s fighting in Dublin, civilian casualties greatly outnumbered those of either Republican insurgents or British soldiers.) Bessie takes the bullet meant for Nora and her death provides the closing moments of the play with a supreme irony. When the soldiers enter the tenement room and discover their mistake they are not greatly disturbed.
Sergeant Tinley: (going over to the body) “’Ere, what’s this? Who’s this? (Looking at Bessie) Oh Gawd, we’ve plugged one of the women of the ‘ouse .”
Corporal Stoddart: “Whoy the ‘ell did she gow to the window? Is she dead?”
Sergeant Tinley: “Oh, dead as bedamned. Well, we couldn’t afford to toike any chawnces”.
They take a teapot from the fireplace and sit down to drink tea. They sing the popular WWI ballad Keep the Home Fires Burning unaware that Bessie, the woman they have mistakenly killed, is the mother of a British soldier fighting in France for whom there will be no “Home Fire” burning on his return.
O’Casey’s women are realists, and none more so than Juno and Bessie. When, in the scene before Bessie is shot, Captain Brennan of the Citizen Army is seeking Nora to tell her of her husband’s death in action, he meets Bessie in the tenement and tells her what the Citizen Army leader, General Connolly, has said of Jack Clitheroe’s death (Jack, knowing he was dying of his wounds, had asked Brennan to tell Nora to be brave and Brennan had repeated this to General Connolly).
Captain Brennan: “An’ when our General heard it he said that ‘Commandant Clitheroe’s death was a gleam of glory.’ Mrs. Clitheroe’s grief will be a joy when she realises that she had a hero for a husband”.
Bessie has been nursing the crazed Nora and her reply carries more conviction.
Bessie “If you only seen her, you’d know to th’ differ”.
Aged before their time and hardened by work and child-bearing, it is the women in these plays who bear society’s greatest burdens; burdens that cannot be cast off by escape into a romanticized past, or the imagined glories of an idealised future.