NAME: BHATT URVI P.
ROLL NO. : 31
STD: M.A. (SEM-3)
SUB: THE AMERICAN LITERATURE
PAPER NO. : 10
TOPIC: The
use of modernity in Eugene O’Neill’s language and style in ‘Mourning Become Electra’.
SUBMITTED
TO: DEPT OF EN GLISH
M.K BHAVNAGAR UNIVERSITY
v Introduction about Eugene
O’Neill:-
The playwright Eugene O’Neill was
born in 1888 in New York City and died in 1953 in Boston. He was an American
playwright who was an awarded Nobel Prize in Literature in 1936 and Pulitzer
Prize for drama in 1920, 1922, 1928 and 1957. His plays are poetically titled.
He introduced technique of realism in American drama. He was influenced by the
realism in writing. Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik
Ibsen and Swedish playwright August Strindberg inspired him. He was the first
American playwright toinclude speeches in American vernacular and involve characters
on the fringes of society. His characters struggle to maintain their hopes and
aspirations, but ultimately slide into disillusionment and despair. He wrote
full length plays and one act plays. Some of his plays are:-
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Ø Beyond the Horizon (1918)
Pulitzer Prize(1920)
Ø Anna Christie(1920) Pulitzer
Prize(1922)
Ø The Hairy Ape(1922)
Ø The Great God Brown(1926)
Ø Strange Interlude(1928) Pulitzer
Prize(1928)
Ø The Calms of Capricorn(1983)
Ø Long Day’s Journey Into
Night(1941) Pulitzer Prize(1957)
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Tall
and thin, dark-eyed and handsome, with a brooding sensitivity, O’Neill was a
man of many paradoxical qualities. Though he was ready to work he was by no
means ready to change his way of living complexity.
v Plot
Summary:
·
The Homecoming
It is late spring afternoon in front
of the Mannon house. The master of the house, Brigadier-General Ezra Mannon, is
soon to return from war.
Lavinia, Ezra's severe daughter,
has just come, like her mother Christine, from a trip to New York. Seth, the
gardener, takes the anguished girl aside. He needs to warn her against her
would-be beau, Captain Brant. Before Seth can continue, however, Lavinia's
suitor Peter and his sister Hazel, arrive. Lavinia stiffens. If Peter is
proposing to her again, he must realize that she cannot marry anyone because
Father needs her.
Lavinia asks Seth to resume his story.
Seth asks if she has not noticed that Brant looks just like her all the other male
Mannons. He believes that Brant is the child of David Mannon and Marie Brantome,
a Canuck nurse, a couple expelled from the house for fear of public disgrace.
Suddenly Brant himself enters from the
drive. Calculatingly Lavinia derides the memory of Brant's mother. Brant
explodes and reveals his heritage. Lavinia's grandfather loved his mother and
jealously cast his brother out of the family. Brant has sworn vengeance.
A moment later, Lavinia appears inside
her father's study. Christine enters indignantly, wondering why Lavinia has
summoned her. Lavinia reveals that she followed her to New York and saw her
kissing Brant. Christine defiantly tells Lavinia that she has long hated Ezra
and that Lavinia was born of her disgust. She loves her brother Orin because he
always seemed hers alone.
Lavinia coldly explains that she
intends to keep her mother's secret for Ezra's sake. Christine must only
promise to never see Brant again. Laughingly Christine accuses her daughter of
wanting Brant herself. Lavinia has always schemed to steal her place. Christine
agrees to Lavinia's terms. Later she proposes to Brant that they poison Ezra
and attribute his death to his heart trouble.
One week later, Lavinia stands
stiffly at the top of the front stairs with Christine. Suddenly Ezra enters and
stops stiffly before his house. Lavinia rushes forward and embraces him.
Once she and Ezra alone, Christine
assures her that he has nothing to suspect with regards to Brant. Ezra
impulsively kisses her hand. The war has made him realize that they must
overcome the wall between them. Calculatingly Christine assures him that all is
well. They kiss.
Toward daybreak in Ezra's bedroom,
Christine slips out from the bed. Mannon's bitterly rebukes her. He knows the
house is not his and that Christine awaits his death to be free. Christine
deliberately taunts that she has indeed become Brant's mistress. Mannon rises
in fury, threatening her murder, and then falls back in agony, begging for his
medicine. Christine retrieves a box from her room and gives him the poison.
Mannon realizes her treachery and
calls Lavinia for help. Lavinia rushes to her father. With his dying effort,
Ezra indicts his wife: "She's guilty—not medicine!" he gasps and then
dies. Her strength gone, Christine collapses in a faint.
·
The Hunted
Peter, Lavinia, and Orin arrive at the
house. Orin disappointedly complains of Christine's absence. He jealously asks
Lavinia about what she wrote him regarding Brant. Lavinia warns him against
believing Christine's lies.
Suddenly Christine hurries out,
reproaching Peter for leaving Orin alone. Mother and son embrace jubilantly.
Suspiciously Orin asks Christine about Brant. Christine explains that Lavinia
has gone mad and begun to accuse her of the impossible. Orin sits at
Christine's feet and recounts his wonderful dreams about her and the South Sea
Islands. The Islands represented all the war was not: peace, warmth, and
security, or Christina herself. Lavinia reappears and coldly calls Orin to see
their father's body.
