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Chapter 10. PINTER: The Lover

In the world of Pinter role playing and games form as intrinsic a part of the basic matrix as do the auras of dread, anxiety and insecurity that have come to be recognized as hallmarks of his work. In an opinion offered in 1969, Samuel Selden named Pirandello as the ultimate master of plays that are "puzzles", "games within games" but Pinter, according to him, is "fast catching up with him".i All Pinter's characters have masks, says Peter Hall.^ Katherine Worth points out that "he uses false voices and phoney performances" to suggest a "terrible sense of non-identit}^ in the way that O'Neill used masks.3 Characters like Richard and Sarah (in The Lover) change their clothes and their behaviour when they take on an alternate identity. Otherwise, language is the ruse frequently used by Pinter's creations to mask their real selves. Wesker's Ronnie may have spoken of words as bridges'* but, in Pinter's world, they are more like "barbs to protect the wired enclosure of the self 5. Talk of "the failure of communication" in the twentieth century has become a cant phrase that Pinter would rather not subscribe to. For him the issue is rather one of "a deliberate evasion of communication",^ a determined masking of real feelings and thoughts. "In my own work, I've always been aware that my characters tend to use words not to

' Samuel Selden, Theatre Double Game (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969) 77.

2 Peter Hall, "Directing Pinter", Harold Pinter: The Birthday Party". The Caretaker", and The Homecoming" , ed. Michael Scott (London: Macmillan, 1986) 51.

3 Katherine Worth, "Pinter and the Realist Tradition", Harold Pinter: The Birthday Party". The Caretaker" and The Homecoming", ed. Michael Scott 37.

"• Arnold Wesker, "Roots", The Wesker Trilogy 2"d. ed. (1960; Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1970) 90.

5 Guido Almansi and Simon Henderson, Harold Pinter (London: Methuen, 1983) 11.

6 Harold Pinter in an interview with Kenneth Tynan in 1960 on BBC radio. Quoted by Michael Billington, The Life and Work of Pinter (London: Faber and Faber, 1996) 124. 421

express what they think or feel but to disguise what they think or feel, to mask their own intentions, so that the words are acting as a masquerade, a veil, a web, or used as weapons to undermine or to terrorize. But these modes of operation are hardly confined to characters in plays..."^

His characters are completely "untrustworthy" since they are even seen to be lying during the course of the action. Their grunts and silences (like those of Davies in The Caretaker) do not primarily imply the inability to find words but the disinclination to communicate honestly. They feel safer behind a veil of misinformation. "I think we communicate only too well, in our silence, in what is unsaid, and that what takes place is continual evasion, desperate rearguard attempts to keep ourselves to ourselves. Communication is too alarming. To enter into someone else's life is too frightening, to disclose to others the poverty within us is too fearsome a possibility."« Even the rare and unusual long speeches (such as Lenny's stories about his dealings with women in the past or Mick's random ramblings and reminiscences to Davies) do not indicate a sincere opening-up. They are just as likely to be full of inventions and untruths, whether spontaneous or pre­ planned. As Pinter has said himself, "People fall back on anything they can lay their hands on verbally to keep away from the danger of knowing, and of being known." And again, "It isn't necessary to conclude that everything Aston says about his experiences in the mental hospital is true."'' Guido Almansi, in his article "Harold Pinter's Idiom of Lies", is convinced that "Pinter's idiom is essentially human because it is an idiom of lies." His characters are elusive

7 Harold Pinter. Quoted by Michael BiUington, The Life and Work of Harold Pinter 371.

8 Pinter in the Sunday Times (London), 3 March 1962.

9 Harold Pinter in an interview with Lawrence Bensky reproduced in Pinter: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Arthur Ganz (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1972) 28. 422 creatures with shifting strategies who "move forward like knights on a chess board", "crab-like", or "dribble" with "oblique" progression to their goals. "The Pinterian hero lies as he breathes: consistently and uncompromisingly. Not to lie is as inconceivable to him as to 'eat a crocodile' or make love to a spider. Goldberg, Mick, Edward, Lenny, Spooner, are not just occasionally unreliable: they are untrustworthy by definition, since their words only bear witness to their capacity for speech, not to their past or present experience. Pinter's opus, like Pirandello's, is a long disquisition on the masks of the liar." 10 In The Dwarfs. Len, in the famous climactic speech, poses the question, "Who are you?"ii, just as Pirandello's Father had asked in Six Characters. Many a time the audience is left guessing to the very end. The characters can spout "words" 12 but these are as likely to be screens to hide behind as facsimiles of the truth. Bill Naismith concedes a certain "psychologic" in the way Pinter's characters speak and behave but it is often not immediately obvious. 13

