Critical note on Mourning becomes Electra

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Critical note on Mourning becomes Electra

Name: Nikunj Bhatti

Roll no.:19

M.A. Semester:  3

Enrolment No.: 14101005

Year: 2015-16

Paper no.: 10. The American Literature

Email id.:nikunjbhatti332@gmail.com

Submitted to: Department of English

 Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

     

Abstract

In his "Mounring Becomes Electra", Eugene O'Neill has taken a great and renewed classical theme and has given it a modern interpretation in the light of his interest in Freudian psychology. In this thesis I have tried to show first the chief details about themes, O’Neil’s style of writing and language, Myths as well as 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. O’Neill’s ‘Mourning Becomes Electra’, has used myth and legend as symbols to give a broad and universal significance to his theme. In this play he used the Electra legend to achieve an approximation to the Greek sense of fate, such as would appeal to modern audiences.

Keywords:  Mourning Becomes Electra, Electra, Oedipus

Mourning Becomes Electra is considered Eugene Gladstone O'Neill’s most ambitious work. In the play, he adapts the Greek tragic myth Oresteia to nineteenth century New England. Generally, critics praised the play as one of O’Neill’s best. O'Neill was genius. He brought change in American drama depiction. He used realism and expressionism. He did bold experiment. He used naturalistic details with symbolist mood, suggestiveness that was known only on the Greek stage. According to John Gassner,

“The stature of Eugene O'Neill casts a long shadow on the American theater whether it stretches or contracts in the critical estimates of a particular period or critic, this much is certain: the height and breadth of the American theater is measured by it. Find fault with O’Neill and you find fault with O’Neill and you find fault with the entire American stage, find merit in him and you find worth in this striving or straining toward significant drama.”

O’Neill won the Pulitzer Prize four times and received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1936. At the time, he was only the second American writer to receive that international honor, the first being novelist Sinclair Lewis.

Mourning Becomes Electra is divided into three plays titled Homecoming, The Hunted, and The Haunted. However, these plays are never produced individually, but only as part of the larger trilogy. Each of these plays contains four to five acts, and so Mourning Becomes Electra is extraordinarily lengthy for a drama. In first part ‘The Homecoming’ Ezra Mannon is killed and in the second one Brant and Christine died. Now let’s see what happens in the third part.

The Haunted is the second part of the Trilogy. In this part Orin returns from war. He got injury in head. Christine was successful in getting favor of her son. Lavinia gives minute details regarding Christine in the room where her father’s dead body has been lying. Lavinia and Orin follow Christine to the ship in which she has gone to warn Brant against Orin. Orin shots Brant. The next day Christine commits suicide. Lavinia gives the impression that he mother has father’s death.

In ‘The Hunted, Orin and Lavinia are back after visiting china and various other islands of the south East Lavinia has grown more beautiful like her mother and her brother has incestuous love for her. Lavinia wanted Orin to marry Hazal who was peter’s sister but her wise could not be fulfilled. She herself wanted to marry peter but this wise of hers remained unfulfilled. Orin shoots himself. Lavinina loved peter very much but breaks with him.

Amos Ames is a middle-aged carpenter, Amos and his wife Louisa form part of the chorus in Homecoming and The Haunted. Doctor Blake is a “stout,” “self important” family physician, who, as part of the chorus in The Hunted. Josiah Borden a manager of the Mannon family’s shipping company; Josh and his wife Emma appear as part of the chorus of town folk in The Hunted, Captain Adam Brant is the black sheep of the Mannon family; it is his quest for revenge that propels the play. When his father, David Mannon, is exiled from his family for marrying Marie Brantome, Brant’s family falls into ruin. Christine is Ezra Mannon’s wife and mother of Lavinia and Orin. She hates her husband and has an incestuous love for her son. While Ezra was away fighting in the Civil War, she began a passionate affair with Adam Brant They plan to kill Ezra so they can be together. Mannon Ezra is Christine’s husband and father of Lavinia and Orin. He is the patriarch of the Mannon family. As the play opens, he returns from the Civil War.

As per the title “ Mourning Becomes Electra” Mourning means :The expression of sadness for someone’s death, Grief , lament , lamentation Black clothes worn as an expression of sorrow when someone dies.“Electra” means sparkling, the fairy sun “Becomes “in the sense of “befits” Electra to mourn it is her fate Mourning (sorrow) is becoming to her, it is the only color that becomes her destiny.

“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:

“The theater to me is life the substance and interpretation of life… [And] life is struggle.”

     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 villains 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.

Traditionally in Greek tragedies, the chorus consists of masked actors who dance and chant. Generally, they do not participate in the action itself, which allows them to remain objective and offer advice or commentary. They often present background information and represent the community’s position or traditional values. In the Mourning Becomes Electra trilogy, the groups of local.

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.

“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.”

          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 Electra O‛Neill wrote:-

“Masks in that connection demand great language to speak which let me out of it with a sickening bump.”

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- symbolic-experimental playwright a strain of poetry that makes him almost a romantic.

