JAC : A Journal Of Composition Theory ISSN : 0731-6755
Women in Arthur Miller‟sAll my Sons and Death of a Salesman Ms. Sonia Chahal Department of English (Asst. Prof.) G.K.S.M. Govt. College,TandaUrmar, Punjab, India Email: [email protected] Mobile: 9855578798
Abstract-The world of Arthur Miller, one of the most significant American playwrights, is not known for its pictures of impressive women. The centre of action in most of Miller‟s plays is family. However, mother is not necessarily the pivot in the families of Miller. Kate Keller and Linda Loman, the two mothers in Arthur Miller‟s most popular plays All my Sons(1947) and Death of a Salesman(1950) are in no ways memorable characters. Rather, the father-son relationship is at the heart of both the plays. In spite of their love and devotion for their families, both Kate and Linda prove to be ineffectual characters. Miller‟s projection of their characters stands counter to the American social trend of giving more and more freedom and equality to women. However, we must remember that Arthur Miller lived in the America of post-World War II era. In that period of time, the role of women was limited to the traditional one of a housekeeper alone. This reality of American society explains the female characters of his play. Even Sue Bayliss and Lydia Lubey in All my Sons, who belong to the younger generation, are essentially homemakers. Ann Deeveris the only female character in both the plays who is a woman of substance and stands apart from the rest of them. Barring her, men occupy the primary and all-important place in Miller‟s world.
Keywords: American society, passive, traditional, housekeeping, submissive.
Full Paper Arthur Miller, one of the most significant American playwrights, is known for taking up in his plays serious issues confronting the American society. His plays, invariably reflect his moral, social and political concerns. The central theme of one of his earlier plays All my Sons(1947) is a businessman‟s evasion of responsibility for a decision in wartime which led to the loss of twenty-one lives. Willy Loman of Death of a Salesman(1950) is a victim of the American dream of success. However, the world of Miller is not known for its pictures of impressive women. Both the plays have women characters who appear to be neither extraordinary nor memorable. They do not influence the action in any significant way and one might go as far as to say that they can even be dispensed with, without doing any serious damage to the play. It is surprising that Miller, who is otherwise known for his complex characters, chose to create such insipid, flat and wishy-washy female characters.
Though Miller‟s plays are never devoid of a social context, the centre of action in most of the plays is the family. However, mother is not necessarily the pivot in the families of Miller. Rather, the father is the unquestioned head of the unit. He wields absolute authority and power over his family. Joe Keller and Willy Loman are the typical patriarchs in their respective families. During the time of war, Keller had a contract for the manufacture of airplane cylinder heads, a batch of which developed manufacturing defect. Instead of trashing
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those defective pieces, Joe Keller told his partner, Steve Deever on the telephone “to weld, cover up the cracks in any way he could, and ship them out.”1 He compounded his crime furtherby skilfully shifting the blame onto his partner, Steve Deever and escaped the law. However, Keller family was not able to escape the brunt of the tragedy of war entirely. His younger son Larry, a fighter pilot, died in an air crash during the war. As the play opens, we see that Joe‟s dreams are now centred around his elder son, Chris. He tells Chris, “I‟m going to build you a house, stone with a driveway from the road. I want you to spread out, Chris, I want you to use what I made for you.” (p.39) Willy Loman, similarly is immensely proud of his elder son, Biff from whom he has high hopes. As Biff has distinguished himself as a good footballer very early in life, Willy tells his brother Ben, “Without a penny to his name, three great universities are begging for him, and from there the sky is the limit.” (2) In both the plays, the sons have great affection and respect for their fathers. Chris‟ admiration for his father is apparent from what he says to Ann, about Joe, “Isn‟t he a great guy?” (p.34)Biff idolizes his father so much that when he flunks mathematics in school, he travels all the way to Boston to meet his father. He thinks that only Willy can prevail upon the mathematics teacher to consider his case.