Elizabeth Sakellaridou reports Pinter's confession (in 1980) of his fascination with "entering into another man's mind". She goes so far as to call this the "pivotal centre" of his enterprise, i'* The question of individual identity and the various roles taken by a person often gains the stature of an important focus of enquiry in his plays. The social intercourse the characters are involved in is invariably presented as a game. Simon Trussler even defines the characters of The Collection as a "collection" or "a set of pieces in the game that is

1° Guido Almansi, 'Harold Pinter's Idiom of Lies", Contemporary English Drama, ed. C.W.E. Bigsby (London: Edward Arnold, 1981) 79, 80, 82-83.

11 Harold Pinter, The Dwarfs", Plavs: Two (London: Eyre Methuen, 1977) 111.

12 Luigi F*irandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author, trans. Mark Musa (London: Penguin, 1995) 19.

'•3 Bill Naismith, Harold Pinter (London: Faber & Faber, 2000) 8.

I'' Elizabeth Sakellaridou, Pinter's Female Portraits: A Study of Female Characters in the Plavs of Harold Pinter (London: Macmillan, 1988) 4. 423 to be enacted".!^ Thus the game is synonymous with the action of the play. Time and again his characters also engage in power play. All positions and status are perceived as temporary and relative. Often an important part of the development in the action of a play is the change in the power positions of the characters. This is amply illustrated by the action in The Homecoming.

Pinter is typically reticent in his description of his dramatis personae. All he gives his actors/audience/director is the bare indication of age and gender. In The Homecoming, for instance, Teddy is "a man in his middle thirties" and Ruth is "a woman in her early thirties". We are not even told that they are married (to each other) nor their relationship to the rest of the characters, all of whom actually belong to one family. In his first play. The Room, the female protagonist is Rose but, oddly, she is called Sal by an unexplained character called Riley. She does not appear to recognize him but he brings a message asking her to "come home". She begs him not to call her Sal - "Don't call me that." - but does not disown the name.i*^ In The Lover only the names of the three characters are listed. The opening conversation of the play is one that pointedly calls into question the marital status of Sarah and Richard, the two characters, yet it is only after more than half the action of the play is over that we learn that they have been married for ten years. When Richard cites "the children" as a valid reason for ending their affair, Sarah's response is "What children?", thus leaving it unresolved whether the two do actually have children or whether they are merely Richard's invention for the sake of argument during their little play within the larger play.'^ On the other hand, the milkman, who pops in briefly to

J3 Simon Trussler, The Plays of Harold Pinter: An Assessment (London: Victor Gollancz, 1973) 106.

"5 Harold Pinter, The Room and The Dumb Waiter (1960; London: Eyre Methuen, 1973) 30.

1^ Harold Pinter, "The Lover", The Collection and The Lover (1963; rpt. London: Methuen, 1968) 71. All subsequent references to this text are to this edition. Further references are indicated by page numbers given in parentheses. 424 deliver the daily pint, is blandly listed as John. Any other playwright would have described him as "the milkman" since he has no significant role in the action. Pinter is invariably enigmatic, even inscrutable, in his presentation of characters and situation.

It is typical of his style to keep a degree of uncertainty regarding the identity of his characters and also their relationships with each other. Answering his critics who seek "the truth", Pinter has said. The desire for verification is understandable but cannot always be satisfied. There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false: it can be both true and false. The assumption that to verify what has happened and what is happening presents few problems 1 take to be inaccurate. A character on the stage who can present no convincing argument or information as to his past experience, his present behaviour or his aspirations, nor give a comprehensive analysis of his motives is as legitimate and as worthy of attention as one who, alarmingly, can do all these things. The more acute the experience, the less articulate its expression. ^^ One might add that life is full of such situations - when people interact with each other with very little real knowledge of each other.

While the traditionally expository first scene is usually filled with relevant information that prepares the audience to deal with the rest of the play, Pinter's plays often retain much of the degree of mystery they begin with to the very end. At the end of The Lover we cannot claim a complete understanding of Sarah and Richard's situation. Where does Richard work? Where does he change his clothes? Similarly, at the conclusion of The Caretaker we still cannot satisfactorily define the relationship between Aston and Mick. In The

'8 Harold Pinter. Quoted in Arthur Ganz, "Introduction", Pinter: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Arthur Ganz (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1972) 3. 425

