Lily

Lily's character is perhaps one of the more complex characters in the play because of the way her identity and relationships develop and grow. Lily is a 43 year old woman who has eleven children and an ill husband at home. Like Michael and Skinner, she lives in poverty. Lily lives in a two room house with her children and husband (Friel 58). They do not have running water or a bathroom for their family. Their bathroom is outside and is used by eight different families. By simply learning about Lily’s background, the audience can see the struggles Lily has had to endure in her life. Throughout the play, Lily reveals herself to Michael and Skinner, as well as the audience. Her nature and characteristics make her a likable character, and because of this, her death is even more upsetting to the audience.

Lily's Relationship with Skinner

Written By:

Nicole Sand

Her interaction with Skinner enforces Lily’s identity as a strong female presence in the play. While she evades her reasons for marching at first, her connection with Skinner allows her to open up and be honest about her reasons for marching and the changes she wants to achieve through it. After this, Lily reveals that she was in fact marching for her son who has Down Syndrome. Winkler describes this child as “the most helpless and vulnerable of her children in a vulnerable and underprivileged community” (18). Lily was simply a mother who was participating in a peaceful march to stand up for and support her child and his future. The fact that Skinner is able to vocalize all the thoughts and feelings that are within Lily creates a special bond between them. This bond is established further when Lily offers to provide Skinner with a meal on most days (Friel 58). While she does not have room for him to stay with her, she does what she can to help and nurture him, through providing food for him when she is able. Lily continues to develop into a character that is caring and nurturing. Furthermore, this goes to show that Lily continues to want to help others, including Skinner, her son, and her country. One way in which she is able to accomplish this is through the march. Lily, Skinner, and Michael are three characters who are all so different and portray different personalities, yet they all have attended this protest for a particular reason and have become united in that identity. Lily’s character is a way for Friel to show and represent the many innocent people who died trying to make a positive difference for their people during the troubles of Ireland.

Friel uses Lily’s character as a way to show what family life was like for the poor and the troubles they were forced to go through. An important moment for Lily in the play was when she finally reveals to Skinner why she chose to partake in the march. Through the course of the play, the audience gets to view the close relationship that develops between Lily and Skinner. Elizabeth Hale Winkler, author of "Brian Friel's The Freedom of the City: Historical Actuality and Dramatic Imagination," states that “the most striking thing about the relationship between Lily and Skinner in the context of Friel’s dramatic production as a whole is their very ability to communicate instinctively” (19). Lily and Skinner are able to form a bond based on the fact that they both come from poverty, as well as share a sense of humor, especially in regard to the lives of the upper class (Winkler 19). Because of this relationship, the two are able to open up to each other and reveal personal details about themselves. In Act II, Scene 6, Skinner begins to question Lily about her reasons for marching. Lily evades the question and eventually states that she is marching for gerrymandering to be ended and for civil rights for everyone (Friel 60). However, Skinner is skeptical and calls Lily out on her lie. In his opinion of why Lily decided to be in the march, Skinner states:

Because you exist on a state subsistence that’s about enough to keep you alive but too small to fire your guts. Because you know your children are caught in the same morass. Because for the first time in your life you grumbled and someone else grumbled. . . and you heard each other, and became aware that there were hundreds, thousands, millions of us all over the world, and in a vague groping way you were outraged. (Friel 60)

"Close Bogside Overview" Photo credit: Dawn Duncan

Winkler describes this moment as, "one of the few instants in which Friel allows Lily to transcend her ordinary limitations, her normal lack of self-reflection and articulation. It is of course a speech from beyond death, and it is an inspired moment, forcing the audience to contemplate a perspective above and beyond Lily’s immediate fate" (19). This death speech given by Lily may be a way for Friel to get the audience to think outside of the play. It makes them take a look into their own lives to be sure that it is not eluding them. It shows the audience that Lily, a loving mother, is strong enough to want to make a difference in the lives of her loved ones by attending a protest like this. It may also cause the audience to think about what a disgrace it is that an innocent mother of eleven must die thinking about regrets and opportunities she was not able to have. Yet, she was trying to accomplish something through the march. Lily was a character that was able to conjure up a myriad of emotions from the audience members.

Michael Parker states that Lily’s “thumbnail sketches of local characters show her to be a natural born storyteller and humorist; at the same time her anecdotes remind us how violence has become normalized, as common an accessory to life in Derry as a miraculous medal” (57). This is shown early in the play through Lily’s concern for the well being of both Skinner and Michael when the three first enter the Mayor’s Parlor. She played the caring, motherly figure to the two boys, making sure they were not hurt from the protest. Through her personality, Lily was not only able to create a bond with Michael and Skinner, but also with the audience. Lily’s relatable qualities and humanization made the impact of her death, as well as the audience’s comprehension of the violence, even more powerful. It is heart wrenching to watch a mother of eleven be murdered for simply asking for her civil rights.

Lily’s decision to participate in the march is rooted in her desire for civil rights. Through the struggles in Northern Ireland, the housing situation for the Irish, especially the Catholic Irish, was particularly poor. During this time, there were housing laws in place to put the Irish at a disadvantage. This is seen through the British not allowing Catholics to have the same opportunities to buy land and housing that is fitting for their family. Michael Gibson and D. Wilson, authors of the Discrimination and Housing page through the CAIN web-service quote A. Clarke, “Land was the source of wealth and the basis of power. To take it from the Catholic Irish and give it to the Protestant immigrants would at once weaken resistance to English rule and bring into being a Protestant community... If the Irish would not become Protestant, then Protestants must be brought to Ireland” (Gibson and Wilson “Discrimination and Housing”). This idea is shown in the play through the horrible living conditions in which Lily and her family are forced to endure. It is likely that Protestant families from England that are much smaller than Lily’s family would have much better housing. Lily has a family of eleven people, yet they are forced into a two room place and must share their bathroom with eight other families.

Lily's Reflection on Death

Lily’s most reflective moment in the play occurs at the beginning of Act II when the thoughts she has before her death are vocalized. Lily states:

The moment we stepped outside the front door I knew I was going to die, instinctively, the way an animal knows. . . And in the silence before my body disintegrated in a purple convulsion, I thought I glimpsed a tiny truth: that life had eluded me because never once in my forty-three years had an experience, and event, even a small unimportant happening been isolated and assessed and articulated. And the fact that this, my last experience, was defined by this perception, this was the culmination of sorrow. In a way I died of grief. (Friel 55)

Works Cited:

Friel, Brian. The Freedom of the City: A Play in Two Acts. London: Samuel French, 1974. Print.

Gibson, Michael, and D. Wilson. "Discrimination and Housing." CAIN Web Service - Conflict and Politics in Norther Ireland. University of Ulster, 15 Jan. 2013. Web.

Parker, Michael. "Forms of Redress: Structure and Characterization in Brian Friel's The Freedom of the City." Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies 5.1 (1999): 47-70. Print.

Winkler, Elizabeth H. "Brian Friel's The Freedom of the City: Historical Actuality and Dramatic Imagination." The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies 7.1 (1981): 12-31. Print.