Dancing At Lughnasa Quotes

Maggie
1. p7- 'There, I hope it chokes you' Maggie says this to Michael about a sweet she has given him just after he played a prank on her. Maggie and Michael's relationship is full of banter and teasing. In this way, it is more like a sibling relationship than an aunt or mother. At the same time, she gives him sweets. You can tell she cares about him. Maggie is often depicted with a bucket, about to feed the hens.
2. p14- 'Trouble is- just one quick glimpse- that's all you ever get. And if you miss that'...' Here, Maggie alludes to her own missed opportunities for youthful enjoyment and escape with someone, a chance for an independent life, started off by a relationship or something similar. Maggie implies that only for a very short window of time are women free to escape, and she has missed that time.
3. 'Oh God- I've forgotten' These are the last words from within the memory, and the final moment of deterioration as Maggie, the sturdiest of the family, also breaks down.
Kate
1. p9- 'You know how to use it? Indeed you do.' Perhaps Kate is out of touch with michael's ability. She gets hima spinning top, and asking him if he can do it, when Michael is making two kites by himself already.
2. p10- 'That road from town gets longer every day'. Kate is pulling everything out of bag. She is the clear provider and in control, although her world is getting more difficult as she tries to get everything together.
3. p15- 'sugar for the bilberry jam... if we ever get the bilberries'... (AGNES AND ROSE EXCHANGE LOOKS)- Kate is behaving like she's the others' teacher, and they are little children who she's nagging. This is a good example of her role within the Mundy sisters' household- the self-appointed leader.
4. Rose tells her that everyone at school calls her 'the gander' behind her back. This is an interesting point because a 'gander' is a male goose, and the goose is very protective. Kate takes on the male role of the family, although father Jack is there, he is hardly the head of the family.
5. p35- Kate's speech about the whole thing falling apart is foreshadowing. When Kate loses control, she melts down. Kate only confides with Maggie, the next eldest. We realise that Kate is the eldest, and has the responsibility, and a lot of pressure is on her to be respectable, responsible, and a religious role model. She's not uptight when she's trying to keep things together.
6. p49- 'This must be kept in the family, Maggie! Not a word of this must go outside these walls- d'you hear? -not a syllable!' This shows Kate's obsession with respectability and prpriety, and paranoia of other people talking.
Michael
1. Invisible Boy-Michael
  1. p44- 'To Santy Claus'- The Vulnerability of Michael- he is just a boy who believes in these things. 'He promised me' a bike- this is going to lead to further bitterness caused by Gerry when the bike never materialises.
2. Narrator Michael
  1. p9- 'by having me- as it was called then- out of wedlock' This implies that attitudes have altered in Ireland (although still quite a strict, Catholic country)- the audience is a lot more liberal than in the 1930s.
  2. We would say that he delivers a 'monologue' because technically, he's not alone on the stage.
  3. p8- 'Aunt kate had once been involved locally in the war of independence'- yet Father jack was in the photo, dressed as chaplain to the British forces... so this shows conflict. Therefore, Kate doesn't want people to know, hence the way she 'snatched' the photo away before Michael got a good look
Chris
1. p11- Kate says Chris is pale because she 'takes no exercise, but it is more likely that Chris is pale because she is depressed. This is why she wants to wear make-up, because she just wants to have a bit of fun.
  1. Chris thinks her hair is 'like a whin-bush'.
2. p23- 'Just leave him alone will you, for once, please?' Chris is exasperated, as all the sisters are trying to mother Michael. Crhis feels that they are making a criticism of her.
3. p36- Chris is nice to Michael after Gerry goes- but she'll be nasty and harsh again when she realises that Gerry won't come back wthe next week.
4. p61- 'At least that's good news'- Irony here, as Chris' life contains very little good news.
Agnes
1. p11- Agnes has a book called 'The Marriage of Nurse Harding'- the inevitably sloppy and romantic plot indicates the unshown longings of Agnes, and probably all the sisters.
2. p13- Agnes' speech about wanting to go dancing- she doesn't care if the people are 'Drunk, dirty and sweaty', everything that Kate loathes- 'I want to dance, Kate', and there's nothing wrong with it, but it's not the dancing (if it ere, they'd all dance at home) It is the social situation, talking to peop;le, to males, it's a physical liberation.
3. p12- Agnes says to Chris about dressing up for the dance- 'You'll look great in that dress you got for confirmation last year'. the only time that these women are allowed to dress up is for church.
4. p53- 'Who wants do dance at this time of-' Mirroring prohibition of dancing. Kate doesn't think they should dance 'at our time of day' to the harvest dance either. As the sentence remains unfinished, the audience can imagine what word could fill the gap, most likely, 'this time of life'.
Rose
1. We imagine that what Rose says is true because of her lack of inhibitions.
2. p10- uninhibited- 'I think he's beautiful, Chris, I wish he was mine'. Rose has no awareness of the social guidelines for an out of wedlock child. This shows she'd be happy to have a child out of wedlock. The disarming honesty here sounds seet. Maybe we feel her vulverability. Her developing relationship with Danny Bradley, who already has children gets us thinking and asking questions.