Birthday Party it is unclear what the connection is (if any) between Stanley and the McCann-Goldberg duo. McCann calls Goldberg Nat but he is called Simey by his wife and mother^^ and Benny (78) by his father. McCann is referred to as Dermot (71) at one point and Seamus at another (78). Lulu talks of Eddie being her first love (79) but he is never identified in the action of the play. Stanley, at first seen as surly and unwilling to participate in the Oedipal game that is Meg's standard interaction with him, later attempts the role of a hard drinking, tough guy in an effort to elude the attentions of the intruders. Afraid that "they are coming" (24) to get him, he tries to throw them off his scent by pretending to be someone else. He projects a personality quite different from his standard one. In The Dumb Waiter we are left wondering if Ben knew that Gus had been dealt the role of the victim of the day. We also wonder who gives the orders and who operates the dumb waiter. In No Man's Land Hirst seems to think Spooner is just a stranger he has brought home but gradually an old acquaintanceship seems to emerge from the conversation. However, it is never clear whether Spooner is a poet who holds meetings in a pub or a worker at the pub who plays at being a poet. In Night School Walter tries to impress Sally by projecting himself as a hardened criminal just out of jail while Sally plays the lady. In The Collection there emerge several versions of a story of rape/seduction and the pla3avright gives us no hint to guide us to the "true" version. Stella, the only character who knows the reality, "neither confirm[s] nor denfies]" it.20 Her unspeaking silence at the end has been compared to Signora Ponza's enigmatic answer at the end of So It Is (If You Think So).21 Not only is the identity of

19 Harold Pinter, The Birthday Party (1960; London: Methuen, 1968) 43, 59. All subsequent references to this text are to this edition and page numbers are given in parentheses.

20 Harold Pinter, The Collection", The Collection and The Lover (London: Methuen, 1968) 45. AH references to this text are to this edition. In subsequent refemces page numbers are given in parentheses.

21 Almansi and Henderson, Harold Pinter 80-81. 426

Pinter's characters often ill defined but they also shift from role to role within the action of the play, thus adding to the sense of enigma.

Pinter's first successful play, The Caretaker (1960), is an enigma. The characters in The Caretaker make use of language as a mode of masking their true identities. The simplest conversations take on the most sinister hues in Pinter's plays. The most innocent of opening gambits can be viewed with such suspicion that the conversation takes on the guise of a game of skill. It is not so much Aston's questions that arouse Davies' suspicions as the possible motive behind them. Aston asks the standard questions about his name and where he was born but to Davies, insecure and paranoid regarding the police, these appear to be potential threats of exposure. He refuses to commit himself to a specific identity. He never explains why he has a "real" name - Mac Davies - and an assumed one - Bernard Jenkins.22 To the question "Are you Welsh?", he hems and haws and merely ends up saying he has "been around" (25). He has great contempt for "aliens" (8) and is proud of his English background and clean habits. When asked where he was born, his initial "dark" response is "What do you mean?" before his lame explanation that "it's a bit hard, like, to set your mind back" (25). He constantly reinvents himself according to the needs of the moment. He is continually redefining and realigning himself. "I've eaten my dinner off the best of plates" (9) he claims unconvincingly to persuade Aston that he is worth sharing a room with. Making an effort to appear "one of them", Davies echoes statements made by both the brothers. When Aston relates the story of how a woman he saw at a cafe came over to him, put her hand on his and asked him if he would like her "to have a look at your body" (25), Davies' response is "They've said the same thing to me" (25). Again when Mick suggests that Davies might have been in the services or in the

22 Harold Pinter, The Caretaker (1960; London: Eyre Methuen, 1975) 25. All subsequent references to this text are to this edition and page numbers are given in parentheses. 427 colonies, he says "I was over there. I was one of the first over there." (51). Although he is obviously just a derelict off the streets he tries to project the image of a man who has known better times and even dares audaciously to look down upon Aston's offerings. The room Aston offers for his shelter, the shoes, the bag of possessions, are looked upon askance even though Davies is in dire need of all of them. Davies juggles the twin roles of aged victim and derelict who has seen better times in a manner by which he hopes to win sympathy and succour but keep his identity short of conclusive commitment. It speaks volumes for Aston's intuitive sympathy and understanding that he never calls his bluff, whether about the papers at Sidcup or anything else.

