362 Mourning Becomes Electra

362 Mourning Becomes Electra: A Trilogy Mourning Becomes Electra: A Trilogy 363 of The Hunted, as if "looking over the head of life, cut Tortured now by what he is saying, Orin breaks Once Seth exits, Hazel accuses Lavinia of driv- closed and throw out the flowers. Seth obeys, and ting it dead for the impropriety of living." Lavinia enters down and pleads with her to permit him to confess ing Orin to suicide. She tells Lavinia she must not she remains on the portico, "stiff and square-shoul "in a terrific state of tension," wringing her hands as to their crime. Lavinia, tempted at first, angrily marry Peter; whatever it is she had done that made dered" (2:1,053). Seth appears from the window at her mother had in the final act of The Hunted. She responds that there is nothing to confess. When Orin kill himself, Hazel insists, would somehow right and pulls the shutters closed with a bang. As pleads to the Mannons "as if they were the visible sym he addresses the Mannon portraits, telling them get between them. Peter has left their house and if obeying a command, Lavinia turns sharply on her bol of her God" to allow her to control her desire for Lavinia will be harder to break than he, she shouts moved into a hotel, refusing to accept Hazel's and heels, marches into the house, and shuts the door Orin's death (2:1,034)- Seth enters and complains that she hates him, that he would kill himself if their mother's advice not to marry Lavinia. Lavinia behind her. The curtain falls. about a black servant. Lavinia leaves with him, and he had any courage. "Death is an Island of Peace, explodes in anger and threatens to kill Hazel with the doorbell rings. Seth accompanies Peter and too," he agrees. "Mother will be waiting for me Orin's pistol. But her fury subsides, and Hazel, now COMMENTARY Hazel into the sitting room and exits. Hazel warns there—" (2:1,042). He starts off, and Lavinia calls certain Lavinia is "wicked" but sympathetic to her Mourning Becomes Electra, up to that point the Peter about Lavinia's influence and voices her con him back in horror. suffering, assures her that her conscience will force greatest accomplishment of Eugene O'Neill's cern that she has become too bold. Hazel expresses Peter enters. Orin leaves them with the excuse her away from Peter. "I hope there is a hell for the career, powerfully combines ancient Greek tragedy, her wish to persuade Orin to live with them but that he needs to clean his pistol. Lavinia rushes good somewhere!" Lavinia exclaims sardonically modem theories of psychoanalysis, New England knows Lavinia will put up a terrible fight. into Peter's arms and exclaims that "no price is too after Hazel has gone (2:1,049). Puritan culture, and American history. In effect, Orin enters and frantically asks to speak to great" for love and peace. She muses passionately Peter enters, and Lavinia begs him to marry O'Neill recast LAZARUS LAUGHED, STRANGE INTER Hazel alone. Peter exits good-naturedly, and Orin about their future in marriage, then a muffled shot her without delay. They must move, she insists, LUDE, and DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS, respectively, hands Hazel an envelope containing the family his can be heard from the study. Peter runs into the as abandoning the Mannon house is the only way but without, as he put it, the "show shop" theat tory, making her swear to open it only if he dies hall to investigate, and Lavinia pleads for Orin's the dead Mannons will leave them in peace. She ricals of these experimental plays of the 1920s (in or Lavinia tries to marry Peter. He agrees that he forgiveness. But then, "with a terrible effort of will," informs him that Hazel has just left, and he growls Bogard 340). Mourning is gripping in plot and pow should move in with her family to get away from her dispassionate self returns, and she mechani angrily about his family's attempts to turn him erfully situated in time and place, and its charac his sister. Lavinia enters, instantly aware they are cally locks the Mannon history in a table drawer. against her. Lavinia pleads with him to marry her ters' histories and personalities are well-developed conspiring against her. Hazel hides the envelope She shouts triumphantly at the Mannon portraits that evening. Suspicious himself now, Peter asks if and troublingly clear. "From the first showdown behind her back, and Lavinia demands to know that she will live in spite of them and marches there is anything he should know. Lavinia throws