3. p10- 'But what you don't know is that he's going out with a wee young thing from Carrickfad'- she is, in a way, more worldly. She, in this instance, completely undermines Kate's Authority, by showing that she knows more about what's happening outside than the others.
  1. p10- Austin Morgan is going out with a 'wee young thing'- and Kate is too old, at 40, she as a female doesn't have the option of choosing younger partners as Austin Morgan, a man more similar to her age, does. Highlights inequality and olack of csocial mobility for women in 1936 rural Catholic Ireland.
4. Rose's dance is 'bizarre and abandoned', like the dancing in Ryanga may be. Kate sees Rose as humiliating the family by being 'disabled'. In Ryanga, nearly everyone is disabled from leprosy, and arehaving a much better time than in Ireland.
5. 'Do you remember that?' asks Agnes to Rose after she comes back from going AWOL with Danny Bradley, page 50 someting. Here, Rose is being treated like a baby, even though she's a 32 year old woman, and has come to no harm.
Father Jack
1. p16- Kate says- 'I met the parish priest. I don't know what has happened to the man. But ever since Father Jack came home he can hardly look me in the eye'. Father jack had been sent back in disgrace after being converted form Catholicism, and now brings disgrace back home, so the parish priest won't look at Kate, who's associated with Father Jack and his un-Godliness.
2. p47- 'The Ryangans have always been faithful to their own beliefs' Christian religion is imported and forced upon the traditionally Celtic religions of Ireland, so Jack suggests that the Catholicism which he had been employed to spread was less natural than the Ryangan paganism.
3. p14- Kate says of the home, 'This is Father Jack's house'- not 'our brother' either. This makes it clear that he is a PRIEST, to be respected, and shows the importance of the priesthoodl.
4. p46- Kate says about Father Jack saying mass- 'A lot of them have been asking me already' when FJ will say mass again. This highlights how a lot of importance is put on the priest and say8ing mass.
Gerry
1. p26- 'Wonderful luck'- Gerry is a carefree drifter. Gerry trusts in luck, and makes it sound like he wouldn't have planned to meet Chris. The sisters are so trapped by their circumstances, (Michael created by Gerry= make them stay away from the dance) and Gerry is so free and impulsive which is the complete opposite. This leads to anger form the audience on the behalf of the repressed women.
2. p30- 'Go ahead. Laugh'. Here, Gerry is playing almost to the audience, and we get the feeling that he sees himself as the star entertainer in a play rather than messing around with the lives of some impoverished women in Ireland.
3. p31- 'Give Evans a big cause and he won't let you down'. This is really ironic. Gery ghas a son, and he's let down Chris on that- so is Michael not considered a good enough cause?
4. p32- 'Of all of your sisters, Agnes was the one that seemed to object least to me'- Gery knows she likes him, and he is obviously playing the sisters. Gramaphones and Gerry = the industrial revolution, and this is ruining the Mundy sisters' way of life.
5. p50- 'Would I tell you a lie?' This is ironic, because he tells lies literally all the time. At the time of saying this, he has another family in Wales!
Stage Directions/Descriptions
1. p21- In the mad dance scene, Maggie dances 'like a dervish'. This is weird, instinctual, and we realise what is bottled up within Maggie. Maggie's flour mask, which is crude and instinctual prepares an audience for the celebration of the first fruits in Ryanga description or the harvest festival, of Ireland, Lughnasa.
2. p21- Maggie 'holds her hands, covered with flour, out from her body', becoming aware of how rough and coarse she is compared with Bernie O'Donnell's description of perfection. We feel sorry, a sense of sympathy for Maggie as she says all this. Maggie admires and adores Bernie O'Donnel and looks up to her. Bernie is everything Maggie wants to be. Maggie has been left behind.
3. 23-24-25- all the Mundy sisters are rushing around before Gerry gets there. Chris stands still, and it draws attention to her, the only still one. We wonder what is going through her mind, and why he is here. We know that last time we know that Chris was hurt and depressed. This man has a profound effect on her, she's not over him and that maybe explains her attitude towards michael. all the sisters tart flapping and preparing for the arrival of the man. This shows how entrenched certain values were about men and womebn. The traditional Catholic roles were that women were there to serve the men. Even Kate is behaving in this way. The choreography of the stage at this point is chaotic yet synchronised, dance-like, and full of disorder. Something about the arrival of Gerry creates tension.
4. p22- Why does Friel make the radio set broken? It coulde be symbollic of the way their family is broken and dysfunctional. The broken radio also serves as a deliberate theatrical device to make drramatic scenes pay off.
5. There's a difference between 'mood' and 'atmosphere'. Mood is on stage. Atmosphere is in the audience.
6. page 50 something- the stain: The red stain on Rose's fingers from the berries after she goes AWOL with Danny Bradley is symbollic. It is symbollic of the red of the poppy, the stain of the berry juice, and even a sexual experience.
7. p67- 'Stained with blood' is Rose's dead rooster. The rooster would be pure white and stained red. This is a massively dramatic image, which could come across as sacrificial, reminiscent of slaughter, and the shock interrupts the natural rhythm of the scene.

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Dancing At Lughnasa Quotes

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