Davies is a born game player but he "overplays his hand''.^^ He misjudges the power equation between the two brothers and throws in his lot with the wrong brother. Both brothers make the offer of a caretaker's job. Davies judges Mick to be the more powerful, more worldly brother and, believing that protection under his wing would be more stable, decides to make a show of his commitment to him by displaying hostility towards Aston. His instinctive deciphering of a sense of rivalry between the brothers may be astute or just plain lucky but he fails to notice the strength of the fraternal bond that also exists between the two. He even goes so far as to threaten Aston with a knife, believing he is acting for Mick. Mick, cleverer game player by far, is able to turn the tables on Davies and manipulate both of them so that it is ultimately Aston who asks him to leave. When Aston perceives Davies playing the role of Mick's friend, he loses interest in befriending him. As Simon Trussler says, the play portrays "shifting power relationships in a struggle for dominance".^-^

23 John Russell Taylor, "Admirable Revival", Harold Pinter: The Birthday Party. "The Caretaker" and The Homecoming*, ed. Michael Scott 166. s-i Trussler , The Plays of Harold Pinter 78. 428

It is a game of survival for Davies but he loses it; he is outmanoeuvred by Mick.

Master game player that he is, Mick uses language (his long speeches) to intimidate Davies. He asks him his name several times in order to unnerve him. The conversation between Mick and Davies is like a game of hide and seek.^^ Each seeks to hide his own identity and find out as much as possible about the other. Mick throws him to the floor to get a physical advantage over him and scares him with a vacuum cleaner in the dark. Although Mick is more articulate than the mentally challenged Aston and the decrepit Davies, he ends up revealing the least about himself. For him language performs the function of a mask to hide behind rather than a mode of self- expression. In this sense, Aston is the most vulnerable character because he reveals the most about himself. It is an interesting possibility that Aston might not have gone to the asylum if he had not talked so revealingly about himself. As a matter of fact, the play gives very httle reliable detail about any of the characters. All three would, except for the odd garrulous speech, rather avoid conversation than engage in it.

The Homecoming (1965), considered Pinter's masterpiece, is another work in which roles and games are of paramount importance. It is concerned with the same theme as The Lover: the composite nature of a woman's identity. Like The Lover this play can be read as another very strong feminist statement. Ruth, arriving from the United States to meet her in-laws, finds herself amongst an entirely male family of game players. She, however, succeeds in outplaying each one of them. She quickly progresses to occupying Max's chair, quite obviously the seat of power. By juggling her roles Ruth finds a way out of her unsatisfactory marriage and into a situation of economic comfort with a position of power. As Pinter himself put it.

25 Almansi and Henderson, Harold Pinter 52. 429

"She says, 'If you want to play this game I can play it as well as you.'"26 Again, as in The Lover, the typical male view of women as either Madonna or whore is challenged. Like Sarah, Ruth too shares the characteristics of both. They are both mothers and sexual icons, or, as Esslin says, the image of woman oscillates between that of mother/Madonna/housewife and the whore/maenad in the play.^^

The title of The Homecoming is found to apply, quite surprisingly, to Ruth rather than to Teddy. Hugh Nelson speaks of the action of the play as a "process of self-discovery in which Ruth remembers things about herself, discovers things she had not known, weighs the needs of Teddy against those of the group and makes an amoral but nonetheless logical choice."^s Teddy has turned his back on his childhood identity and, moving away from his family of pimps and prostitutes, has espoused academic life in America. Although his room is "still there''^^ and "nothing has changed" (22) he has now become "a complete outsider''^^^ as both he and the audience soon realize. "Home" for Teddy is now America. On the other hand, Ruth, who reveals that she too was "born near here" (53), has obviously not taken to the new identity that Teddy's brand new way of life gave her the "opportunit}^ of adopting. While Teddy speaks of America as a place of sunlight and swimming pools, a place where they have "everything" (50), for Ruth it is a barren place, all rock and sand and insects (53). She is clearly unhappy there. The visit to Teddy's home gives her another chance to redefine her role. In fact it is she who

26 Harold Pinter. Quoted by Michael Billington, The Life and Work of Harold Pinter 169.

27 Martin Esslin, The Peopled Wound (London: Methuen, 1970) 135.

28 Hugh Nelson, The Homecoming: Kith and Kin", Modem British Dramatists, ed. John Russell Brown (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1968) 147 - 48.

29 Harold Pinter, The Homecoming (1965; London: Methuen, 1983) 21. AU subsequent references to this text are to this edition and page numbers are given in parentheses.

30 Naismith, Harold Pinter 170. 430 finds herself at home there, amongst London low-life, even though her husband is keen to go back "home" (54) to America.