In both the plays, the father figures exercise great authority and power over their sons. Joe Keller, for instance, does not let Chris leave the family business. Willy Loman has a hand in spoiling his son. Far from reprimanding him for stealing a football from the school locker- room, Willy almost expresses his approval of Biff‟s action by telling him that the “coach probably congratulate you on your initiative.”(p.63) Thus, brought up, Biff wanders from place to place, takes up job after job, but fails to make good. Both the father-figures are shown as moral miscreants. The moral misdeeds of both Joe Keller and Willy Loman become the cause of conflict between the father and the son in both the plays. Joe Keller is a criminal while Willy Loman is an adulterer. It is the knowledge of his father‟s complicity in the misdeed of shipping out defective cylinder heads to the army that brings about a serious upheaval in the life of Chris Keller. Life will never be the same for Chris as is clear from his outburst, “I know you‟re no worse than most men but I thought you were better. I never saw you as my father. (Almost breaking) I can‟t look at you this way. I can‟t look at myself.”(p.87) He has decided to leave his family and home for good. The discovery is unbearably shocking for Chris, since he has always been an idealist. He simply cannot fathom how his father could have thought about business at a time when so many young boys were making the supreme sacrifice for their motherland. He cries out in anguish, “You are not even an animal, what animal kills his own, what are you?”(p.76) Biff Loman is similarly shaken to the core, at the discovery of his father‟s adultery. It is all the more devastating for him because he chances upon its shocking discovery while he is still in his formative years. After failing in Mathematics, Biff follows his salesman father Willy to Boston. There, he sees a strange woman in his father‟s hotel room. This affects the young Biff deeply. All the pleadings by Willy fall on deaf ears. Biff leaves the room after telling his father: “Don‟t touch me, you ---liar! You fake! You phoney little fake! You fake!”(p.138) The sexual aberration on the part of his father spells doom for the life and career of young Biff. He never completes his graduation. He throws away his chance to reappear in the examination and thus ruins his life. As Willy tells Bernard, his neighbour‟s son later in the play, “He flunked the subject, and laid down and died like a hammer hit him.”(p.115)
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The father-son conflict is at the heart of both the plays. The conflict ends with the suicides of both Joe Keller and Willy Loman. The salvation of both the sons, in a way,comes at the hands of their fathers only. Though he is greatly pained at the death of his father, we know that Chris will be able to begin his life anew as his father has atoned for his sin by paying with his life. He will do as told by his mother, Kate, “Don‟t dear. Don‟t take it on yourself. Forget now. Live.”(p.90) In Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman takes his own life so that his family may get twenty thousand dollars as insurance money. The death of his father brings Biff Loman face-to-face with his own reality as well as that of his father. It is as if through the tragedy of his father that Biff comes to an understanding of his self and where he stands in terms of talent and capability in the world of intense competition. The realization and acceptance that he is “a dime a dozen”(p.148) is complete now. When the play ends, Biff is ready to leave once again for his wanderings. But he has overcome his restlessness. He has cast off his illusions that he is someone special and has no false self-image now. Both Chris and Biff attain a high level of self-reconciliation as a consequence of being involved in and watching the tragedy of their fathers closely from a vantage point. If the discovery of the ethical misconduct of both the fathers had wrought havoc and devastation in the lives of both the sons, the deaths of their fathers fill the sons with a strange calm and acceptance. The lives that had been derailed earlier become normal once again.
Notably, in the context of Miller‟s plays, the wife and the mother do not have a significant place in the scheme of things. Miller‟s female characters are more often than not passive and innocent with little will or judgement of their own. They are confined within the four walls of their home and hardly know the outside world. The women in the world of Miller are essentially home makers. They have little connection with the world outside. Linda not only looks after the house beautifully, she also manages the finances very well. She keeps Willy updated on instalments. Not only that, she is also a frugal wife who keeps on mending old stockings instead of buying new ones. Willy keeps on scolding her on this count. Kate, Joe‟s wife, also runs a well-kept house. We always see her preoccupied with the nitty gritty of household chores. Her house is open to guests at all hours. George Deever, her former neighbour, affectionately remembers Kate‟s hospitality in the past when he used to come over to Keller household as a child. He is pleasantly surprised to see that Kate still remembers his preference for grape juice and has some ready for him.