Eugene O’Neill is a playwright who uses symbols frequently and effectively. The use of specific types of symbols used by O’Neill becomes evident after reading his work. Perhaps the most noticeable symbols in his plays are the titles. His titles are obviously carefully selected and hold a deeper meaning than they appear to; only after reading the play does the reader fully understand the significance of the title. The titles of O’Neill’s plays are symbols in themselves. For example the title Mourning Becomes Electra is initially unclear. It is obvious that some sort of mourning is involved but it is unclear what “Electra” signifies. After reading the play the reader should realize that “Electra” is clearly not a person. Actually, Electra refers to the Electra complex, which makes perfect sense after reading the play. O’Neill often uses three different types of symbols: titles, background noises, and buildings/land.

O’ Neill’s “Mourning Becomes Electra” is a continuation of the Greek tradition. It is rare to find two principal complexes “Electra” and “Oedipus” in one work of art. Here we have both as parallel themes. The tragic implications as will be observed are of the kind that generates emotions of purgation and emotional relief. However, it’s set in a modern scene. The play “Mourning Becomes Electra” has much in common with the grand style of ancient Greek tragedy. It is the suffering of human beings that results in an ennobling effect. The characters have complex psychological hang-ups which contribute towards their doom. On the Greek pattern we have a trilogy with three parts: The Homecoming, The Hunted, and The Haunted. Whereas in the Greek cases, the psychological aspect is disguised and barely identifiable, in O’Neill it constitutes the essence of drama.

Christine had no such anger to be redressed. For her it was a simple case of husband change. Having got bored or fed up with one Patriarch, she wanted to experience the ecstasy of love. Up to this point the story may be taken as a recasting of the Greek myth. What happens ahead is O’Neill’s own interpretation. In this case the daughter Lavinia too is in love with the mother’s paramour and hence an opponent. There is a strong psychoanalytical stance as the daughter is expressively preoccupied with “Electra” complex. She is consumed by love for father and is obsessively involved in revenge for his death.

 

According to the play, the “Oedipus complex” arises because the mother loves the father too little and the son too much. This Freudian hypothesis explains the attraction and attachments that motivate the events each Mannon is drawn by an unconscious impulse to that person who resembles the parent of the opposite sex. Oedipus is a Greek mythological character based on the myth of “Oedipus Rex” was written by Sophocles. Oedipus who unwittingly kills his father, Laius and marries his mother Jocasta. (Wikipedia)

For example,

“I loved [Orin]”, Christine says, "until he let you and your father nag him into the war, in spite of my begging him not leave me alone". (Eugene)

Here we can see love between Christine and her son Orin.

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. Like Oresteia, O’Neill’s play features themes of fate, revenge, hubris, adultery, and honor. Many critics note that the play reflects his recurring concerns about the unsuccessful struggle of an individual to escape a tragic fate and the dark nature of human existence.

Revenge serves as a primary motivation for the play’s actions. Seeking to revenge the death of his mother, Marie Brantome, Adam hopes to destroy the Mannon family, especially Ezra. Paradise is an obsession for many of the play’s characters. As a seafaring family, early generations of Mannons had sailed to beautiful South Pacific isles. Orin wants to run away with his mother Christine—an attempt to escape societal norms so that he can sleep with his mother. Christine wants to go with her lover, Adam.

Incest and incestuous desire lie behind most of the relationships central to Mourning Becomes Electra. Ezra’s daughter Lavinia loves her father; Christine’s son Orin loves his mother, and Lavinia and Orin love each other. While O’Neill presents these relationships as unconsummated desires, Orin does urge Lavinia to sleep with him in act three of The Haunted, hoping that by committing incest that they will be bound together in sin and guilt. His sister refuses. (Themes)

Sin and Guilt as a theme O’Neill’s work illustrates his fascination with sin, guilt, punishment, and redemption. In Mourning Becomes Electra, the sins include murder (Christine’s killing of her husband; Lavinia and Orin’s killing of Adam); adultery (Christine’s with Brant); suicide (Christine’s and Orin’s); and premarital sex (Lavinia’s with the islander). In a sense, Ezra murders Brant’s mother by refusing the sick woman money for food and medicine. Also, Lavinia “kills” Christine and Orin by driving them both to commit suicide. Orin’s feelings of guilt lead him to write his confession, which he threatens to give to Peter if Lavinia marries him. At the play’s end, Lavinia’s guilt forces her to give up hopes of happiness and to punish herself, as the last Mannon, by rejecting love and shutting herself in the house.

To sum up, “Mourning Becomes Electra” is a multi era play and has within it some aspect of twentieth century thought. It is condensed philosophy and a plausible guide for an individual embarking on a scholastic venture.  In ‘Mourning Becomes Electra’, O’Neill has used myth and legend as symbols to give a broad and universal significance to his theme. In this play he used the Electra legend to achieve an approximation to the Greek sense.

 

Works Cited

Eugene:  Eugene, O'Neill. Mourning Becomes Electra. New York City, 1931.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Oedipus_complex&oldid=685435759

Themes: http://www.sparknotes.com/drama/mourning/themes.html

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