When she tells Lenny, "1 can't get the ones 1 want over there" (56) she is clearly talking of something other than the shoes she indicates. Again, in the beginning of Act II, when she talks of the movement of her leg, and her underwear too, she is drawing attention to her sexuality.31 Earlier Tqddy has mentioned that she has not been well, that she needs rest and sleep (22) - thus seeming to imply some major unhappiness in the shape of a health or adjustment problem. She reveals that she had been a nude model (possibly a euphemism for a prostitute) before she met and married Teddy. (57). "I was...different ...when I met Teddy...first" (50) she tells Lenny. Ruth's discontentment with her role as Teddy's wife and a search for her true identity makes her think about a return to the area of her roots and she is able to meet the family halfway when they propose to set her up as a part-time whore who will also play the part of the mother figure at home. She decides to "stay" (21). In the process of self- discovery, she finds that the so-called respectability of American campus life is not her cup of tea. She is far more comfortable with herself as a whore.

Ruth does exactly what she wants. She refuses to sit down, have a hot drink, rest, or sleep as Teddy suggests when they arrive but goes out for a walk in the middle of the night with the greatest confidence. She also handles Lenny with aplomb. She is obviously used to dealing with his sort of person. The tone of their interaction is set with their first exchange. She corrects Lenny's greeting of "Good evening", telling him it really is morning (27). She is able to maintain

31 It is tempting to discover Eric Berne's Stocking Game in Ruth's action at this point. It is surprisingly similar to the test case described in Games People Play. However, the player in the example acts (apparently) unconsciously and plays innocent after bringing attention to her sexuality whereas Ruth does it in a manner that is thoroughly conscious and deliberate. At no point does she pretend any innocence. 431 her strong stand when, after Lenny's provocative story of the diseased prostitute (meant to impress, intimidate and set the ground rules for further interaction), she can respond in a matter of fact manner by asking "How did you know she was diseased?" (31) rather than showing fright or awe (as expected) at Lenny's violent treatment of the woman. The content of the conversation is irrelevant but communication has taken place between the two, for "below the word spoken is the thing known and unspoken''^^. Ruth has understood Lenny. Now when, in another attempt to control her, Lenny asks her to give back her glass of water or else "111 take it then", she can reply with a corresponding aggression. RUTH. If you take the glass...Ill take you. Pause. LENNY. How about me taking the glass without you taking me? RUTH. Why don't I just take you? (34).

As if this provocative rejoinder were not enough, she goes on to suggest that he lie in her lap so that she can pour some water into his mouth. The pimp has met his match in the ex-prostitute. By winning the battle of wills and establishing a dominant position, Ruth proves that not only does she truly "belong" (75) amongst them but can hold her own any day and even rule the roost.

Significantly, Max recognizes her as a tart in his first encounter with her. "Who asked you to bring tarts in here?" (41). "I never had a whore under this roof before. Ever since your mother died." (42). It is likely that Lenny too knew her for what she was and that is why he takes the ironic stance with her in his initial greeting and then dares to quickly move on to a strange familiarity, asking if he might hold her hand. Also, in spite of being told "I'm his wife" (28), he still goes

32 Harold Pinter, 'Writing for the Theatre". Quoted by David T. Thompson, Pinter: The Player's Playwright (London: MacmiUan, 1985) 42. 432 on to ask Ruth if "you sort of live with him over there, do you?" (29). Even after he is told that Teddy and she have three children, Max still turns to his son to ask him, "All yours, Ted?" (43). By the end of a day Lenny is able to offer his "professional opinion" (73) on her as a worthwhile proposition to embark upon. Joey is slower on the uptake but even he recognizes that she is "wide open" (58) when he finds her kissing Lenny.

This kiss is another game. It is an open challenge to her husband. Almansi and Henderson refer to Eric Berne and Roger Caillois and their theories of games while analyzing the games played by Pinter's characters. Agon or contest is the name of the game here and it is played with language and gesture.^3 Twice there is a conflict between Teddy and Lenny with Ruth as the unspoken bone of contention. Lenny taunts Teddy on his subject of Philosophy. Another time, when Teddy deliberately eats a cheese roll Lenny has made for himself, Lenny makes his position clear and offers his own challenge: Well, Ted, I would say this is something approaching the naked truth, isn't it? It's a real cards on the table stunt. I mean, we're in the land of no holds barred now. Well, how else can you interpret it? To pinch your younger brother's specially made cheese roll when he's out doing a spot of work, that's not equivocal, it's unequivocal. (64).

