Blanket bog landscape, Ireland.

• Play Title: Sive 
  Author: John B. Keane 
  First published: 1959 
  Page count: 142 

Summary

Set in 1950s, rural Ireland, Sive tells the story of a beautiful young woman being forced to wed a withered, old man. Sive, the chief character, attends a convent school and is already romantically involved with a handsome young man, but this is not enough to protect her. A meddlesome matchmaker allied with Sive’s greedy aunt arrange for the girl to be auctioned off. Although she is somewhat protected at first by her uncle Mike and her grandmother, the plan still progresses until a wedding date is arranged. The young woman, who is an orphan and illegitimate, is made to feel worthless by her aunt. Additionally, Sive believes her true love has abandoned her. Faced with marriage to a man whom she detests, Sive resorts to a desperate solution.

Playwright and novelist John B. Keane (1928-2002) wrote chiefly about the people of his own region. In Sive, he depicts an Ireland that would soon die out – thanks to rural electrification, free secondary school education, women’s rights, and economic growth. However, in the 1950s, some 40,000 people were emigrating from Ireland to Britain each year. Those who remained in the economically stagnant country were often reliant on farming or associated industries. The Catholic Church set a strict agenda regarding morals, and Ireland was staunchly patriarchal. Keane acts as both a playwright and benign anthropologist when he reveals the grotesque greed and inhumanity of some rural characters of that historical era. The play addresses themes such as arranged marriage, family conflict, young love, betrayal, and greed. However, the core theme of the work is that of control.

Ways to access the text: reading 

The play may be read on the Internet Archive for free. Alternatively, you may source the play via Everand, which offers a free trial period.  

There is no audiobook or film version of this work, to my knowledge.  

Why read Sive?

Sive is a work of realism but one really cannot approach it as such. The societal conditions that made this story possible in the first place have all faded into a weird, historical mist. The chasm between then and now, them and us, is simply too great. Instead, Sive is best read as a fairy tale. As such, one has the wicked stepmother figure; a handsome prince; an evil, ‘handsy’ ogre; and a beautiful princess. Yes, they speak in a parlance peculiar to Southwest Ireland and no actual magic occurs, but the themes of the work shine more brightly when one treats the play as allegorical rather than strictly literal. The playwright exposes the moral rot that occurs in people who have been blighted and mistreated in life. The result is that they hand on this pain to a new generation. Sive’s fate may be seen as the collateral damage of Mena’s and Thomasheen’s old hurts. Reading this work gives a rare glimpse of the rural ‘monsters’ of the Munster region.

Post-reading discussion/interpretation

^{“Money is the best friend a man ever had.” (Keane 32)}

Sive is an allegorical tale. The chief lesson: money is the root of all evil. This is a foolproof interpretation of Keane’s play, which also leaves a reader understandably dissatisfied. One does not need to read an obscure, regional play written in North Kerry in the 1950s to learn a commonplace, biblical platitude. The work’s true value lies in how the playwright depicts a bevy of societal forces, both inherited and contemporary, which serve to mould young Sive’s fate. The question of money is, nonetheless, primary. Money is the motivation that propels an unnecessary plan to solve a non-existent problem. Sive is betrayed by those she trusts the most and the play is replete with biblical allusions that underline this fact. For instance, there is the tale of how Judas Iscariot betrayed Christ for 30 pieces of silver. At the opening of the play, Mike has just sold bonhams at the fair and he “begins to count the silver with inexperienced hands” (32). Later, Nanna Glavin chastises Mike over the arranged marriage, saying that her “own grandchild is for sale like an animal” (104). Since Mike was Sive’s protector, his change of mind about the marriage, motivated by money, is a blatant betrayal. If one looks at Exodus 21:32, one learns that the significance of 30 pieces of silver is that it equalled the value of a slave. One initially views Sive as the ward of her protective guardians, but she is indeed soon treated like a chattel. A more subtle biblical reference relates to the matchmaker Thomasheen. During the late night of negotiations between Thomasheen and Mena, he suspects he may hear the cockerel’s crow on his way home. For comparison, Peter had denied Jesus three times before the cock crowed. The two chief negotiators in Sive, namely Thomasheen and Mena, are not only selling the girl but denying her a future too. When the bond of responsibility between guardian and child is denied then new questions arise. Sive is most certainly a tale about greed but underlying that greed are the intertwining, thorny issues of control and betrayal.

