A Focused Look at "Juno and the Paycock"

The below was an essay I submitted to my professor of Modern English Literature during April. I have my own doubts about the quality of the essay, but here are my thoughts nonetheless. This was not a review of the play or the script, but a focused look at the theme of feminism and male/female relationships in O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock. Someday, I may write a longer, more detailed paper on the same topic. I may also develop a broader review of the play as a whole later. If I do either, they will show up here, on this blog. For this essay I used the book edition Three Dublin Plays: The Shadow of a Gunman, Juno and the Paycock, the Plough and the Stars. London: Faber and Faber, 1998. Print.

The Fall of Men

Juno and Mary's Feminine Independence in "Juno and the Paycock"

Many have hailed Juno and the Paycock by Sean O'Casey as a pro-feminist play. However, the term feminist has become vague and general to include many different world views and varying philosophies. It would be more correct to say O’Casey expresses the necessity of feminine independence. Feminine independence refers to a woman's financial, emotional, and other needs being fulfilled by herself and other women, with her being completely independent from masculine help. Mary and Juno are forced to their own feminine independence by the defunct masculinity of Mr. Boyle, Bentham, and Jerry, who fail to fill the traditional, necessary, masculine roles of husband and father. This failure leaves Juno and Mary in a vacuum of responsibility where they must perform the roles of men, as the men had abandoned them.

Jack Boyle is the first to fail in his role. As Juno's husband and father of their household, Mr. Boyle would traditionally provide financial support. However, he refuses to work, instead playing truant and drinking the money Mrs. Boyle earns. "He wore out the Health Insurance long ago, he's afther wearin' out the unemployment dole, an', now, he's thyrin' to wear out [Juno] (Act 1, pg. 69)". He complains of debilitating pains in his legs at the merest threat of a job. These pains mysteriously disappear when he has the opportunity to walk to a pub. Juno works full time, shouldering the responsibilities of providing for her family, paying the rent, and providing money for Mr. Boyle's drinking (Act 1, pg. 69, 77). This does not free her from other duties. She continues to cook for her family, care for her crippled, paranoid son, mind after Mr. Boyle, and keep the house in order. She has filled the void of responsibility Mr. Boyle left, without vacating her own traditional place as well. Because she has already been supporting herself, Juno is perfectly capable of material independence from Mr. Boyle.

Mr. Boyle fails as a father to Mary, not only in refusing to provide for her by working respectably, but also in threatening to disown her for her pregnancy. He reacts as if Mary's actions affected only him and were meant as an attack against his sanity. "Goin' to have a baby... Oh, isn't this a nice thing to come on top o' me... Amn't I afther goin' through enough without havin' to go though this!...Ay, she'll leave this place, an quick too! (Act 3, pg. 133-135)." As a Catholic, she did sin by having an extra-marital sexual relationship, and that is very good reason for any one who loved Mary to be angry. However, Mr. Boyle was still capable of providing a home for her, or attempting to arrange a marriage. In rejecting his fatherhood for Mary, he shirks his role of husband to Juno yet again. He is refusing to shoulder this burden with Juno as her husband, again leaving her to take on full responsibility.

Charles Bentham, a school teacher who had first told the Boyle family of the possibility of a grand inheritance, refused to take the masculine roles of husband and father as well. After courting Mary during their days of prosperity, "he was always bringin' [Mary] to dances (Act 3, pg. 122)", He abandoned Mary without a word, leaving her pregnant and shamed, disregarding the husbandly responsibility he led her to believe he would take. When the Boyles discover their supposed inheritance would never come, it became clear that Bentham had left Mary for lack of money. He had never intended to love her, only marry into wealth. Perhaps he did not know Mary was pregnant with his child. Whether or not he was ignorant, Bentham left his unborn child fatherless, forcing Mary to fill the role.

Jerry Devine was perhaps the best man of the play. He was a hard worker, capable and willing to begin a family with Mary. Yet he refused to be father to another man's child. He responds to the truth in a panic. "God knows, I'm sorry for you, Mary...I shouldn't have troubled you....I wouldn't if I'd known (Act 3, pg. 140)." The request was a hard one to ask of any man in his culture: to take another man's child and pretend he or she is his own. It is a difficult thing for him to take a wife, knowing how intimate she had been with her most recent ex. Mary's pregnancy was a complete surprise he was not prepared to shoulder. Yet, however understandable Jerry's final refusal to wed Mary was, it was his failure to accept the roles of husband and father that left Mary stranded.

Nearing the end of the final act, Juno is ready to cut herself emotionally from her husband, and Mary goes to follow. Her last conversation with Mr. Boyle is superficially about Mary, but in it Juno realizes Boyle will never provide as she needs him to. When she tells Jack that she intends to leave if Mary is disowned, he encourages her to. "Well, go with her," he says, "...I can live when yous are gone (Act 3, pg. 135)" Juno decides to let him "furrage for himself now," as she tells Mary, she has "done all [she] could an' it was all no use (Act 3, pg 145)." Juno and Jack are at an impasse, with Juno being the only one willing to dedicate herself to their relationship, and neither can or will give the other any more support. Until Jack is willing to change, Juno must forage for herself as well.

In the end, Mary and Juno leave their home together (Act 3, 146). They will support themselves and Mary's child with no help from any man, fulfilling the responsibilities the men forsook. Had Mr. Boyle worked to support his family, had he not rejected Mary in her hour of need, neither Juno or Mary would need to leave him. Rather, all three could have worked to support each other as a family. Bentham and Jerry both missed opportunities to fill masculine roles when they refused to wed Marry. When they forsook the role as father, Mary was left to fill that space with herself and her mother. The men had failed and only the women were left to stand at their posts. As Juno says of Mary's child, "it'll have what's far betther [than any father]- it'll have two mothers," for the women have not forsaken each other (Act 3, pg. 146). O'Casey shows here the brokenness, the loss of the masculine, which births feminism, as Juno and Mary begin their attempt to continue living. Jack Boyle sums this brokenness up unwittingly well with his last line of the play. He says "th' whole worl's in a terrible state o' chassis [chaos] (Act 3, pg. 148)." Men lose themselves and order falls, while the women stand with the dust crumbling in their hands. Juno and Mary make a strike to remove themselves from the chaos and rebuild their lives with independence. O'Casey does not say within the play that theirs is the best path for all women, or that they will live happily, or prosper. He only shows Juno and Mary needed their feminine independence.