From House to Home
Spatial intersections in Bailegangaire and A Thief of a Christmas, by Tom Murphy
Keywords:
Tradition., Space., Home.Abstract
Late twentieth-century Ireland was permeated by the paradoxical relationship between modernity and tradition, which is captured in two plays by Irish dramatist Tom Murphy, Bailegangaire (1993b) and A Thief of a Christmas (1993a). This article aims at examining the urge felt by the three primary female characters, Mommo and her granddaughters, Mary and Dolly, to come to terms with their respective pasts and feel “at home” in the present. A study of spatial elements that intersect the two plays both onstage, the A-Zone, and offstage, the diagetic space, is conducted. Hence, this paper demonstrates that it is precisely these spatial “juxtapositions” and “superpositions” of time and space that occur between the two plays which enable the characters’ conflicts to be solved as a form of accommodating the traditional peasant play to a new and modernized Ireland.
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