How are the mothers presented in the play Blood Brothers and how does the audience respond to them ?

Right at the beginning of the play, where the mother, Mrs Johnstone, is singing, the audience gets that feeling that she is a lonely and heart broken woman, who is having money problems and is in need of a loving husband. Then when she makes the deal with Mrs Lyons the audience feels even more sorry for her because she is so blind and trusting that she can’t see behind Mrs Lyons mask and she can’t see how as soon as she has sworn on the bible, Mrs Lyons attitude towards her changes. “ No. No, I want to do the shopping from now on.”, this shows that she has started to change because she doesn’t want Mrs Johnstone to buy anything for her future child because she doesn’t want her to get any more involved with her future child and is planning on doing everything for the child herself, however what the audience sees, Mrs Johnstone doesn’t. She doesn’t see through Mrs Lyons pretence and just continues with her work which gives the audience the feeling that she is  a bit dense and is misled easily.

Mrs Lyons is presented as the villain in the play because she is the one that manipulates Mrs Johnstone, she causes the twins separation, she is the one that gets paranoid about Mrs Johnstone taking Eddie and she is the one who kills both Eddie and Mickey even though she made the superstition and told Mrs Johnstone that she would be the one who would cause the twins death. This shows the audience that all the bad things happen to her because she was the one who caused the corrupt consequences and it feels a bit like karma, (what goes around, comes around).

Mrs Johnstone is presented as the ideal mother image, she loves her children, she doesn’t mean anyone any harm, she is a bit superstitious, but her hearts in the right place and she only give Eddie to Mrs Lyons because she is desperate and she has no other options, otherwise she would have never done anything so immoral.

I think that Mrs Lyons herself is so desperate for a child that she goes blind and all she can see is Mrs Johnstone’s twins and her chance for a child. I think that her desperation for a child causes her to lose her morals and all she can see throughout the play is her child and how she can keep him, she doesn’t think about anything else and lets others suffer so long as she gets to keep her child. I believe that Mrs Johnstone is again desperate, but for an entirely different reason and it is perhaps their desperation that brings Mrs Johnstone and Mrs Lyons together and they help each other in their time of need, but then go against each other when they each realize the effects of their deceit.

In conclusion I think that the audience feels sorry for both mothers and they also feel a bit sad at the ending because Mrs Lyons superstition came true and both twins did die. I feel sorry for Mrs Lyons because what she wanted the most, a child, she lost and it was she herself who caused his death, all because of her stubbornness and for her pride of not giving in to Mrs Johnstone.