Slouching towards Raftery's Hill: The Devolving Patriarch in Marina Carr's Midlands Plays

This essay sets out to re-evaluate the critical focus on Marina Carr as a writer with primarily female-centred concerns by examining her development of the figure of the destructive patriarch. The argument links Carr's vision of masculinity and communal insularity to the seminal presentation of these issues in John B. Keane's The Field and places particular emphasis on how earlier father figures in Carr's plays evolve into the central character of On Raftery's Hill.