Portrayal of Maurya as a Universal Mother in ‘Riders to the Sea’ by John Millington Synge

Question: How does the playwright portrays the character of Maurya as a Universal mother in his play "Riders to the Sea"?

Maurya, a woman of over eighty, is one of the four major characters of the play ‘Riders to the Sea’ by John Millington Synge. The whole story moves around her, telling the tale of her tragic past. Her great endurance and bravery in the most striking phases of the life reaches her at the level of real heroine of the play. Now we are going to look into Maurya critically.    

                   

At the very beginning of the play we see that, Maurya has already lost her four sons and now she is waiting to recover the dead body of fifth one, Michael, who has been missing for nine days and to receive his dead body. As she says;

“…if Michael is washed up to- morrow morning, or the next morning, or any morning in the week, for it's a deep grave we'll make him by the grace of God.”

Now, Bartley is only one alive son of her family.  

                

            Actually, Maurya is a very misfortunate woman, because she had to have a close observation of the death of her husband, father-in-low and the other members of her family. She had to bring up her children in the world without the help of any other men of the family. As she says;

“I’ve had a husband, and a husband’s father, and six sons in this house-six fine man, though it was a hard birth I had with every one of them… there were Stephen and Shawn were lost in the great wind, and found often in the bay of Gregory of golden Mouth…”

As Maurya faces a great difficulty to bring up her sons in this world, they should have remained with her to relief her from the difficultly and hardship. As a mother once she had a lot of aspiration with the sons, but all in vain. We can feel her extreme grief and agony from her own speech:

“In the big world the old people do be leaving things after them for their sons and children, but is this place it is the young men do be leaving things behind for them that do be old.”      

     

 Maurya, like most other mothers, takes a great care for her sons and pray to the almighty for the betterment of her sons. In her own speech;

“…May the almighty god have mercy on Bartley’s soul, and on Michael’s soul and on the soul of sheamen and patch, and Stephen and Shawn…”

  Moreover, she tried her best to resist Bartley going to the main land in order to sell a couple of horses in a cattle fair. After losing five sons, no mother can let her child go to the sea in bad weather. As she says:

“ If it was a hundred horses, or a thousand horses you had itself, what is the price of a thousand horses against a son where there is one son only?”

 We can see that, Maurya can smell the danger of her son. So she says:

“It’s hard set we’ll be surely the day you’re drowned with the rest. What way will I live and the girls with me, and I am old woman looking for the grave?”

 Again, she predicts her son’s fate which later proves true.

     “He’s gone now, god spares us, and we’ll not see him again.”

  Here, we find a strong analogy between Oedipus and Maurya. Maurya knows future as like as Oedipus, but Oedipus learns his fate from oracle while Maurya knows it from her own experience.

  Maurya, like most other women of the island, has superstitious believes. We get reference of this in her various speeches. As she says;

“Bartley came first on the red mere, and I tried to say ‘God speed you’ but something choked the words in my throat…”

After her returning from the spring well, she declares the death of Bartley because she has seen the ghost of Michael on grey pony just behind Bartley sitting on red mere. It is nothing but a superstition.

          To-wards the end of the play we can see that, the sublimity and the audacity of Maurya to undergo the irreparable loss. She is afraid, as long as, Bartley is alive and she tries her best to alter his destiny but of no use. So when the dead body of Bartley is taken to home she turns into a fearless lady and challenges the sea.

“They’ve all gone now, and there isn’t anything more the sea can do to me…”

 In the tragedy, Riders to the sea, Synge’s canvas is limited but the range of his experience is wide, varied and deep. Its setting might be regional but its appeal is universal. The story could be a real experience of any family, of any where of the world living in the sea-shore where sons grow up and embrace the watery death in the sea as soon as they are of age, thus leaving the old mothers helpless and alone as like as Maurya.

  We see in the play a storm of sufferings and tragedy has blown over Maurya, but she shows an outstanding patience, endurance and calmness to resign her from the tragedy. As she says;

“What more can we want than that? No man at all can be living for ever, and we must be satisfied.”

Last of all, we can say that, Maurya is undoubtedly a unique creation of Synge. She as a mother has to undergo the intolerable pain and grief of losing all of her sons. Despite all she is “so firm set and integral in her nature that in spite of all its victory over her she is still herself” as Daniel cookery remarks.      

            

This paper is prepared for you by Talim Enam, BA (Hons), MA in English.

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