Paper no - 10 The American Literature

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                                     Name: Mital M. Raval      

                                             Roll No: 19

                                           M.A. SEM: 3

                                 Batch Year: 2016 – 2018

                         Enrollment No: 2069108420170026

                         Email Id: ravalmital5292@gmail.com

                           Paper Name: American Literature

 Assignment Topic: Mourning become Electra as a tragedy in modern Sense.

                                 Submitted to: Dr. Dilip Barad

                                        Smt. S. b. Gardi

                                     Department of English

                                   M .k. Bhavnagar University

About the author:

                                 

                                       

       Eugene Gladstone O’Neill was born in October 16, 1888 in New York City and died in November 27, 1953. He was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in Literature. He was son of James O’Neill the popular romantic actor. He was great dramatist because he uses the reality in his drama. He writes comedy as well as tragedy. He was lover of the sea. He spent some year at sea, during which he suffered from depression and alcoholism. He wrote so many plays during his time.

His works are: 

Full length play	One act play
The Hairy Ape, 1922	Bound East for Cardiff, 1914
The First Man, 1922	In The Zone, 1917
Anna Christie, 1920 - Pulitzer Prize, 1922	The Long Voyage Home, 1917
Strange Interlude 1928 - Pulitzer Prize	Moon of the Caribbees, 1918
Mourning become Electra 1931	A Wife for a Life, 1913
Beyond the Horizon, 1918 - Pulitzer Prize, 1920	The Web, 1913

(Wikipedia)

       He has been called the first American to succeed in writing tragedy for the theater, a fulfillment of his avowed purpose, for he had declared that in the tragic, alone, lay the meaning of life and the hope. He sought in Freud’s concept of the subconscious the equivalent of the Greek idea of fate and modeled his great trilogy, Mourning Becomes Electra, on Aeschylus’s Oresteia.

 

About the novel:

                                

                                         

 

         Mourning Becomes Electra is a play cycle written by American playwright Eugene O'Neill. The story is a retelling of the Oresteia by Aeschylus. It is also trilogy of Psychological tragedies and the infamous trials of Oedipus. The characters this play are parallel characters from the ancient Greek play. For example, Agamemnon from the Oresteia becomes General Ezra Mannon. Clytemnestra becomes Christine, Orestes becomes Orin, Electra becomes Lavinia, Aegisthus becomes Adam Brant, etc. As a Greek tragedy made modern, the play features murder, adultery, incestuous love and revenge, and even a group of townspeople who function as a kind of Greek chorus. Though fate alone guides characters' actions in Greek tragedies, O'Neill's characters have motivations grounded in 1930s-era psychological theory as well. The play can easily be read from a Freudian perspective, paying attention to various characters' Oedipus complexes and Electra complexes.

       Mourning Becomes Electra is divided into three plays with themes that correspond to the Oresteia trilogy. Much like Aeschylus' plays Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers and The Eumenides, these three plays by O'Neil are titled Homecoming, The Hunted, and The Haunted. However, these plays are normally not produced individually, but only as part of the larger trilogy. Each of these plays contains four to five acts, with only the first act of The Haunted being divided into actual scenes, and so Mourning Becomes Electra is extraordinarily lengthy for a drama. In production, it is often cut down. Also, because of the large cast size, it is not performed as often as some of O'Neill's other major plays. In the entire play we find theme of ‘sex’, ‘murder’, and ‘death’.

 
 

         

           

Some feature of modern tragedy:

• The meaning of modern tragedy is “ordinary people in tragic situation”.

• In modern tragedy everything is simplified. People are stripped down to what is essential.

• Must fall from the throne.

• They don't have to look real, real in essence, any action is simple.

•   Person in high position falls to great depth. All central characters die or are destroyed.

•  Modern tragedy is to fall from great height all central characters die, no way out of dilemma. Has to be done in stylized manner. (Abwag)

          These all feature are implied one or another way in this play. So lets us we look how it is tragedy in modern sense. 

                    

Mourning becomes Electra as tragedy in modern sense:

         “Mourning become Electra” play has many feature of modern tragedy. This story is about the ordinary man not about a king or queen like Old Greek tragedy. In the end of the modern tragedy all central character must be died at the same way in this play also all central characters are died. Off course the story of this play O’Neill adopted from the great Greek story of “Oresteia”, but it follows modern feature of the drama. 

            Mourning become Electra is a continuation of the Greek tradition with Freudian unconscious and Puritan heritage of 19^th century in New England setting. It is rare to find both “Electra” and “Oedipus” complexes in a single work of art. But here we have both as parallel themes. Novel set in a modern milieu; the plot, the characterization, and the storyline are all reflective of the ancient tradition. In the words of Lawrence A. Johnsen, 

“Mourning become Electra is a tale of ancient hatreds, illegitimacy, revenge, family secrets and murder”. 

