A Cultural and Historical Study of the Character Maggie in Dancing at Lughnasa

Dancing at Lunasha is the most prestigious masterpiece of the 1990s by contemporary Irish theater master Brian Friel. Through a close reading of the text, combined with the analysis of the contemporary context, this paper examines the characterization of Maggie, the second sister in the play, from multiple dimensions, and at the same time excavates the cultural connotations projected on her by the playwright. In her family relationships, Maggie reflects the qualities of the mother figure in the Irish literary tradition. The multiple predicaments suffered by her and other family members are a disclosure of the difficult historical situation of the Irish nation in the early twentieth century. Meanwhile, Friel also uses the character of Maggie to implicitly express his attitude towards Irish culture in the nineties, conveying the idea of embracing and promoting ancient Celtic culture and tolerating heterogeneous cultures in order to reshape the unique Irish national cultural identity.