ROUNDABOUT BLOG

Harvey, the invisible rabbit at the center of Mary Chase’s Harvey, is a pooka from Celtic mythology, plopped into the middle of an American family’s struggle to fit into society. Chase, like many first-generation Americans, wove the folklore of her family’s homeland into tales set in her own time and place.

Mary Coyle Chase was born on February 25, 1906, in Denver, Colorado. Her mother, Mary McDonough, emigrated from Londenderry, Ireland at the age of sixteen, following four older brothers to Colorado’s gold rush. McDonough later married Frank Coyle. Chase was the last of their four children, born nine years after her nearest sibling. The Coyle family was poor but stable, making a life in the working class, immigrant neighborhoods of Denver.

Mary Chase

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“Pooka. From old Celtic mythology. A fairy spirit in animal form.  Always very large. The pooka appears here and there, now and then, to this one and that one at his own caprice.  A wise but mischievous creature.  Very fond of rum-pots, crackpots…” (Wilson)

“Lord, what fools these mortals be” – Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

This definition of a “pooka” read in the play brings to mind the kind of magical, mischievous characters from Shakespeare’s comedies: the fairies of A Midsummer Night’s Dream who use potions to manipulate young lovers, or the sprite Ariel who enchants the island castaways of The Tempest. Characters like Puck and Ariel are visible to an audience, but not to the mortal characters with whom they intervene, and this allows for hilarious comic situations. On a metaphorical level, they may represent irrational human forces—the intoxication of love or the delusionary influence of power. How might we understand the magical but invisible presence of the pooka Harvey?

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