The narrator, Michael Mundy, is a familiar character of this kind of play, the boy who grows older and recalls a particular time in his youth. In this case, it's three weeks in August 1936, when his already fractured Irish family begins its slide toward total disintegration. His deadbeat, wastrel father, Gerry Evans, makes two brief, unexpected visits during the course of the action, and old Uncle Jack has returned to his sisters' home after 25 years as a legendary missionary in a Ugandan leper colony. Lughnasa, the ancient pagan celebration of the beginning of the harvest, brings them all together in the dance of life. The five Mundy sisters, strongly individual, don't fit society's expectations for Irish women in the 30s.
None is married.
Kate, a school teacher, is the primary breadwinner who keeps the others in line with her schoolmarm regimentation and strict Catholicism. The second oldest, Maggie, keeps up the house in both appearance and sarcastic wit. She is the play's center, physically and comically, constantly cooking meals and lamenting her single state. Agnes, quiet and intense, contributes to the household by knitting gloves - a profession about to be rendered obsolete by the opening of the first local woolen factory. The only sister with marriage prospects is Christine, who hopes to wed the father of her son.