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Objects and Madness in Eugene O'neill's Drama This document is downloaded from DR‑NTU (https://dr.ntu.edu.sg) Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Objects and madness in Eugene O'Neill's drama Nur Shereen Mohamed Rafi 2020 Nur Shereen Mohamed Rafi. (2020). Objects and madness in Eugene O'Neill's drama. Master's thesis, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. https://hdl.handle.net/10356/145723 https://doi.org/10.32657/10356/145723 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution‑NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY‑NC 4.0). Downloaded on 30 Sep 2021 18:46:15 SGT OBJECTS AND MADNESS IN EUGENE O’NEILL’S DRAMA NUR SHEREEN D/O MOHAMED RAFI SCHOOL OF HUMANITIES 2020 Objects and Madness in Eugene O’Neill’s Drama NUR SHEREEN D/O MOHAMED RAFI School of Humanities A thesis submitted to the Nanyang Technological University in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Arts 2020 Statement of Originality I certify that all work submitted for this thesis is my original work. I declare that no other person's work has been used without due acknowledgement. Except where it is clearly stated that I have used some of this material elsewhere, this work has not been presented by me for assessment in any other institution or University. I certify that the data collected for this project are authentic and the investigations were conducted in accordance with the ethics policies and integrity standards of Nanyang Technological University and that the research data are presented honestly and without prejudice. 26 July 2020 . Date Nur Shereen D/O Mohamed Rafi Supervisor Declaration Statement I have reviewed the content of this thesis and to the best of my knowledge, it does not contain plagiarised materials. The presentation style is also consistent with what is expected of the degree awarded. To the best of my knowledge, the research and writing are those of the candidate except as acknowledged in the Author Attribution Statement. I confirm that the investigations were conducted in accordance with the ethics policies and integrity standards of Nanyang Technological University and that the research data are presented honestly and without prejudice. Authorship Attribution Statement This thesis does not contain any materials from papers published in peer-reviewed journals or from papers accepted at conferences in which I am listed as an author. 26 July 2020 . Date Nur Shereen D/O Mohamed Rafi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Assoc. Prof. Daniel Keith Jernigan, for his continuous support and feedback throughout this journey. My central idea changed numerous times before finally settling on this, and I appreciate his knowledge, guidance, and patience. It would be hard to imagine a better supervisor for this thesis. I would also like to thank Asst. Prof. Kevin Andrew Riordan, who was my supervisor for my Final Year Project and part of the committee at my confirmation. His guidance over the years has been invaluable to me and I have learnt a lot in the process. Asst. Prof. Michelle Chiang was also part of the committee at my confirmation and I appreciate her support and feedback, which encouraged me to look beyond my initial ideas. My sincere thanks also go to my fellow postgraduates, especially Karen Lui Jia Yi, who has been on this arduous journey with me. I can be completely lost at times and she has always been there to bless me with her knowledge over the past six years. Thank you to Abigail Shantini for your constant entertainment and support these years. I cannot express how wonderful the Humanities & Social Sciences Library is. There were plenty of resources for me to embark on this thesis, and whenever I needed a new text, the staff were quick to order a copy for me. Last but not least, I would like to express my love and appreciation for my family. My parents, Rafi and Vahida, have been incredibly supportive of me and ensured I was well-fed in the process. Thank you to Shiraz, Hanna, Nani, and Adam for entertaining me. My African Grey, Zazu, has always been there for me (not that he had much of a choice) and has always calmed me down. Thank you to Mith and Diyan, who are like family to me. And, of course, thank you to my gym. i TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................ i TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................ ii SUMMARY .................................................................................................................. iii PART I: INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................... 1 PART II: THE UNSEEN SIDE OF THE PRIMITIVE MASK ................................ 12 PART III: DION ANTHONY’S MAD MASK............................................................. 26 PART IV: THE GREAT MOTHER DYNAMO ......................................................... 39 PART V: TWO VERSIONS OF THE SUMMERHOUSE ......................................... 53 PART VI: QUESTIONING THE INFLUENCE OF THE GOWN ........................... 74 PART VII: CONCLUSION ........................................................................................... 93 CITATION ….................................................................................................................. 101 ii SUMMARY This thesis explores the link between objects and madness in American dramatist Eugene O’Neill’s plays. O’Neill was interested in the “abnormal mental conditions” (Stamm, “Dramatic Experiments” 9) of his characters, a theme he explored in numerous plays through realism and expressionism. O’Neill experiments with the “determining circumstances” (Stamm, “Faithful Realism” 244) of his characters with various tangible objects. The five plays analysed are All God’s Chillun Got Wings, The Great God Brown, Dynamo, More Stately Mansions, and Long Day’s Journey into Night, chosen as they are the best examples of plays which delve into the tragic consequences of mental illness. Throughout O’Neill’s plays, there is a tension between the seen and the unseen in terms of what causes the mad characters to succumb to madness – a tension that is at least partly paralleled in a tension considering how O’Neill’s plays are to be categorised. This thesis traces the evolution of O’Neill’s objects from mad objects that have power over the characters to objects that cause madness in characters due to the associations of their memories and beliefs with those objects. O’Neill experiments with different modes, objects, and types of madness to illuminate how, in each play, the most important element is the object. I will then consider whether classifying the plays as symbolist amplifies the influence of the object over the respective characters. iii PART I: INTRODUCTION Often regarded as the first major American dramatist (Shiach 13), Eugene O’Neill is credited with going “beyond the superficiality of surface realism to a level of psychological realism never before achieved in American drama” (Demastes 20). Realist theatre involves a dramatist putting “on the stage only what he could verify by observing ordinary life” and consists of “dialogue which avoided poetic fights and excessive sentiment” (Styan, Realism 5). While ‘realism’ and ‘naturalism’ are often used interchangeably, there are notable differences between the two. French novelist Émile Zola was the first to outline a theory of naturalism in literature (Styan, Realism 6). His philosophy of naturalist novel and drama was: one of absolute objectivity, with setting, characterisation and dialogue rendered so close to actual life that an audience would be convinced by its illusion of reality. A playwright had only to reproduce man’s environment, endow it with human life and show that one produced the other, and what had seemed small and insignificant could be important and urgent (Styan, Realism 8). Naturalism in drama demonstrates how Man is altered by his environment, paying attention to specific forces, no matter how ‘small and insignificant’ they seem. By all accounts, O’Neill was both a realist and a naturalist as he employs both techniques in his works. For this thesis, though, I will refer to O’Neill’s realist and naturalist plays as ‘realist’. O’Neill began his playwriting career in 1913, writing in the mode of realism whereby characters speak in prose rather than verse, and the plays are set in the real world. However, his plays do not function merely as demonstrations or replications of the observable world, intended to entertain audiences. Rather, O’Neill probes deeply into the psyche of his characters, exploring how the past influences the present and how these characters function in their environment, among other things. 1 Prior to realism, American theatre was struggling to develop a form of its own and to discover itself. Unlike Europe, America had little “literary and cultural heritage from which to draw” (Demastes 20). American theatre “had been largely given over to melodramas and lavish spectacle” (Shiach 10) as theatre favoured “time-tested box office successes or sensational, sentimental, and melodramatic audience-grabbers” (Demastes 11). O’Neill was thus “writing at the end of a period when a flamboyant, semi-professional style of acting … had held the stage for nearly a century” (Bogard qtd. in Demastes 21). American theatre’s interest in realism started around 1889 (Demastes 18) as “Americans had finally begun to find native sources of material and to use
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