Later, Max is pleased to know that Ruth is a mother and a good cook. Just as Max speaks variously of Jessie, so also he offers different reactions to Ruth at different times. Jessie has been called "the backbone to the family*, "a woman with a will of iron, a heart of gold and a mind" (46), she has taught the boys all the morality they know (whatever that might be), but at other times she is just a "slutbitch" (47) with a "rotten stinking face" (9). Similarly Ruth is variously a "tart" (41), a "whore" (68), a "disease" and a "bedpan" (42)

33 Almansi and Henderson, Harold Pinter 24-26. 433 and also "a lovely girl, a beautiful woman" (59), and again "a woman of quality" (60); she is "charming" (49) and, above all, "You're kin. You're kith. You belong here." (75). Ruth's entry into the house is, in fact, a sort of return of Jessie - as what Andrew Kennedy calls the new mother-whore.3"*

Teddy says she is a great cook and her "thirsty" (35) sexuality is witnessed by both Lenny and Joey. She is to take over the role that had been played by Jessie. When Max declares that he has not had a whore in the house since Jessie died, it seems that Jessie has been described as a prostitute. This explains Lenny's ambivalent attitude to her, the fact that MacGregor was able to have "had Jessie" (78) and also the reason why Sam was deputed to "drive her around" (16). Jessie, driven around by Sam while she was "on the game" (72), seems to have been a working prostitute as well as a strong mother and housewife. Ruth is the reincarnation of Jessie and is welcomed into the household as such. Martin S. Regal uses Derrida's terminology to describe the continued sense of Jessie's presence in the house - a wall has been subjected to "erasure" but has left a visible "trace".^5 The power of the memory, as embodied in the noticeable absence of the wall, is such that the entire family awaits the replacement of the mother figure, the filling of the void.

The "classic Pinter power-plaj^^G [^ The Homecoming is so riveting and so shocking in terms of the application of standard moral conventions, that it makes a tremendous impact. The Homecoming

^t Andrew Kennedy, Six Dramatists in Search of a Language (1975; Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 1976) 184, 186.

35 Martin S. Regal, Harold Pinter: A Question of Tuning (London: MacmiUan, 1995) 65.

36 Billington, The Life and Work of Harold Pinter 378. He uses the expression while analyzing Ashes to Ashes but it is equally applicable to The Homecoming and other Pinter plays. 434

"looks unblinkingly at life in the human jungle".^^ pinter spares no- one the bare and unadorned basic truth. Billington sees the play as far more radical than earlier plays like A Slight Ache. The Collection and The Lover (which also deal with woman's identity) in that the two women at its centre (Jessie and Ruth) are actually shown to be both mothers and sexual icons. The supposedly fixed identities of mother and whore are flexible, shifting and perfectly compatible. Rejecting Esslin's Oedipal interpretation, he sees the play as a feminist challenge to male despotism and to the conventional classification of woman as either mother or whore. He sees Ruth's clear sighted, matter of fact choice between the alternatives available to her as a female triumph over a male power structure. Quoting Penelope Gilliatt's astute summation of Ruth - "Ruth looks upon her body as a landlord would look at a corner site. As soon as she has apparently been exploited sexually, she really has the advantage because she owns the property." - he shows that it is a credit to Ruth that she manipulates Lenny and the others so that she is able to escape from a sterile marriage and lifestyle to a position where she exercises social, sexual and economic control.3« Not only can Ruth now play a role that is far more natural and congenial to her but she also has a degree of independence in the bargain. By offering her sexual power as barter she is able to specify the property she desires, thus winning the control over the territory that is so consequential in Pinterian drama. 3^

It is clear that Ruth rejects the role of campus wife where she can "help [Teddy] with [his] lectures" (55). She is useful to Teddy in terms of her mind and her housewifely duties. It is a demeaning "little vjoman" type of role in which she is valued according to her

37 Peter Hall. Quoted by Naismith, Harold Pinter 150.

38 Billington, The Life and Work of Harold Pinter 171-75.

3^ Irving Wardle, "The Territorial Struggle", Harold Pinter: ''The Birthday Party". "The Caretaker" and "The Homecoming", ed. Michael Scott (London: Macmillan, 1986) 171. 435 usefulness to him. On the other hand, the family's greater "need''^o of her ensures a higher status in Max's house. As Dukore says, using an earthy sort of economic logic, "The power is hers, for no one else has the supply and everyone else has the demand."''i Similarly, Austin Quigley, using the same terms, says that since "she is to be the major supplier of domestic needs, she is thereby the wielder of domestic power".'^^ She prefers to return to her erstwhile identity of a call girl of class, with a relative freedom in her life. When she reminisces about her days as "a model for the body" (57), she gradually begins to relax in a home she slowly but surely recognizes as her natural habitat.