A solution that requires a problem. Sive is a bright, beautiful young woman who is attending secondary school. She’s in love with Liam Scuab, a handsome local carpenter of her own age. They have been in a relationship for some time. Enter Thomasheen Seán Rua. He is a single, middle-aged, illiterate, impoverished man who acts as the self-appointed, local matchmaker. After an enlightening chat with the elderly, rich farmer named Seán Dóta, Thomasheen believes he has found the perfect husband for Sive. Upon hearing this news, Mike describes Seán as “that oul’ corpse of a man” (Keane 37). The situation is confusing and rightly so, but back in 1840, William Carleton wrote an excellent description of the less-than-straightforward role that an Irish matchmaker performs.

“The Irish Matchmaker, then, is a person selected to conduct reciprocity treaties of the heart between lovers themselves in the first instance, or, where the principal parties are indifferent, between their respective families, when the latter happen to be of opinion that it is a safer and more prudent thing to consult the interest of the young folk rather than their inclination.” (Carleton 116)

The crucial point made by Carleton is the discrepancy between what is in a young person’s interest (highly debatable) and what their inclination (heart) tells them to do. Prompted by having seen Thomasheen, Sive and Liam inadvertently have a meta-discussion about matchmaking. While they concede that it may be necessary in some isolated, country areas, they belittle the practice since the unlucky participants have no prior knowledge of one another (Keane 40). Unbeknownst to these young lovers, Thomasheen is arranging their respective futures. Although he grandly professes to carry out “matchmaking and making love between people” (20), Thomasheen openly denigrates the modern concept of love. This is most evident when he mocks Mike for speaking about love in lofty tones, at least by the standards of a country farmer (55). Thomasheen is an Irish Cupid, but one without any heart. Keane has written elsewhere of the benefit of traditional matchmakers so Thomasheen may be seen as a deviant figure who is abusing his role.

Thomasheen and Mena, and eventually Mike, are all motivated by the financial renumeration of a successful match between Sive and Seán Dóta. However, there is an uneasiness amongst them too, so a conscience-cleansing excuse is needed. This excuse is Sive’s illegitimate, orphan status. According to traditional, Catholic teaching, Sive’s mother was a fallen woman. Sive’s deceased father is related to Liam’s family, so they have never been welcomed in Mike Glavin’s home. The Glavins ostensibly fear a repeat of history, but this fear leads to a warped sense of right and wrong. For context, at this point in Irish history, the Catholic clergy were obsessed with all things sexual and the control thereof. Thousands of Irish women who had conceived outside of marriage were admitted to religiously run Mother and Baby Homes. In the 1950s, the average stay of new mothers in these institutions was 11 months (McGarry). Illegitimate children were a source of great shame for the families concerned and were normally put up for adoption. Hiding behind the excuse of moral rectitude, the Glavin’s foist an obscenely unsuitable match upon Sive, thus avoiding such a prospect. To use biblical language, they are visiting the sins of the father (and mother) on the child. In truth, no Christian act is being performed. The playwright simply exposes the often-duplicitous way that religious teachings were observed. Religion was used as a stick to beat another into submission with perfect impunity.

Although the term ‘generational trauma’ was not known when Keane wrote this work, he is describing just that. Mena and Thomasheen are punishing an innocent girl to somehow rectify their own flawed paths. Young Sive becomes a means to an end. The childless Mena wishes to have full authority in her own home, which means she wants to be rid of a dead woman’s adult child and a cantankerous, old woman. For Thomasheen, his fee for the match will help secure his future marriage to a local widow. Sive’s ill-fated match is ironically the balsam by which two other marriages will be set right. Generational trauma encapsulates the economic, cultural, and familial wounds of the past. Mena and Thomasheen grew up in severe poverty and they both viewed marriage as an escape. The suicide of Thomasheen’s father, a great trauma by itself, led to the failure of his own marriage prospects at that time. For Mena, she had to scrimp and save to amass a marriage dowry, otherwise, she would never have been eligible to marry ‘well.’ She now deems Mike to be a poor class of husband and their married life has been one of mostly continued impoverishment. In contrast to these two figures, Sive is young and beautiful; she is receiving an education; and she has a handsome young lover who also has good prospects. Keane shows how these flowers of youth, symbolic of a changing, progressive Ireland, are ultimately blighted by an older generation. In his other plays, like Big Maggie and The Field, Keane ponders some of the same issues, namely an obsession with maintaining familial authority; the hardships of farming life; and the perverse, reflexive desire to punish a younger, more free generation.

