The Playboy of the Western World

Pegeen Mike as a Tragic Heroine

The character of Pegeen is said to have many of the qualities of Molly Allgood (Maire O’Neill),
Synge’s fiancée, with whom he had a rather tempestuous relationship. She played the part of
Pegeen in the first production of The Playboy of the Western World by J.M. Synge and, like her,
was independent and wayward, temperamental and warm-hearted, restless and very ambitious,
and in the end lost her Playboy to death.

Full name Margaret Flaherty, Pegeen Mike is the 20-year-old daughter of Michael James. She is
engaged to Shawn Keogh at the top of the play, and later engaged to Christy for a short period.
the first part of Act I establishes her strength of character and her spirit: she can handle all the
men, from her father, Michael, to Shawn Keogh. She has no fear of authority, ecclesiastical or
civil: ‘Stop tormenting me with Father Reilly’ she sneers at Shawn, and ‘Daneen Sullivan
knocked the eye from a peeler’ shows her admiration for one with courage enough to stand up to
and get the better of authority.

Into such a world ruled by self-interest and respectability stumbles Christy, young, tired and
frightened. Their interest is immediately aroused (a ‘strainseir’ is always an object of great
curiosity in an Irish village.) Pegeen’s contempt for men is still evident when she
contemptuously challenges Christy: ‘You did nothing at all’, ‘Would you have me knock the
head of you with the butt of the broom?’ Christy’s confession that he had killed his ‘poor father’
for striking him takes her aback. The strong-willed, sharp-tongued young woman begins to melt
as romance at last enters her life. All thoughts of self-interest and respectability are abandoned
as she loses her head to the stranger.

After his successes at the sports Christy returns to the Shebeen with Pegeen positively aglow
with admiration and love. In the love sequence that follows she abandons herself completely to
Christy’s verbal hypnosis. In her ecstasy she really enjoys humiliating Shawn Keogh and when
Christy chases him out she passionately announces to her father: ‘Bless us now, for I swear to
God I’ll wed him, and I’ll not renege’.

With the re-entry of Old Mahon and his claim that all Christy had given him was a ‘tap of a loy’,
suddenly Pegeen snaps out of her trance and turns impetuously on Christy, ‘And it’s lies you told,
letting on you had him slitted, and you nothing at all’. Her pride has been hurt and she feels
publicly humiliated and in her rage she abandons him to fate. ‘Take him on from this or I’ll set
the young lads to destroy him here’.

Ironically she does not realise that she has just provided Christy with his greatest opportunity yet
to prove himself a hero. Old Mahon’s ‘dying’ yell finally dispels that last trace of fantasy.

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Reality returns: the villagers are one again against the intruder that would bring the law and
trouble to them.

Pegeen must lead in purging the community of this menace and to her eternal shame she realises
too late what she had done: she has freed Christy from any last ties that would have impeded his
progress ‘to the stars’. He doesn’t need her now, whereas she does need him, but she has lost
and he has won. She is indeed almost the tragic heroine at this stage; the Dido deserted by her
Aeneas.

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