In the study, Orin tells Lavinia
that Christine has already warned him of her madness. Calculatingly Lavinia
insists that Orin certainly cannot let their mother's paramour escape. She
proposes that they watch Christine until she goes to meet Brant herself. Orin
agrees.
The night after Ezra's funeral,
Brant's clipper ship appears at a wharf in East Boston. Christine meets Brant
on the deck, and they retire to the cabin to speak in private. Lavinia and an
enraged Orin listen from the deck. The lovers decide to flee east and seek out
their Blessed Islands. Fearing the hour, they painfully bid each other
farewell. When Brant returns, Orin shoots him and ransacks the room to make it seem
that Brant has been robbed.
The following night Christine paces the
drive before the Mannon house. Orin and Lavinia appear, revealing that they
killed Brant. Christine collapses. Orin knees beside her pleadingly, promising
that he will make her happy, that they can leave Lavinia at home and go abroad
together. Lavinia orders Orin into the house. He obeys.
Christine glares at her daughter
with savage hatred and marches into the house. Lavinia determinedly turns her
back on the house, standing like a sentinel. A shot is heard from Ezra's study.
Lavinia stammers: "It is justice!"
·
The Haunted
A year later, Lavinia and Orin
return from their trip East. Lavinia's body has lost its military stiffness and
she resembles her mother perfectly. Orin has grown dreadfully thin and bears
the statue-like attitude of his father.
In the sitting room, Orin grimly
remarks that Lavinia's has stolen Christine's soul. Death has set her free to
become her. Peter enters from the rear and gasps, thinking he has seen
Christine's ghost. Lavinia approaches him eagerly. Orin jealously mocks his
sister, accusing her of becoming a true romantic during their time in the
Islands.
A month later, Orin works intently
at a manuscript in the Mannon study. Lavinia knocks sharply at the locked door.
With forced casualness, she asks Peter what he is doing. Orin insists that they
must atone for Mother's death. As the last male Mannon, he has written a
history of the family crimes, from Abe's onward. Lavinia is the most
interesting criminal of all. She only became pretty like Mother on Brant's
Islands, with the natives staring at her with desire.
When Orin accuses her of sleeping
with one of them, she assumes Christine's taunting voice. Reacting like Ezra,
Orin grasps his sister's throat, threatening her murder. He has taken Father's
place and she Mother's.
A moment later, Hazel and Peter
appear in the sitting room. Orin enters, insisting that he see Hazel alone. He
gives her a sealed envelope, enjoining her to keep it safe from his sister. She
should only open it if something happens to him or if Lavinia tries to marry
Peter. Lavinia enters from the hall. Hazel moves to leave, trying to keep
Orin's envelope hidden behind her back. Rushing to Orin, Lavinia beseeches him
to make her surrender it. Orin complies.
Orin tells his sister she can never
see Peter again. A "distorted look of desire" comes into his face.
Lavinia stares at him in horror, saying, "For God's sake—! No! You're
insane! You can't mean—!" Lavinia wishes his death. Startled, Orin
realizes that his death would be another act of justice. Mother is speaking
through Lavinia.
Peter appears in the doorway.
Unnaturally casual, Orin remarks that he was about to go clean his pistol and
exits. Lavinia throws herself into Peter's arms. A muffled shot is heard.
Three days later, Lavinia appears
dressed in deep mourning. A resolute Hazel arrives and insists that Lavinia not
marry Peter. The Mannon secrets will prevent their happiness. She already has
told Peter of Orin's envelope.
Peter arrives, and the pair pledges
their love anew. Started by the bitterness in his voice, Lavinia desperately
flings herself into his arms crying, "Take me, Adam!" Horrified,
Lavinia orders Peter home.
Lavinia cackles that she is bound to the
Mannon dead. Since there is no one left to punish her, she must punish
herself—she must entomb herself in the house with the ancestors.
“One of O’Neill’s enduring
masterpieces, ‘Mourning Becomes Electra’, represents the playwright’s most
complete use of Greek forms, themes, and characters. Based on the Oresteia
trilogy by Aeschylus, it was itself three plays in one. To give the story
credibility, O’Neill set the play in the New England of the civil war period,
yet he retained the forms and the conflicts of the Greek characters: the heroic
leader returning from war, adulterous wife, who murders him, his jealous,
repressed daughter, who avenges him through the murder of her mother, and his
weak, incestuous son, who is goaded by his sister first to matricide and then
to suicide.”
By
Arthur Gelb
v Style:
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“It is impossible to put one
‘label’ on Eugene O’Neill’s style of dramatization. And sometimes within
the framework, he is a naturalist, a romanticist, a symbolist often
bordering on the Surreal. He is an empiricist, a psychoanalyst, and a
mystagogue.”
(Bibliographical)
‘Like
William Shakespeare, O’Neill was a man of the theatre’
He
was born into it, grew up in it, worked in it, and wrote for it. He knew his
craft, and he hated the artificiality and pretense of the commercial theatre. He said:
|
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“The
theatre to me is life-the substance and interpretation of life… [And] life
is struggle.”
