Rona Munro
Rona Munro is a prize-winning British writer, currently living in London. She has authored a dozen plays, some with other writers for stage, radio and television. Munro was born in 1959 in Scotland. Encouraged by her family, she began to write as a young child. After university she joined a group called Edinburgh Playwrights Workshop, for the reading and discussion of newly created works. One of her claims to fame is that she wrote the last Doctor Who serial to air, in 1989.

 

Northern Ireland
Bold Girls was first produced in Strathclyde, Scotland in 1990. The action takes place in Belfast and reflects the state of things in Northern Ireland at that moment. What is referred to as “The Troubles” is the constant background of the story. This is the period in Irish history from 1968 to about 1998 (the Good Friday Agreement) and the designation of Troubles carries a good deal of understated and self-conscious irony. Certainly just about any period in Irish history has been rife with troubles, but this is how the populace dubbed this time. The natural good humor and resilience of the Irish people has carried them through this costly and protracted struggle, where in spite of a peace agreement, there is not much peace.

 

Ireland has been under siege for centuries one way or the other, and has an enormously complex history. Put simply, the current condition in Northern Ireland (and in 1990) has its roots in the 17th century, the so-called plantation period. The British government, interested in securing its hold over the area, brought in thousands of English and Scottish settlers with land grants taken from the Irish owners. The majority of these were Protestant and soon there was a Protestant majority in this area. Throughout the next hundred years, through the industrial revolution in the 19th century, the area became prosperous. When the rest of Ireland became independent in 1921, the six counties of the north remained part of the United Kingdom. They enjoyed a good deal of autonomy, however, with their own Protestant-dominated parliament. And, in spite of the fact that Catholics were discriminated against in a number of ways, except for IRA activity, there was little unrest until 1968.

 

The current “Troubles” began in a climate of global civil rights consciousness-raising, with activities ranging from peaceful demonstrations to the bombing of Protestant villages and attacks on British soldiers and Irish police. In response, in 1971, the British government ended Northern Ireland’s autonomy by flooding the province with troops. They set about dismantling the government, imposing their direct rule, their tactics often achieving the complete alienation of the Catholic population. In 1972, they arranged a ceasefire, and the level of violence fell off, but terrorist activities continued throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s on both sides.

 

These “sides” can be roughly categorized as Protestant/Unionist/Loyalist or Catholic/Nationalist/Republican. But, as in any complex long-standing situation, there are nuances among all these, including the continuum from radical to moderate, and including the fact that the most rabid Nationalist who may ally himself fiercely with the Catholic cause may not have been inside a church for decades. The confrontation is less about religion than it is about nationality, territory and political power, combined with sheer gang warfare. Each side has committed atrocities and has mourned its victims.

 

Starting in 1980, the British and Irish governments began to cooperate more closely to achieve a resolution. This involved the establishment of a number of mechanisms for dialogue and negotiation. In 1981 an Anglo-Irish Intergovernmental Council was established to provide a formal framework for this effort. In November, 1985, the two governments signed the Anglo-Irish agreement (Margaret Thatcher and Garrett Fitzgerald), which basically stated that there would be no change in the status of the six counties with the consent of the majority of its people. This enabled the Irish government to put forward a number of proposals on many aspects of Northern Ireland affairs. In 1991/1992, the governments convened round-table talks involving a number of political parties, except for the radical nationalist party Sinn Féin, because of their acknowledged use of violence.

 

In general, it can be said Ireland is like the rest of the world, only more so. Other countries have been oppressed by colonial conditions, have a strong sense of patriotism, have large groups of the population living outside their native land, and have a significant body of excellent literature. But there does seem to something exceptional about the Irish, something hard to define which makes the country a special case.

 

Belfast
Several of the cities in Northern Ireland benefited from some efforts at urban renewal during the time at which the play takes place. Belfast experienced some improvements between 1973 and 1993 because of government money spent on housing and other developments there. In the 19th century Belfast was actually the fastest growing town in the United Kingdom (ahead of Dublin), partly because of the industrial revolution. The city went into decline after 1920 until this more recent development. In spite of the bombing which continues, there is a night life and a “shopping life,” apparent in the play.
 
In the 1970s in Belfast, so-called peace lines were built to segregate rival areas. This “ghettoization” basically destroyed the old parishes and also eliminated any social contact across these divides. The powerful sense of territory hinders the prospect of reconciliation. Bold Girls takes place in Belfast in the midst of these events. One of the important things about the play is to understand that what is happening is on two levels – the environment surrounding these women is precisely Belfast in 1990, with all that that implies, but it is also anywhere and any time.

