The character of Maurya in the Riders to the Sea: an individual mother transformed to a universal one

The character, Maurya in the one act play ‘Riders to the Sea’, is a wonderful creation of J.M. Synge. He characterizes this old Aran Islander mother at a very critical moment of her life. From Synge’s portrayal, a perfect and tragic picture of Maurya occupies our mind.

Maurya is a sorrowful figure who represents all the mother of the island; they, being compelled, have to sacrifice their husbands and young sons to the sea, on account of earning their livelihood. In the same way, Maurya loses her husband and six sons one by one; and this kind of events in anybody’s life is undoubtedly a matter of extreme sorrow. But their lives do not stop.


Then, she is religious but experienced by the rude Atlantic. She regularly prays to God to save her sons and believes in God. But, when Nora says “Didn’t the young priest say the Almighty God won’t leave her destitute with no son living?”, she says “It’s little the like of him knows of the sea….. Bartley will be lost now..?” It indicates that the sea used to play cruel game with them. 

Though she is attacked by an indescribable grief, she does not forget the things relating to the family. Having past nine days after Michael’s going out, she bears a miserably mental condition. At this very time too, she looks after her family. She says “Isn’t it turf enough you have for this day and evening?”

Indeed, Maurya has deep affection for her sons especially for Bartley. She prohibits again and again from his going to the trip to sell the horse. Because the weather is so bad that he must fall in a rough time on the sea. She tells that she has no need of money, wealth and horses, if he, only living male member of the family, is not alive. 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?” When he does not listen to her prohibition, she says “its hard set will 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;” At last, when he is still on his decision, she bitterly says “Isn’t it a hard and cruel man won’t hear a word from an old woman, and she holding him from the sea?” All these statements of Maurya come from her extreme affection for her son.

However, she has a foresight to understand the coming danger. Cathleen and Nora do not believe in the death of Michael until they have not got proof. But, Maurya understands that Michael must have died. And so, she has made the white boards brought, to make coffin. For the same reason, she goes to the sea shore everyday for the sake of receiving the dead body, if it is washed up. Again, when Bartley leaves the house to go to sea, breaking Maurya’s prohibition, she says “He’s gone now, God spare us, and we’ll not see him again. He’s gone now, and when the black night is falling I’ll have no son left me in the world.” These premonitions in Maurya’s thought and behavior may come from her long hard existence in the world and bitter experiences of cruelty of the sea, or from her instinct.

Maurya is a superstitious and mysterious woman. She shows argument against Bartley’s going to the sea- “that wind is rising the sea, and there was a star up against the moon, and it rising in the night” that means, this rare incident must be eventful. Again, seeing Michael’s riding on the pony is nothing but Maurya’s hallucination that is the result of failing to bestow the bread, and to wish him God’s bliss. Since earlier she uttered bad things on account of failing to stop him from going to the sea in a rough weather.   

At last of the play, we see that Maurya in not only the mother of Bartley or Micheal, but she prays “May the Almighty God have mercy on Bartley’s soul, and on Michacl’s soul, and stiphen and Shawn; and may He have mercy on my soul, Nora, and on the soul of everyone is left living in the world.” So, she transforms from an individual mother to a universal mother. Moreover, she is an idol of patience- she does not break down; suffering a long way of grief, she utterly surrenders to the fate. She says “Michael has a clear burial in the far north, by the grace of the Almighty God. Bartley will have a fine coffin of the white boards, and a deep grave than that? No man at all can be living for ever, and we must be satisfied.”

Comments