“The
theatre to me is life-the substance and interpretation of life… [And] life
is struggle.”
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O’Neill was an artist of
integrity and courage; he was constantly exploring, expanding and
experimenting. He tended towards realism in his work, rejecting material that
could not be verified by the senses. At time he played with non-realistic,
expressionistic devices, externalizing the interior state of a character with
sound or light or language. ‘Mourning Becomes Electra’ is perhaps the longest,
essentially consisting of three full length play, with a total of thirteen
acts. O’Neill’s view of humanity was despairing and nearly tragic, there are no
moral messages in his plays. He does not preach or promote causes. There are
few villians in his works; instead there are characters of enormous energy,
driven by huge passions- lust greed, ambition, and love. A major thematic
concern with O’Neill is obsessive love, love that derives a person without
reason and beyond conscience, love that does not heal but smothers and
destroys. Christine and Lavinia Mannon in Mourning Becomes Electra rose prime
example of the obsession.
O’Neill is not universally admired.
His principal detractors find his style crude, his language clumsy, and his
plays in need of ending. Concerning style, one must remember that O’Neill was
blazing a path separate from the contrivance of the romantic “well-made play”.
O’Neill is able to show great amount of information about his play just through the set alone. This is a unique aspect of his style. O’Neill’s stage directions focus on the individual characters. This occurs in all of O’Neill’s work but there is not finer example than in Mourning Becomes Electra when
Christine is described:-
“Christine
Mannon is a tall striking-looking woman of forty, but she appears younger. She moves with an animal
grace. Her face is usual, handsome rather than beautiful. One is struck by the
strange impression it gives in response of being not living flesh but a
wonderfully life-like pale mask, in which only
the deep-set eyes, of a dark vlet blue, are
alive.”
O’Neill uses striking titles. Mourning
Becomes Electra and Desire under the Elms follow a similar pattern. The title
Mourning Becomes Electra may have no real meaning to a reader at all prior to
reading the play. It is under whether Electra is a person or something else.
However after reading the play the genius of title is exposed. The title is a
reference to the Electra complex which plays a huge role in then play.
O’Neill brings the structure of Greek
play. He brings “Chorus” of people in Mourning Becomes Electra. Also, this
tragedy is influenced by the ancient Greek trilogy. The use of Greek tragedy as
a plot influence and structure design is a characteristic of O’Neill’s style
which sets him apart from others.
Eugene O’Neill is a playwright who was
so masterful and revolutionary in his language and style that it is impossible
to define it with just few sentences. There are consistent traits such as
extensive stage directions, evocative titles and Greek-styled structures that
separated him from other playwrights O’Neill’s style is versatile with many
facets.
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“O’Neill
traced the course of a modern dramatist in search of an aesthetic and
spiritual centre.”
Gassner
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- Language:-
O’Neill could use his skill effectively. In some pays he uses interior
monologue in some other he makes use of mask. He used dialects effectively for
special effects. His language is not as lofty as of the Greeks. It lacks the
Greek grammar. There is a feeling that he lacks “language” equal to reach of his non-verbal powers.
For
the language in Mourning Becomes ElectraO’Neill wrote:-
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“Masks in
that connection demand great language to speak-which let me out of it with
a sickening bump.”
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O’Neill could not succeed raising the
language. We find an inadequacy of language hampering to greater or lesser
degree.
On the other side if we see O’Neill
wrote about common life of sailors and farmers and social outcast where he
managed his language very well.
John Gassner argues that the
deficiency found in O’Neill’s language is not entirely the result of his lack
of endowment but of the modern division between prose and dramatic poetry.
O’Neill could create lusty language at
Electra-Lavinia’s tragic closing of the doors upon herself in Mourning Becomes
Electra. He could not become the great poet, dramatist that he wanted to be. He
was described by some critics as “Prose
Shakespeare.” Yet there is in this realist-naturalist-
symbolist-experimentalist playwright a strain of poetry that makes him almost a
romantic.
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“In
O’Neill plays there is reality and there is joy of life, his vocabulary is
rich with the richness of life and work, and his people have that wildness
which civilization accentuates. His speeches are fully flavoured as a nut
or an apple and they have the poetry of human endeavour and suffering.”
-
Andrew E. Malone
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v Conclusion:-
O’Neill was pioneer American dramatist. He
wrote moving and powerful tragedies. The chief theme of O’Neill’s plays in man
in relation to his society, his God and the Universe, O’Neill experimented
successfully with new techniques of drama. He wrote lengthy plays. His lengthy
plays are of epic dimensions and through these O’Neill brought to the American
theatre spaciousness that was known only on the Greek stage where an Aeschylean
trilogy kept the people spell bound for house, O’Neill introduced naturalism in
America. O’Neill’s play Mourning Becomes Electra is the psycho-analysis of the
characters of the plays. O’Neill’s all the plays possess the modern
characteristics of the plays of the Modern Age. The tragedy Mourning Becomes
Electra has been rich in dialects and possesses amusing style. The mixing of
ancient and modern elements is interesting. The characters seem real.
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