Over the play however duties change. The mothers’ driving force alters and one would like to think that they find out, especially Mrs. Lyons that it is possible to love just one thing above all else, and that money really isn’t everything. We don’t actually see Mrs Johnstone change that much throughout the course of the play. She is the one constant. An ever present character from beginning to end. This not only sets her as the main character but also helps the audience to really empathize with her, Willy Russell does this because he wants all the focus on her, the underdog. We see her re-builds her broken life ‘DIY’ style. The start of act two marks her new beginning. Moving to a new house means a clean slate, they “can begin again”. The way that we see her do this also helps us sympathize with her character because she is actually making the effort against all odds to better herself. We also see the reacurrence of the song “We Go Dancing” at this point which was introduced to us at the start of the play, the ‘good times’ and also, as in the beginning we see her being told she looks “like Marilyn Monroe”. This makes the audience feel upbeat and happy, bending to the mood of their main character and to the upbeat tempo of the song. Mrs Johnstone goes on a rollercoaster ride of ups and downs but still manages to stay the same person maybe that is the mark of a good human being.
Mrs Lyons however seems to deteriorate steadily throughout the play. She starts out as a calm, composed, well balanced women and ends up a nervous wreck, a shadow of her former self. This lack of consitentcy could produce mistrust with the character from the audience or even give of the image of her being a bad mother. Maybe it’s because she has something she cares about more than herself that she is so off the rails. Maybe if this was the case she may get more sympathy from the adience however I do not believe that Willy Russell tries to show this. He is trying to paint a very negative picture of her and I think it more likely that he is trying to show she is controlling and not a fit person to be a mother. Near the end Mrs. Lyons tells Mrs. Johnstone “you have ruined me but you will not ruin Edward” a selfless act which at the beginning of the play you may not have thought possible from a woman who seems to think of her baby as a possesion “Edward is my son, mine!”. But did Mrs Lyons bring about her own selfproclaimed ruin? Her love of her son or maybe just fear of losing him made her paranoid and her paranoia about her sons discovery of the truth made her a bad mother perhaps. We also see her becoming perhaps becoming less rational believing in the superstition she once scorned Mrs. Johnstone for which suggests her lacking the common sense she used to have, putting Mrs Johnstone’s little superstitions down to a lack of education or a sign of the society in which she was brought up.
But a chracter has to be presented a certain way for it to change. We are introduced to the two mothers very early in the play, Mrs Johnstone first. Instantly the audience like Mrs Johnstone and dislike Mrs Lyons. We see Mrs Johnstone falling from glory. This fall is illustrated by the use of Marilyn Monroe as a kind of benchmark, one minute she is “sexier than Marilyn Monroe” next she’s “twice the size of Marilyn Monroe”. The audience see she has her heart in the right place and has been ditched by her good for nothing husband, They sympathize with her struggling to pay the milkman with many hungry mouthes to feed. However on the other end of the scale Mrs Lyons can’t have any children, it’s all she lacks in her apparently perfect world and perhaps that’s why she gains no sympathy maybe it’s that we are introduced to Mrs Johnstone first for a reason, we see her situation as desperate with children left right and centre in the grips of poverty then we see Mrs Lyons in her perfect house with perfect husband complaining that she cannot carry a baby. It bears no contrast. Willy Russell wants us to sympathize with Mrs Johnstone, she is our lead character and to feel emotion for what she goes through we need to empathize with her situation. We also need to feel sufficient dislike of Mrs Lyons so that we don’t sympathize with her when she gets desperate.
“Tell me it’s not true. Say it’s just a story.” The opening line of the play is repeated at the end. We see Mrs Johnstone not Mrs Lyons lamenting over the death of her two sons and it’s gives the impression of coming full circle, the completion of ‘the story’. She can’t quite believe it’s true that it has actually happened to her sons, the prophecy of Mrs Lyons come to life or death as the case may be. As the audience sees the distraught Mrs Johnstone all their sympathy and their own sadness pour into her character but what about the absent mother? She who has just lost a child also and yet she receives nothing no let up from the writer from her bad image even in great sadness. It seems clear to me that these two opposing characters are the classics good and evil, Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Superman and Lex Luther. Its very clean cut we don’t really see any of Mrs Lyons’ good side I suspect this is because of Willy Russell’s background that he is brutal with Mrs Lyons. He came from a working class family in Whiston near Liverpool and left school at fifteen and led a life very much like Mickey’s. This makes him biased towards the lower classes and and their situation. Whilst rensenting the upper classes, it was probably what he was taught as he grew up and also how he felt at going through life trying hard and yet failing whilst others more privilaged just winged it to the top. So it is pretty obvious that this play is going to be written in support of Mrs Johnstone’s case.
We see the two mothers representing the opposite ends of this scale that is social class. They epitimize their own place on the social ladder. Mrs Johnstone struggling to keep her head above ground with eight children and no job until Mrs Lyons comes along, a lady of leisure rich husband, nice house in fact “it’s a pity its so big” and offers her cleaning work. Some of these things stem from money that much is pretty obvious but the image that each of them gives comes from many factors like accent. Mrs Johnstone has, we can tell from the text a very strong Liverpudlian accent “Ah yeh…yeh. Ey it’s weird though” that Mrs Lyons doesn’t at all. She speaks with precision and ‘class’ not a mistake to be heard perhaps an exageration by the writter to emphasize the difference using the language. Mrs Lyons accent probably came from her upbringing and decent education which is another thing that set the two women apart because as we see Mrs Johnstone isn’t the brightest women in the world the fact that she had eight children says that much. Where as Mrs Lyons seems to be fairly well educated, we see her argue her way out of tight spots like when her husband gets suspicious when she snaps a Mrs Johnstone for wanting to hold the baby, he says “don’t be hard on the woman” but Mrs Lyons comes back saying that she dosen’t want the baby to catch anything as if to imply that her husband cares for their child less than her and then guilt trips him further by looking as if “she is about to cry” in the stage directions. This is meditated, she knows what she is doing and it shows clear inteligence. Mrs Johnstone could probably make more use out of Mrs Lyons education in the work place than she ever would being a house wife and this clear advantage and the way it is put across to look so unfair allow Mrs Johnstone to be viewed as the clear underdog and everyone loves an underdog. I think that Mrs Lyons is made out to be the villain of this tale but really its just the writer manipulating the audiences emotions. It could probably easily be turned around and Mrs Lyons be made the hero.
Willy Russell presents the two mothers as total opposties in class but they do share one thing their mutual love of Eddie. He portrays Mrs Johnstone in a very favourable light and Mrs Lyons in a negative one. This has a huge effect on the way the audience relate to and feel about the two different charaters. Positive or negative it is all engineered by the writer.
