Melancholia And Mourning In Tom Murphy’s Bailegangaire

Tom Murphy(1935---2018)is a prolific Irish dramatist whose works vary widely in form and content.One of his greatest works,Bailegangaire(a Gaelic word meaning "the town without laughter"),is a play in which an old woman,Mommo,tells a never-finished tale about a “laughing contest” to her granddaughters,Mary and Dolly night after night.This thesis,through detailed textual analysis of Murphy’s Bailegangaire in the lens of the theory of melancholia and mourning,explores the root of Mommo and Dolly’s melancholia,and how they manage to walk out of melancholia and complete the mourning with the help of Mary.Mommo’s melancholia is linked with Irish peasantry’s melancholia rooted in the Great Famine,which consists of three aspects: material poverty and spiritual deprivations,the guilt of the loss of loved ones and being concealed by the myth of the West.As a result,Mommo fails to fully utter the story of the family,just as those Irish people who are reluctant to face the Famine and its existing impacts.Dolly’s melancholia is related to the Irish women’s melancholia.According to Catholic doctrines as well as Irish legislation,Irish women can only be confined in domestic life to perform their duties of taking care of the family.Like many other Irish women,Dolly’s melancholia comes from the oppression in patriarchal Ireland.On the one hand,she is powerless in face of domestic violence,since Irish women are financially dependent on men,and divorce is legally prohibited.On the other hand,the fact that abortion is legally banned in Ireland makes Dolly helpless in dealing with her unborn baby out of wedlock.Through the lens of this family,the controversial issues of Ireland---famine,peasantry,female oppression and illegitimate children---are reflected,unfolding the melancholia of the whole nation.Like Mommo’s unfinished story,the past always haunts Ireland.At the end of the play,Mommo is able to finish the story with the help of Mary,which symbolizes the clarification of the family history as well as the completion of the mourning for their traumatic past.Besides,the reconciliation of two sisters and the coming of the unborn baby indicate the family is embracing a brand-new future.On a thematic level,the drama is a refashioning of the past to illuminate the present and offer hope for the future.By this hopeful ending,Murphy points out a way out of melancholia for Ireland: to remember the past,to face up to history and to embrace the future.