TRUE SELF’S TRIUMPH OR DEFEAT? : READING AMBIVALENCE IN MARINA CARR’S WOMAN AND SCARECROW

Abstract

Irish playwright Marina Carr’s Woman and Scarecrow (2006) stages the last hours of a dying woman, with a particular focus on her inner dialogue with Scarecrow, a figure that can be read as Woman’s true self in Winnicott’s terms. While this article highlights Woman’s imprisonment in a capitalist patriarchal world to expose her suffering under the false self, it also problematizes the ending of the play, interpreting Woman’s death in the arms of Scarecrow as a disturbing but liberating moment for womanhood. Beginning with a romanticized vision of her own death and attempting to associate herself with self-sacrificing heroines from tragedies written by male writers, Woman undergoes a process of self-questioning under Scarecrow’s guidance, subsequently transforming her death into an act of feminine resistance and revenge on her husband, Him. From this perspective, this article reads Woman’s symbolic and Faustian pact with Scarecrow as a path to freedom, because her death is more than a biological end; it represents the dissolution of the false self imposed by patriarchy.