브라이언 프리엘의 『몰리 스위니』 = 아일랜드의 과거와 현재 재조명하기

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Brian Friel has been hailed as "the foremost living Irish playwright". The poignancy of Friel's plays has much to do with the native Irish wander-lust, but they have their universality as well.
In Molly Sweeney, Friel conflates Molly's individual history with that of Ireland. In that sense, this play continues Friel's tradition of political theater. Molly Sweeney, like his Translations, is also a play about colonization and its consequence. However, rather than concentrating on the effects of colonization on an entire culture, Molly Sweeney focuses on the colonizer's impact on the life of the individual Irish woman named Molly. Therefore Molly serves to function as a allegorical significance in this play.
This paper aims to revision the past and present of Ireland by examining how Molly Sweeney proves to be a dynamic representative both for the Irish nation and for the contemporary Irish woman, colonized subject of the postcolonial Irish male. The image of woman as Ireland has long been tied to national political discourse. Molly Sweeney demonstrates how a new, more complex and authentic image of Cathleen ni Houlihan can testify to the resilience of the extremely versatile myth. And at the same time this play links her condition with the intellectual theory and the case history of Irish philosopher George Berkeley and Oliver Sacks.
It can be concluded that the blind Molly acts as a symbol for Gaelic Ireland. Molly's earlier, unsighted world serves as a metaphor for the aboriginal culture of Gaelic Ireland so foreign to the English colonizer. The blind Molly's calm and independent way imitates her authentic and secure citizenship in Gaelic Ireland.
The partially sighted Molly who retreats psychologically and loses her ability to see serves as a metaphor for the colonized Ireland. Molly's effort to acquire the new language of sight separates her from the comfort of home. Her transition to a sighted world is so traumatic that she cannot wholly make it. Molly suffers from a condition of "seeing but not seeing", what neurologists call "gnosis". The effort required to make a life for herself in a colonized world proves too much for her, and she collapses. The life conducted under the power of English in the nineteenth century Ireland became itself a sort of exile.
At the end of the play Molly in a psychiatric hospital, deserted by both her husband and doctor, becomes the dual symbol for the postcolonial Ireland and the still-colonized Irish women. Just as the postcolonial Ireland, both a former and present colony borders on being a nation, Molly who was trying to compose another life that was neither sighted nor unsighted, has begun living in a psychic terrain where living and dead, fantasy and reality intermingle and visitors traverse boundaries between life and death. But more importantly, Molly is also a contemporary Irish woman whose experience is ruled by the postcolonial Irish male. Just as real Irish women were shut out of power in postcolonial Ireland through sexist legislation, Molly is shut away, deprived of power, and suffered from a still patriarchal state.
As with other Friel texts, the situation of Ireland lies beneath the surface of Molly Sweeney, structuring the author's perceptions even if it never emerges overtly. The key concepts of Friel's bigger plays are a constant presence in this play, particularly ideas of exile and borderlands. Molly's borderline existence between fantasy and reality suggests not only Friel's own existence moving across the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland but also his artistic terrain.