The pack may live by predatory activities, but she too can stalk her prey with the best. Max's fear that "she'll use us" (81) is valid. She is a strong negotiator and is conceded all that she demands. She is no less than a businesswoman who is capable of operating in the real world. Ruth is actually seen negotiating a deal while the business lives of Stella (The Collection) and Emma (Betrayal) are merely suggested. She has already shown Lenny and Joey that she has the spunk to more than handle them (pun intended). While she has Max and Joey on their knees begging for sexual favours, Lenny stands "watching" (82) warily with an alertness that is likely to prove necessary. Whether she becomes Gillian, Cynthia, Dolores or Spanish Jackie for professional purposes (74), Ruth has the self- confidence of one who has found her true self. Ruth has come home to roost - as cock of the walk. Teddy, on the other hand, chooses to return to the "clean" land of sunlight and swimming pools (54), his children and his campus job. It is to Ruth's credit that she has not

•'o Hugh Nelson, "The Homecoming: Kith and Kin", Modem British Dramatists, ed. John Russell Brown (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1968) 147.

-•i Bernard F. Dukore, Harold Pinter (1982; London: Macmillan, 1985) 80.

-ts Austin E. Quigley, The Pinter Problem (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton U P, 1975) 217. 436 allowed Teddy to "tell [her] what to do".^^ That he is able to watch all Ruth's machinations coolly and even make the offer to her on behalf of the family, makes Teddy the "biggest bastard of the lot".^^ Just as a mother can voluntarily choose the role of a whore and play both roles simultaneously, so too can a Professor of Philosophy both turn his back on the life of his gangster family and yet, at the same time, outdo them in terms of dastardliness. "Don't become a stranger" (80) is Ruth's parting message to Teddy when he is ready to leave, implying she has no hard feelings. Ruth's choice of roles allows her a strange freedom in her relationships, besides getting a chance to bring her "fractionized""*^ images (mother and whore, matriarch and handmaiden, guardian and hostage) into play and making them a continuum that expresses her whole womanly personality.

In his film version of the play (made for The American Film Theatre), Peter Hall interprets the action of The Homecoming as the dramatization of the family game of one-upmanship. In the sense that the men play games in order to create a position of comparative power for themselves within the family circle and seek a feeling of well-being as the consequence, we can say that their games come under the banner of Berne's games. Each member of the family is eternally engaged in the attempt to upstage the others. Certainly it is clear that the others are trying to corner Max into playing "Mother" and he, in turn, tries to retain his earlier patriarchal standing by refusing to cook meals and by feminizing the others - calling them "tit" (40), "bitch" (11), and so on - in an effort to appear strong by contrast. When Teddy arrives the whole family "puts on him" to try to

^•3 Harold Pinter, The Birthday Party (London: Methuen, 1968) 86. When Stanley is taken away Petey calls out to him: "Don't let them tell you what to do."

'•'• Peter Hall. Quoted by Bernard Dukore, "Dififerent Viewpoints in the Play", Harold Pinter: The Birthday Party". "The Caretaker" and The Homecoming" , ed. Michael Scott 191. t5 Nelson, The Homecoming: The Kith and Kin" 160. 437 break him. The proposition to his wife is an effort to "crack him" rather than an expression of desire for Ruth. But Teddy "is actually the biggest bastard in a lot of bastards, and he won't be cracked.''^^' Lenny and Ruth negotiate their positions in a conscious, Adult manner: in the final tableau Ruth and Lenny are the Adult figures who gather their "Children" around them.

Hugh Nelson says Ruth "comes home to herself, to all her possibilities as a woman"."^^ Elizabeth Sakellaridou shows how Ruth reaches an "equilibrium" and defies both debasement and deification (Jessie's lot) by openly talking about her past ("I was a model for the body*) and rejecting any romantic association such as that which Lenny introduces in his story of the lovely girl for whom he bought a hat with flowers on it (57). "As the revelation of Ruth's past history suggests, she experiences separately the different sides of herself; at an early stage her sexuality, at a later stage her maternal instinct and her role as a subservient wife, and now in her final stage she reaches self-completion by bringing all the various elements of her personality together in a harmonious whole." '^^ Ruth blossoms slowly but surely and the various stages of her growth are clearly revealed. She is far from the sphinx-like mystery woman that we see in Stella whose smile at the end neither confirms nor denies the truth of the version of her story that James finally comes to believe. On the other hand, Teddy, as Lenny says, has become very "inner" (64). Of course, like other Pinter characters, he uses his quietness as a shield but, still, his portraiture strikes us as either unsatisfactory or, more bluntly, a failure.

'•^ Quoted by Lucina Paquet Gabbard, The Dream Structure of Pinter's Plays: A Psychoanalytic Approach. (London: Associated Uniyersities Press, 1976) 187.