between Lavinia and Christine," says O'Neill biog what it is. They argue about Orin's departure. Orin military-style from the room, "as if by the very act of herself at him, kissing him passionately and begging rapher Louis Sheaffer in praise of the play, "the nar eventually tells Hazel to go home; before she does, disowning the Mannons she had returned to the fold" him to "forget sin and see that all love is beautiful" rative starts to coil and tighten like a huge python she denounces her friendship with Lavinia. Ignor (2:1,044). and to make love to her then and there. "Want that will devour all members of the doomed house ing this, Lavinia demands again to know if Hazel is me!" she cries out frantically. "Take me, Adam!" of Mannon, and it rarely eases its grip during most hiding Orin's history. She pleads with Orin not to Act 4 (2:1,052). Realizing her mistake, she resigns herself of its thirteen acts of murder, suicide, near-mad allow Hazel to leave with the manuscript, swear Late afternoon three days later. The exterior of to accept that the dead will not permit her to love ness and haunting" (370). Audiences would have ing to do anything he asks. He accepts her offer, the Mannon house, same as act 1, scene 1. Seth in peace. Peter insists on knowing about Avahanni. quickly read the incestuous relations among the "laughs with a crazy triumph," and takes the enve appears from right, chewing tobacco and sing She ferociously admits that she slept with him and Mannons as derived from Sigmund Freud's Oedipus lope from Hazel (2:1,040). He then tells Hazel to ing "Shenandoah." He expresses resentment over that in his innocence and purity, he had shown complex, which in turn was borrowed from Greek forget him. "The Orin you loved was killed in the Lavinia's taking nearly all the flowers from his gar her that love was not.a sin. Revolted by the admis tragedy; O'Neill's psychoanalytic biographer Ste war Remember only that dead hero and not den to beautify the house. The locals, he says, now sion, Peter declares that Hazel and his mother were phen A. Black suggests the story reflected O'Neill's his rotting ghost!" (2:1,040). She rushes from the take the word Mannon to mean "sudden death" right and rushes off left. At first repentant, Lavinia own incestuous feelings toward his mother, MARY room in tears. (2:1,045). Lavinia enters from the left dressed in squares her shoulders and coldly says goodbye. ELLEN "ELLA" O'NEILL (2004, 182). (In 1926, mourning black and carrying flowers. Another seri O'Neill had indeed informed his friend KENNETH Orin tells Lavinia she must promise to give up Seth enters, again singing lines from "Shenan ous transformation is apparent: She looks older, MACGOWAN that he had been diagnosed by his Peter, and then "a distorted look of desire comes over doah"—"Oh, Shenandoah, I can't get near you haggard, sleep-deprived, and the "mask-like resem psychiatrist, Dr. G. V, Hamilton, as suffering from his face." "There are some times now," he says, / Way-ay, I'm bound away—" (2:1,053). Lavinia blance of her face" has intensified further. Seth an Oedipus complex [Bogard 345]). "when you don't seem to be my sister, nor Mother, responds that she is not "bound away" but bound offers to bring a sofa for her to lie on; thus he not some stranger with the same beautiful hair—" now to the house forever. Nor does she plan to understands, she says, that the house is a "temple O'Neill always insisted, however, that he would (2:1,041). When he begins to caress her hair, she commit suicide like Orin and her mother. "That's of Hate and Death" (2:1,046). She vows to marry "have written Mourning Becomes Electra almost pulls back violently, and he laughs. "Perhaps you're escaping punishment. And there's no one left to Peter and rid herself of the Mannon legacy. Hazel exactly as it is if I had never heard of Freud or Marie Brant&me, eh? And you say there are no punish me. I'm the last Mannon. I've got to punish enters, dressed in mourning and, though clearly Jung or the others" (quoted in Alexander 155). ghosts in this house?" (2:1,041). If they consum myself! ... I know they will see to it I live for a long grief-stricken, has an expression of "stubborn resolu While composing drafts of the play in France, he mate their love sexually, he implies, they will feel time! It takes the Mannons to punish themselves tion" (2:1,047). complained that the problem he had posed for him equal guilt, and she will never leave him.

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