Keane has worked betrayal into the textual seams of Sive. It is a work that oozes with the contempt of a begrudging generation whose own life chances have faded long ago. The marriage match comes about in secret, told of in hushed tones and underpinned with elaborate lies. The young woman is first isolated from allies like her grandmother and her lover. To achieve this, Mena halts Sive’s convent education and makes the girl change bedrooms. Soon, Sive is told of the shame of her background so that she may begin to doubt her value as a person. Liam’s declaration of love for Sive is received by the gatekeeper Mena, who goes on to tell Sive of Liam’s best wishes for her marriage and that he is going abroad (all lies). Mike burns the secret letter from Liam that contains an escape plan for Sive and a promise of marriage. Even though the match between Sive and Seán is being mocked in the local bars and sung about by tinkers on the highways and byways, Sive is ignorant of this information. One is shown the diabolical effectiveness of the hermetic seal of lies surrounding the young woman. Total control is being exercised by Mena, Mike, and Thomasheen so that their culpability for a heinous plan remains invisible. A masterful illusion envelops Sive until she panics with horrible consequences.

The dénouement of Sive marks the dissolution of the elaborate web of lies. When Sive’s dead body is laid on the kitchen table, Thomasheen first recedes into the background before exiting the cottage, soon to be followed by an equally silent and cowardly Mr. Dota. The symbolism of men walking silently away from tragic circumstances would not have been lost on the play’s original audiences. Mena faces the full force of Liam’s retribution. He tells Mina – “You killed her! … You horrible filthy bitch!” (Keane 144). The scene is full of pathos because the truth of the long-planned betrayal and its horrible consequences are nakedly revealed. Mena, much like the biblical Judas, is left to contemplate the repercussions of her horrible deed. The sly lies and clever manoeuvres have earned Mena the lifelong burden of knowing she destroyed a young, innocent life. Keane’s depiction of Mena is an amalgamation of all that was wrong in society – penury, jealousy, envy, greed, hardship, and hate. The playwright shows how poisoned souls will damage all they touch. Grievous poverty and the moral strait-jacket of 1950s Ireland simply made such characters more potent.

The moral message of Sive is nuanced by the specific cultural and historical setting. The story certainly has a fairy tale quality, which makes it more accessible to readers. Although heavy with biblical allusions and steeped in an Ireland that is only remembered by a much older generation, Keane’s play still holds relevance since he speaks of personality archetypes. Sister Marie Hubert Kealy has written much about Keane, and she remarks that “his social commentary is cloaked in domestic relationships, easily recognized by his audiences and clearly defining his views of the larger areas of concern” (121-22). Sive’s story is indeed much influenced by the fervent religiosity of Ireland at that time and the State’s collaboration in keeping a whole people docile. Keane was, however, a critic very much on the inside, rather than the outside. Such critics move very deftly but are often the most effective too.

Works Cited 

Carleton, William. “The Irish Matchmaker.” The Irish Penny Journal, vol. 1, no. 15, 1840, pp. 116–20. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/30001127.

Keane, John B. Sive. Mercier Press, 2011.

McGarry, Patsy. “‘Ireland’s proportion of unmarried mothers in homes ‘was probably highest in world.’’ The Irish Times, 12 Jan. 2021.

Sister Marie Hubert Kealy. “DOMESTIC AUTHORITY: ANOTHER LOOK AT THE PLAYS OF JOHN B. KEANE.” Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies (HJEAS), vol. 11, no. 2, 2005, pp. 121–32. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41274323.