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Tragic heroine

While it is difficult to find a truly heroic character in Juno and the Paycock, Juno Boyle has some of the characteristics of a classical tragic heroine in the play.

The use of her name in the title conveys her role as protagonist.

Although Juno is a nickname given to her because many of her key life events occurred in June - born, christened, married and gave birth - the name also has associations with the Roman goddess Juno, the protector and advisor of women as well as the goddess of love and marriage.

Juno supports her family financially and emotionally, while her errant husband wastes his money and time on drinking. She is the parent who supports Mary in the closing scenes of the play, showing the important role played by women in the family and society.

Juno may not be of high status or have a typically fatal flaw, but she does come to a realisation in the end when she resigns herself to the fact that her husband will "be hopeless till the end of his days".

Hard-working

Juno is introduced in the opening scene as she prepares to go out to work.

O’Casey’s stage directions describe her as being "forty-five years of age, and twenty years ago she must have been a pretty woman; but her face has now assumed that look which ultimately settles down upon the faces of women of the working-class".

Therefore she is presented as a woman who has struggled in life with "a look of listless monotony and harassed anxiety".

All of these descriptions show a woman who has worked hard her whole life.

We assume - when we find out how idle her husband is - that Juno has always been the breadwinner, even when she was bringing up two children as well.

Juno is immediately contrasted with her lazy husband in the opening scenes of the play.

She is the only person in the family who is working and bringing in an income. Mary is on strike and Johnny is disabled having lost his arm in the War of Independence.

Pragmatic

Juno has to be sensible and pragmatic because she must support her family.

Johnny is obviously weak and disturbed from the beginning, while Mary seems only interested in her "ribbon" despite being on strike and not earning.

Captain Boyle will be - as Juno admits at the end of the play - "hopeless till the end of his days".

When Jack is still in denial and unwilling to face up to the fact that he has borrowed money he can’t pay back, it is Juno who worries about being “up to our ears in debt”.

In fact, the only hope at the end of the play is offered through Juno’s pragmatic courage when she decides to leave with her daughter and the latter’s unborn child to start a new life somewhere else.

Compassionate

Juno shows sympathy for her son’s situation and - as we have seen earlier - is willing to support her daughter through anything.

However, she seems to judge Mrs Tancred’s situation harshly in Act II, when she states that Mrs Tancred, "deserves all she got; for lately, she let th’ Die-hards make an open house of th’ place".

However, her experiences lead to a more compassionate understanding by the end of the play when Juno realises how selfish she has been in the past, “I forgot, Mary, I forgot; your poor oul’ selfish mother was only thinkin’ of herself … Maybe I didn’t feel sorry enough for Mrs Tancred when her poor son was found as Johnny’s been found now - because he was a Die-hard!"

Like the tragic hero of Greek tragedies, she goes through a change of understanding and the tragedies that befall her are not within her control.

She is the only member of the family to show compassion for Mary. In contrast to her husband and son, she realises that Mary will suffer more than any of them and stands by her daughter in her time of need.