Nr. 3 (32) anul IX / iulie-septembrie 2011 - ROMDIDAC

Ex Ponto nr. 3, 2011
Rose believes he is in love with her. She is close to Agnes. We learn through
Michael that Rose dies in a mental institution for the destitute in Southwark in
the 1950s. Agnes and Rose also help Maggie (38 years old) to keep the house.
Maggie is always telling jokes, defusing the tension; she challenges Kate’s
authority but also acts as her confidant. She may have had dreams of her
own, revealed when she hears of her friend’s children. Maggie and Christina
(26 years old) have no income at all. Christina is Michael’s mother; he state of
mind fluctuates between depression when Gerry leaves and optimism when
he comes back as she hopes each time that it will be permanent.
Jack (53 years old), the women’s brother, has recently returned from Africa
where he was a missionary priest, in Uganda in village called Ryanga. He is
a former Catholic chaplain to the British Army in East Africa during WWI. He
worked in a leper colony there and he is respected in Donegal for his missionary
work. He is suffering from malaria and has trouble remembering things. He
confuses his sisters’ names and mistakes them for his house boy Okawa. He
seems to have forgotten Catholicism and turned pagan, admiring the pagan
beliefs of the African natives. He worries Kate, who is concerned with the
reputation of the family. Jack also admires Christina for having a child. Jack
recovers from his malaria and confusion eventually, but dies later of a heart
attack. Father Jack’s story is illustrative of the motif of tragic homecoming,
which is to be encountered in other plays by Friel.
The other man in the Mundy sisters’ lives is Gerry (33 years old), a nice
but unreliable Welsh, who is a travelling salesman. He visits the sisters from
time to time. There is a possibility that Gerry is serious this time about his
marriage proposal to Christina, but he postpones it until after his return from
Spain, where he wants to fight in the Spanish Civil War, ironically against
Franco, who was supported by Catholics. Gerry is portrayed as a good dancer,
but in a negative light as he left Christina and had an illegitimate child. His job
as a travelling salesman gives him the freedom that the Mundy sisters lack.
Through Michael, we find out that he has been left with a limp after falling
off a motorbike in Barcelona. Also, he has another family in Wales and his
proposals of marriage to Christina are false. After Gerry’s death, in the 1950s,
Michael is contacted by a half brother in South Wales, who reveals that Gerry
had a wife and several sons at the time of the action.
The financial insecurity of the sisters is a constant theme. They never got
married though they seem to have had suitors they remember; yet, no reliable
men seem to surround them. The situation gets worse with the opening of
the knitwear factory, which has killed the hand knitted glove industry and
which has been Agnes and Rose’s job. Moreover, the village priest tells Kate
that there are not enough pupils for her to continue teaching in autumn. Kate
suspects it is because of her brother’s behavior, as he will never be able to
hold Mass again.
The background of the play is the Republic’s 1937 Constitution, which
included, besides the principles of conservative Catholicism, a sort of romantic
vision of Irish woman, “wife and mother”: her life (not her work) within the
home “gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be
achieved”. According to Lojek, this portrayal embodies “the ideal of the ‘sainted’
Irish mother to become a hallmark of national patriarchal assumptions” (78).
There is a feeling throughout the play that these women’s lives are going to
be torn apart that summer. Because of a feeling of failure, Friel’s characters
may seek refuge in words or work, like Agnes or Kate, silence, like Rose or
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