 

Women
Ireland’s women have born multiple roles in their long history. As in any culture, women are regarded as pure innocents, scheming hussies, virulent shrews, or embodiments of beauty. Women in Ireland have had to struggle for their rights as much as in any other place. But the archetypes for women exist in the extreme in Ireland, as borne out by its mythology and literature. If one were to characterize them, one could say that Irish women have developed a tough genius for survival – that their significant strength is more of endurance and grit than of some kind of exhibitionism, that they are shrewd, calm and patient.

 

One explanation of the role of women in Ireland centers on the Famine in the 19th century, which was a turning point for everyone in the country. After this catastrophe, many, especially those on farms, were afraid of having large families who would only starve. And since birth control was not allowed by the Church, many did not marry or married late. By 1900, 30% of men were unmarried (10% in Europe as a whole). The average age of married men was 33 (29 for women). The impact of this situation on women was that they frequently had older husbands who were tied to their mothers or else became domineering patriarchs. Because marriage was hard to achieve, rivalries developed. Men developed a reputation for being poor at human relations, especially with women their own age. The constitution under Eamon de Valera in 1937 affirmed that a woman’s place was in the home, a condition which did not change much until women in the rest of the world began to claim equal status.

 

A significant breakthrough was the election of Mary Robinson as president of Ireland in 1990, just after Bold Girls was written. She was the first woman to be elected, a modern-minded liberal from the Labor Party, a radical lawyer with a reputation for crusading for human rights.

 

Women in Irish literature
A dominant theme of 20th century Irish literature, by both men and women, is the depiction of the inadequate relationships between men and women. These are sympathetic portrayals of gentle, brave or loving women ruined by weak, repressed, despotic or otherwise inadequate men – or these same women simply failing to find a suitable man. The situation is described by one writer (John Ardagh, in Ireland and the Irish, 1994) as the “Ballroom of Romance” syndrome, after the story by William Trevor. Here a farmer’s daughter dreams of romance and, unable to win the one man she loves, grows older and lonelier as she stays on the farm to care for her crippled, widowed father. She frequents the dreary Saturday-night gatherings at the nearby dancehall, and finally settles for marriage with one of the local drunks.

 

The plight of women who have to deal with male inadequacy or dereliction is present in works of Synge, Joyce, Friel, and many others. Writer Edna O’Brian: “Women were superior to men, but victims; more intelligent but emotionally crippled by these situations.” It is interesting to reflect if matters have changed since Trevor’s story was written – if, since the Mary Robinson era, women have better prospects all around, in terms of jobs or a husband.

 

Characters in Bold Girls
These four women are deeply connected to each other in some surprising ways, to their environment, and to the men that are in the shadows outside the action that we observe throughout the drama.

Nora – the matriarch who has been living with war-torn conditions for a very long time. She has developed ways to cope and to find pleasure in things, including hoping for nothing more grand than a remnant piece of fabric with which to decorate her front room.

 

Cassie – Nora’s daughter, whose husband has been “lifted” by the British and is in jail (the “Kesh”). She dreams of getting out altogether, even if it means leaving her children behind. She has some less than admirable secrets.

 

Marie – friend of the two women and in some ways, the center of comfort. She is the soft one, who, clinging to the memory of her deceased husband Michael, refuses to succumb to despair.

 

Deidre – the mysterious young stranger, whose connection to them all is revealed in painful ways. Her name is the same as Deidre of the Sorrows, the maid of Ulster, an important legend of Irish mythology. She was the beautiful daughter of the king’s bard, promised in marriage to a king, but in love with another man. She ended tragically. Rona Munro has stated that she did not intentionally name her character after the “dangerous one,” but the audience cannot help but make the connection.

 

A well-constructed and informative essay about the play can be found on the Web site for The Association for Scottish Literary Studies. This is an article by Douglas Gifford, entitled “Making Them Bold and Breaking the Mould: Rona Munro’s Bold Girls” (1991)
http:///www.arts.gla.ac.uk/ScotLit/ASLS/Laverock-Bold_Girls.html
His essay includes the following:
1. Introduction, including his identification of the setting of Marie’s house as a House of Women 
2. Summary of the plot
3. Discussion of the use of the stage
4. Dialogue – the way in which it is constructed to underscore how the characters do not really listen to one another until the end of the play.
5. How the play reflects the society, the ways in which the characters are hardened to the action.
6. Comic elements
7. Symbolism: birds, “boldness,” “girls,” materialism, eclipse of the moon, dreams
8. Values of society, political and religious issues, failure of the community
9. Role of the men

 

Questions for further study
Making use of Gifford’s essay and other resources consider the following:
1. How does Bold Girls fit into the body of Irish literature about women? How do these women compare with women in other Irish plays?
2. What is the condition of women in Ireland and Northern Ireland today (in 2006)?
3. Irish mythology has many stories about powerful women. What are some of these stories and how does this mythology relate (or not) to Munro’s play?
4. Identify some Irish women writers and some of their works.
5. Discuss some of Rona Munro’s other plays and how they compare with this one.