Juno and the Paycock

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At the end of ‘Juno and the Paycock’, Juno says to Mary that although her un-born baby may not have a father, ‘It’ll have what’s far betther- it’ll have two mothers’. Does the play provide evidence to support the opinion that the female characters are superior to men?

‘Today in our modern society, women have equal rights to men. Jobs are not decided on gender and many men are house-husbands. This was not, however, the case in the early 1920s. Men where in charge, they where the working partner and the bread-winner for the family. Women where the house-wives who never questioned the authority of their husbands, yet, this was not the state of affairs in a two room tenancy lived in by the Boyle Family. In charge of this family was Juno Boyle, who not only was the sole source of income, a loving mother, and a devoted wife but the one person who took all of the family’s burdens and troubles on her shoulders. Based on O’ Casey’s own mother who, single-handedly brought the O’ Casey up family when Sean’s father died. She was described as loving, hard-working, determined and devoted, which is what we come to know Juno as.                                                    

The father, "Captain" Jack Boyle (so called because of his being a retired merchant sailor, his reputation for telling colorful stories of the sea, and his incessant wearing of his naval-looking hat) constantly tries to evade work by pretending to have pains in his legs, “…the pains in me legs. Oh the pain in me legs…”  He spends all his money at the pub where he escapes from the reality of his situation with his ne'er-do-well "butty", Joxer Daly. Jack Boyle is an unoccupied man who likes to think people respect him. He wants to appear philosophical and thoughtful to others. We know this from the way he talks about things, "I ofen looked up at the sky an' assed meself the question - what is the moon, what is the stars?"  He does not have a job and possibly resents Juno for being the one who ‘wears the trousers’. However, it is because of his refusal to get a job that the family is living in such a state of squalor.                                                                                                                      

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Juno Boyle is a typical mother who loves her two children and would do anything for them. Her role as wife is not what would have been considered the norm in the 1920s as such. She is the only working member of her family as her daughter Mary is on strike and her son Johnny lost his arm in the Easter rising. Juno is unselfish and constantly thinking about her family. An example of this is when she waits for Jack just so she can make sure that he eats his breakfast, “Here, sit down an’ take your breakfast….” Juno ...

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