Both Linda and Kate are devoted wives and loving mothers as well. Linda, the wife and mother, is affectionate and caring. Willy, though curt with her at times, confesses to her, “You are my foundation and support Linda.”(p.53) Linda is all the time worried about her family. She is particularly concerned about her elder son, Biff, who at the ripe age of 34 has not yet found his feet and drifts from one job to another. Kate is likewise entirely devoted to her husband and her sons. Though she is aware of the grave misdeed of Joe, we never find her lacking in support for her husband. The extent of her love for her sons can be understood from her inability to come to terms with Larry‟s death. The very beginning of the play finds her in a very distraught state of mind because the tree planted in the memory of her son has been uprooted in the wake of heavy storm. In Kate, throughout the play, we see a grieving mother, unable to come to terms with the death of her son. She is the only one in the family, who still clings to the hope that Larry is alive and will come back one day.
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In spite of their love and devotion for their families, both Kate and Linda prove to be largely ineffectual characters. Though Linda tries to mend the attitude of Biff towards his father, she is largely unsuccessful in doing so. She reminds her sons of the great love their father has always borne for them. Later in the play, when Willy has been treated disgracefully by both the boys in the restaurant, Linda again loses her temper and reprimands them severely. However, she is unable to avert the tragedy that befalls her husband later. Kate also, despite her best efforts, fails to bring about a reconciliation between the father and son. This results in the suicide of Joe Keller. Critics have even accused Linda of deliberately encouraging her husband in his lies and self-delusion. Her main interest seems to be to somehow keep things going. It seems as if she supports Willy‟s dreams without having the slightest faith in them. Her most important interests are stability and continuation of the same situation. Here she appears to be a woman of very limited imagination That is why, she strongly discourages her husband from going away with Ben, his elder brother, to try his luck in Alaska. Willy might have succeeded in fulfilling his dreams of success, had he embarked on thejourney of tapping the potential of the yet unexplored parts of the great land of America. However, Linda‟s insistence on “here and now” makes success quite elusive for Willy, a man with no extraordinary talent to survive in the big bad world of intensecompetition of a big city. At that time, Willy fails to recognize in Linda‟s stance “a direct negation of all his ambitions and a close opportunity of realizing them is lost.” 3Linda‟s inability to understand her husband‟s desires and aspirations is partly responsible for sending him to his doom. Her incomprehension of the situation that she displays at the end of the play is truly unpardonable:
Linda: I cannot understand it. At this time especially. First time in thirty-five years, we were just about free and clear. He only needed a little salary. He was even finished with the dentist. (p. 152)
In contrast, Charley, the neighbour of Willy seems to have a better understanding of Willy when he says that no man only needs a little salary. He further remarks:
Charley: …Nobody dast blame this man. A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory. (p. 153)
As the play draws to its end, Linda does not leave a very favourable impression on the mind of the reader. Miller‟s portrayal of her character can only be termed as pathetic. Kate similarly comes across as a weak woman, with little or no control over the direction that her life takes. It is really strange that though she has always known about the moral culpability of Joe, she has not been able to stir any feeling of remorse in him. Joe Keller is guilty of a very serious crime. His greed is responsible for the death of twenty-one young pilots during the time of war.At the opening of the play, we find him carrying on with his life very normally, entirely unmindful of the havoc that he has wreaked in so many lives. Rather than making him realize the seriousness of his crime, Kate has always maintained silence over the issue. Her only interest seems to be keeping the family together. In the end, however, the burden of Joe‟s secret is too much for her to bear and she inadvertently tells it to George and then to Chris. It is she who should have gently and lovingly brought Joe to the right path, since she has been privy to his dark secret right from the beginning. It is Chris who is finally
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responsible for making Joe realize the enormity of his crime. Larry, the younger son, had in fact taken his own life because of the shame he had felt at the news of his father‟s misdeed. As Chris reads out the last letter written by Larry to Ann, the truth finally dawns upon Keller and he bursts out, “Sure, he was my son. But I think to him they were all my sons. And I guess they were, I guess they were…”(p. 89) A little while later, he goes inside and kills himself.
