*The study of gender and sexuality has proven central to our class discussions these past several weeks. The next few posts will reflect on these discussions from different student perspectives.
Every
play read, seen, or acted involves the defining of characters with masculine or
feminine outlines. Ireland’s history of a repressed Catholic culture
predisposes these boundaries and roles. Although similar to the roles in the
United States, Irish masculinity and femininity are pulled into three major
tropes: men using violence as currency for masculinity, strong women being
villainized and demeaned, and the idea of women as interchangeable sex objects.
Masculinity, as portrayed in Irish
theater, involves violence. In Howie the
Rookie, Howie Lee’s “rep is, an’ everyone knows this, he’s a goer goes all
the way,” (p. 53). Howie is known as a violent individual and this garners him
respect. When his friend, Peaches, gets scabies the end result is a beating for
the man they deem responsible. In this way, masculinity is achieved and
strengthened through violence: the more violent one is, the more masculine.
This is seen as a sort of currency, since during the time period this piece is
set in the country was extremely poor. The youth of this time had little money
to settle disputes, and therefore violence was used as a means of currency, to
repay debts, to be vindicated and so forth. There is also an interplay between sexuality
and masculinity. “People fear The Ladyboy” potentially because he is violent,
but mainly because he is “other,” (p. 37). The Ladyboy is frightening because
he is the antithesis of what they know and they have a difficult time
understanding how to categorize The Ladyboy. Because of this ambiguity, The
Ladyboy needs to be extra violent to firmly assert his manliness; “As Ladyboy
opened wide, just before he took two fingers off at the knuckles,” (p. 37). This
violent proof of masculinity is not seen in the openly homosexual character,
Ollie, who does not get to participate in the group beating. Ollie is in the
restroom when his gang decides to continue the beating of The Rookie without
waiting for Ollie. Ollie does not need to assert his masculinity through
violence because his sexual orientation is not regarded as a masculine
orientation.
Other plays involve this same trope
of violence as a depiction of masculinity. The
Playboy of the Western World marks a clear distinction between the story of
violence and the physical portrayal of violence. Christy is seen as a charming
and eligible man because of the story he tells about killing his father, but as
soon as this act is enacted in person, the townspeople call Christy immoral and
threaten to hang him. Pegeen says, “There’s a great gap between a gallous story
and a dirty deed,” (p.110). This distinction divides the story of violence as
more masculine than the deed itself. Reputation provides ideas of manliness
over overt physical violence. However, in most of the plays, physical violence
is indeed used as a means for banking masculine brownie points (as demonstrated
in Howie the Rookie). However, in
most of these plays the violence is done for the audience of men within the
narratives, rather than in The Playboy of
the Western World the violence is done for an audience of mainly women. In Disco Pigs, the character of Pig becomes
increasingly more violent throughout the play, attempting to impress his love
interest, Runt. This use of violence is to protect “property” – Runt – from
other individuals who are perceived, by Pig, as trying to deceive him. Pig
needs to display his masculinity through his violence as well as lay claim to
his perceived property through the killing of a man showing attention to Runt. This
warped violence enforces Pig’s belief of his entitlement to Runt, disregarding
her agency.
Women characters in Irish plays are
hardly given any agency, and if they are they are undermined and demeaned. The
femininity of these characters is reduced to villainy, because they possess
traits typically associated with men (strength, tenacity, autonomy). They are
condemned for acting like men. Pegeen, a strong woman character in The Playboy of the Western World, is stripped
of agency by her father. He chooses a “shy and decent Christian…for my
daughter’s hand,” (p. 104). Pegeen, although very wild, is unable to make her
own choices about who to wed, and when she proclaims she will marry otherwise
her father says, “Aren’t you a heathen daughter to go shaking the fat of my
heart,” villainizing her for her autonomy (p.105). Widow Quinn, another strong
female character in The Playboy of the
Western World, is also villainized; she is accused of killing her husband
(as she plainly admits to) and is therefore highly regarded as an awful
individual. The extreme distinction between masculinity and femininity plays
out in the reaction to the beliefs that Widow Quinn killed her husband and that
Christy killed his father. Both are tales, yet the Widow Quinn is looked to as
an evil and immoral person that no one wants to speak with, whereas Christy is
celebrated and found attractive and desirable. Avalanche, a forceful and
determined female character in Howie the
Rookie, is described as a “dirty fat cunt,” (p. 31). Howie Lee “had her
three times and dug it to fuck,” (p. 13). The language describing Avalanche is
cruel and villainous, portraying her as this grotesque figure, only suitable
for sex.
The trope of women as disposable sex
objects is seen in most of these Irish plays as well. In Howie the Rookie, the Rookie sleeps with a new girl almost every
night, “Handsome bastard, I am. Bit attractive to the dollys, they’re into me.
Find them easy to pick up, easy to get. Break Hearts an’ hymens, I do,” (p.
34). There is no regard for these women and they do not matter to the Rookie –
these women are interchangeable objects of sexual gratification, used and
discarded. In The Playboy of the Western
World there are three girls from the town that come to call on Christy.
Each of them makes explicit sexual innuendos. In the stage directions there is
a thick description for each character, except
these three girls. Even in the writing, the women are meant to be
interchangeable objects of desire, without substance. In Cathleen ni Houlihan the mother and the intended daughter-in-law
are typical homemakers, preoccupied with facets of the upcoming wedding. These
women are not substantial characters and their femininity is portrayed through
stereotypical domestic duties. They are wife and mother, they are quite, they
are busying themselves with household chores and preoccupied with wedding worries.
Many of these tropes about
femininity and masculinity are seen in the United States. Women are overly
sexualized and men are overly violent to clearly establish the delineation between
the sexes. Most American TV series show women in scantily clad clothing,
fawning over muscular men who tend to punch people. The themes are similar, the
history behind them are different. Irish tropes of masculinity and femininity
come from their Catholic roots and from the need to substitute violence as
currency rather than money. These cultural differences provide the undercurrent
for the violent masculinity trope as well as strong women as villains or women
as interchangeable sex objects. The importance lies in understanding the
history of the Irish culture to be able to make informed analyses about the
texts, rather than taking these stereotypes at face value.
The author enjoying some Irish stew in Cork.
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