           The story of this play follows Greek play. What happens next in the story it is Eugene O’Neill’s own interpretation. In this case the daughter Lavinia too is in love with the mother’s paramour and hence an opponent. Then, there is a strong psychoanalytical stance in the play since Lavinia is obsessively preoccupied with “Electra” complex. She is consumed by love for father and is expressively involved in revenge for his death. Lavinia tells Ezra explicitly: “You are the only man I shall ever love. I am going to stay with you.”

       Along with Lavinia’s Electra complex there is another complex we found in the play namely Oedipus complex. It is found in two characters Orin and Brant. Oedipus complex means ‘mother’s love towards son or son love towards mother’.  In the play Adam loves his mother and Christine; Orin loves her mother and Lavinia; Lavinia loves her father, Adam and Orin; Ezra loves both daughter and wife; Christine loves both her son and Adam. This kind of complexity we found in this modern play. Adam tells Lavinia:

“You are like your mother in some ways. Your face is dead image of hers. And look at your hair. You will not meet another in a month of Sundays. I only know one other woman who had it. You will think it strange when I tell you. It was my mother.” 

         Christine too is pre-occupied with Lavinia’s Electra complex. She reminds Lavinia: “You have always tried to become wife of your father and mother of Orin. You have always schemed to steal my place.” Thus both Orin’s Oedipus complex and Lavinia’s Electra complex remain at the core of the story. Orin’s mother complex is developed at some length. He is his mother’s love and his baby. Orin’s love for his mother is always reverential. His greeting on their first encounter in the play has curious juxtaposition: “Mother! God it is good to see you.” Christine deals with him in seductive terms, emphasizing physicality in their relationship: “You are a big man now, are not you? I cannot believe it. It seems only yesterday when I used to find you in night-shirt.” 

      According to Freudian hypothesis each Mannon is drawn by unconscious impulse towards the parent of opposite sex. In Orin and Lavinia this impulse has grown into fixation. The most obvious instance of Freudian complex is Orin’s fixation at her mother. While away at war, Orin dreamt of his mother as an Island of Peace. Supplementary to this dream was the illusion each man he killed at the front resembled his father. The desire to posses his mother and kill his father give him classical Oedipal symptoms. This incites him to kill Adam and the brunt of his hatred falls on his father’s figure. Christine’s presence always has softening effect on him. When he witnesses Christine’s disintegration as a result of Adam’s murder, he pleads her: “Mother does not moan like that! How could you grieve for your servant’s bastard?”

          After Christine’s suicide, Orin’s life is shattered. Lavinia takes him to the Islands of East. After a year the reader finds them taking the roles of their father and mother as Orin tells Lavinia: “Are not you see I am in father’s place and you are mother?” Orin’s complex is made explicit when he makes incestuous proposal to Lavinia: “I love you now with all the guilt in me–the guilt we share. Perhaps I love you much Vinnie…How else can I be sure you will not leave me? You would feel as guilty as I am!”

        When Lavinia shouts at Orin that he should commit suicide, at that time Orin hears his mother’s voice: “Yes that would be justice–you are mother now. She is speaking through you…Death is an Island of Peace–mother will be waiting for me there.” Orin’s suicide is return to his mother–death is to peace; it is passage into oblivion.

       After Orin’s death, Lavinia’s puritan heritage reclaims itself. Although she tries to break away from the tradition and escape with Peter but her dream crumbles down as she calls Peter ‘Adam’ in a Freudian slip. Afterwards she accepts her fate with Puritan spirit of resignation and locks herself in Mannon house to live with the ghosts of dead in expiation for all their crimes. The Mannon catches Lavinia in the end–being born was starting to die. The Mannon house is sepulcher and her life is living death henceforth.

         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. (Notes)

Conclusion:

           At the concluding part we can say that Mourning become Electra play is about tresses of “incest” between mother and son, daughter and father. We also find ‘Totem and Taboo’ in this play for example, Christen has having a sexual relationship with Adam while she is in a near incestuous relationship with her son Orin. On the other hand, Lavinia is seeking an incestuous relationship with her father and cannot allow her brother, Orin, to escape from under her influence over to Hazel.

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Works Cited

Abwag, webside of. Moden tagedy. n.d.

Notes, MA English Super. “Mourning Becomes Electra”–Modern Counterpart of Greek Tragedy: . 2016.

Wikipedia,Eugene O'Neill. n.d.