The most important woman in Death of a Salesman other than Linda is the woman who for money and perhaps for pleasure, has sex with Willy. She will use her influence as a receptionist or a secretary in the office to send Willy directly on to the buyer. Even though the woman gets something out of the relationship, she knows that she is being used. When Biff enters the hotel room, she asks him, “Are you football or baseball?” Biff replies, “Football”, and the woman feeling angry and humiliated, blurts out “That‟s me too.” (p. 137) Though we admire her vigorous response, she is not really an impressive figure. It is a little harder to be certain about the character of the two women in the scene in Stanley‟s restaurant, where Willy too goes at the invitation his sons for lunch. For Happy, the women are prostitutes but one of them clearly says, “No, I do not sell.”(p. 131). However, the two women are of little substance. They are simply figures introduced in the play in order to show how badly Happy and Biff behave with their father, whom they have invited for lunch.
Miller‟s projection of women in his plays stands counter to the American social trend of giving more and more freedom and equality to women. The equality gained on various fronts by American women has helped them stand on equal footing with men. However, we must remember that in the times in which Miller lived and wrote, the role of women was limited to the traditional one of a housekeeper alone. Both the plays were written and staged in the late forties of the last century. As Vanessa Martin Lamb elaborates in her write-up, “Americabefore the 1950‟s”,suffered from almost twenty years of stagnation, caused by the Depression and World War II.4When the war was over, American soldiers returned home and the society started moving towards normalcy once again. The economy opened up and now most of the homes had transistors, televisions, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, etc. Car became a status symbol. Marriage became the new imperative and most couples began their families right after marriage. Needless to say, all these changes in the society affected the American women in a major way. As the men had come back from the war, no need was seen for the women to continue with their work. Many women had started working outside home in the absence of men. Now they were put under an immense pressure both by the American culture and society “to return to their traditional role as mothers and housewives completely dedicated to their children and dependent on their husbands.” 5Even the American government seemed to like and promote the idea that “women should be happy washing dishes, preparing meals, cleaning the house and be the “ideal” woman.” 6Sex roles, therefore, were clearly defined within the family. Though most of the women were educated, the ultimate goal of every young woman was supposed to be to find a good husband and raise healthy and educated children. The consequence of all these expectations from women was that millions of women lived their lives as American suburban housewives with successful husbands and children “running in the garden or watching the brand-new television set and above all, the wife cooking in her highly equipped kitchen, doing the laundry in the most
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modern washing machine and cleaning the house with her extremely powerful vacuum cleaner while wearing high heels and pearls and with an intact hairstyle.” 7
This reality of the American society of Miller‟s times explains the characters of females in his plays and the compulsions behind their actions and reactions in the play. Both Kate and Linda fit the role of traditional woman to a hilt. The next generation of women portrayed in All My Sons seems to be quite different. The Bayliss and Lubey families are the neighbours of Kellers. Jim depends so much on his wife, Sue that she is free to call him a dog. Frank Lubey comes very handy for his wife, Lydia, who can make him dance to her tunes. Both Sue and Lydia come across as quite spirited and dynamic, very different from the quiet and submissive Linda and Kate. It is true, nonetheless, that the roles of these two young women in their families do not go beyond housekeeping and supervising children in the traditional style. Miller seems to be referring to the „baby boom‟ 8 that swept across America after the World War II, when Lydia tells George of the three babies that she had one after another in a short period of time. Lydia seems to be following the trend of the American women of her times “having an average of 3.2 children before their late twenties.” 9
George (to Lydia): No kidding, three
Lydia: Yea, one, two, three...(p. 63)
Lydia is a young mother, always busy with running after her little children in the whole block. She is also the perfect housewife who can do wonders with her needle in the shortest possible time. Kate admires the beautification of her plain hat at the hands of Lydia. Sue does not come across as a very even-tempered and pleasant personality. Rather, she is a blunt person, who does not believe in mincing her words.At her very first meeting with Anne, she makes her dislike for Chris very evident as she believes that Chris with his idealism is not a good influence on her husband. She is afraid that under the influence of Chris, he might give up his lucrative practice and go in for medical research. This would bring home a very meager income and for her, money is the most important thing in life. Her narrow vision reminds us of Linda Loman who similarly does not encourage Willy in pursuing his dream of success. Like Linda, she is unable to understand the dreams of her husband and we suspect that he rather feels trapped in his marriage. This, however, is of little concern for her.
Ann Deevar belongs to the younger generation and is the only female character in both the plays who has substance and seems to be capable of holding her own in the male-dominated world of Miller. She is the twenty-six year old daughter of Steve Deever, former neighbor and partner of Joe Keller. She was engaged to Larry before his tragic demise. Ann moved to New York city with her mother when her father, Steve was convicted of knowingly shipping faulty airplane parts to the military. After Larry‟s death, she and Chris started writing to each other. As the play opens, Ann has come on a visit to the Keller family. Both Ann and Chris want to get married to each other. At the same time, both of them do not want to hurt the sentiments of Kate Keller who still believes that Larry is alive. Ann comes across as an intelligent, beautiful and self-assured young woman. Unlike her brother, George, who is a lawyer, Ann‟s career is not defined in the course of the play. However, she seems to be a fairly independent woman, managing on her own, financially and otherwise also in the big city of New York. Ann shares Chris‟ idealism and has shunned her father Steve Deever after
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his conviction. In fact, she has disowned him completely, refusing to even visit him in jail all these years. Here, she even surpasses Chris in her moral uprightness. Chris wavers significantly in his stance after discovering his father‟s crime. He openly admits that he cannot bring himself to send his father in jail. Ann again shows up as a strong character, when it comes to her determination to get married to Chris. Though she does not want to hurt the sentiments of Keller family, she has brought along the last letter written by Larry. The letter purportedly written by Larry before he embarked on his fatal last journey is very important, since it clinches the issue of Larry‟s death once and for all. Ann will not like to bring up that letter but she will not refrain from doing so, if the need arises. And she has to do so, thereby bringing about a huge upheaval in the Keller household. The play does not end with her marriage. It rather ends with the suicide of Joe. However, we do know that Chris will be definitely putting his past behind him and starting his life anew. Once that happens, the marriage will take place. One can confidently predict that as a wife, she will meet Chris on an equal footing. From what we have seen uptill now, blind obedience is certainly not her cup of tea. Moreover, she is no victim of circumstances, by any means. Her bringing the letter along clearly indicates that she is not the one to sit back passively and allow others to write her destiny.
We do not know the reasons that Miller had behind the creation of such a strong character in Ann. We cannot say whether the character of Ann was required to drive the plot forward or if Ann was created because maybe in her, Miller saw an ideal woman, the onethat he felt would be the right helpmate and support for the modern American male. The truth remains, however, that barring Ann Deever, men occupy the primary and all-important place in the world of Miller. It is as if the fathers and the sons are the key players, the only aspirantsin the American success story.Any success or failure that may followbelongs to them alone.
REFERENCES
1. Miller, Arthur. All My Sons. Madras: Oxford University Press, 1975, p. 53. For all textual references, the same edition has been used. The page numbers are given in parenthesis after each quotation. 2. Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. New Delhi: Arnold Associates, 1972, p. 109. For all textual references, the same edition has been used. The page numbers are given in parenthesis after each quotation. 3. Ibid, p. 29. 4. Vanessa Martins Lamb. The 1950‟s and the 1960‟s and the American Woman: the transition from the “housewife” to the feminist. History. 2011. dumas-00680821. p. 1 5. Ibid, p.12. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid, pp. 17-18. 8. Ibid, p. 8. 9. Ibid, p. 10.
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