47 Nelson, 'The Homecoming: The Kith and Kin" 149.

''8 Sakellaridou, Pinter's Female Portraits 111. 438

As Peter Hall has said, the play is as multi-faceted as a diamond and has more types of ambiguity than just seven.^^ it can be read as Ruth's feminist triumph or as a text of misogyny. The more possibilities the text throws up, the richer the play obviously is. When all is said and done the plays of Pinter are fascinating studies of man as a game player, a man who steadfastly plays roles while hiding his true self.

Of all Pinter's plays it is The Lover (1963) that most explicitly deals with role playing. Like The Collection with which it is often paired in a double bill, The Lover deals with erotic sexual fantasies and the action is presented in such a way as to make valid several possible interpretations and versions offered by the characters or perceived as possible by the audience. Like Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Lover is also overtly concerned with marital relationships whose functionality depends upon role playing. We recall that, in Osborne's Look Back in Anger. Jimmy Porter and Alison have to resort to their childish games of bears and squirrels for it is only on that level that they can rediscover their once spontaneous rapport. In the years that have passed between the staging of Look Back in Anger and the televising of The Lover (a surprisingly brief period of only seven years), games husbands and wives play appear to have become far more adult in their complexity. Sarah and Richard seem to find sexual and ludic fulfillment in their game of Afternoon Lovers. We see the two of them dressed in "a sober suit" (50) and "a demure dress" (49) respectively at first, engaged in routine domestic chores. Richard gets ready to go to work while Sarah empties and cleans ashtrays in the living room. In the afternoon, Sarah, costumed for the pgirt in a very tight, low-cut black dress and very high-heeled shoes, receives her lover. To play the role of the lover Richard discards his business suit and affects a casual suede jacket and the no tie look. He calls himself Max.

'•'^ Peter Hall. Quoted by Almansi and Henderson, Harold Pinter 69, 66. 439

The interaction between the two now is of a rather different hue than before. At first Max plays the sexual predator pursuing an unwilling, shrinking violet of a married woman. Then, quite seamlessly, the act changes. Max becomes her rescuer, a well-meaning park-keeper, and she becomes the seductive aggressor. The sexuality is symbolized through the use of a bongo drum upon which their fingers intertwine and scratch each other while maintaining the beat of the drum. At the climax they disappear under the tea table.

The complexity in this play acting lies primarily in the attitude of the actors to the play, both when they are not playing their roles and while they are in their roles. Sarah's reaction appears to be quite simple: the afternoon game gives her a chance to live a side of her personality that cannot find release in their day-to-day life. Richard could possibly subscribe to the values of the middle class milieu where images of women belong to the polarized opposites of dignified wife and prostitute. He cannot see his wife as the latter. The game provides Sarah a way to express the sexual side of her being. That Sarah considers both aspects - those of wife and lover - as legitimate parts of her being is obvious from the fact that she does not feel the need to change her name when she alters her personality for the game. Richard, however, changes his name in the play within the play, thus denoting that he is unable to interact with Sarah the whore while in the role of her husband. He needs to separate his role as husband from that of his role as lover. It is interesting to notice that he refers to Sarah once as Dolores (66) and once as Mary (67) during the playing out of their sexual fantasies, separating his wife from his afternoon sex partner.

Of particular interest is the fact that though it is Richard who has the need to separate his two roles, it is he who cannot stop himself from talking of each role while he is engaged in playing the other. As Richard he cannot ask enough questions about Max. As Max he is 440 agitated about the affair because he thinks it is unfair to his wife. On the other hand, Sarah is at ease in the relationship. She speaks positively of Richard when Max asks about him and also speaks well of Max when Richard voices his curiosity. She feels no need to talk of one aspect of her life while involved in the other. At the same time she does not mind discussing it. Richard is snide about her belief in being "utterly frank" in order to have "a healthy marriage" (56). But for Richard/Max there is certainly an element of neurosis in his role playing life. His need to keep the two parts of his life apart is only as great as his inability to do so. While Sarah behaves as if the afternoon game is their beloved secret, Richard is clearly uneasy about it and he insists she do something about her lover and end the affair. He cannot bear the "humiliating ignominy of his position" (78) anymore and insists she end "Your life of depravity. Your path of illegitimate lust." (77). His anger is evident when he suggests Take him out into the fields. Find a ditch. Or a slag heap. Find a rubbish dump.... Buy a canoe and find a stagnant pond. Anything. Anywhere. But not my living room. (79). Richard's disgust with his wife's carnality could be the reason why the game became a necessity in the first place. But after (possibly) ten years compliance Richard can no longer treat it as tnere "pla}^ anymore. Richard's play has slipped from the conscious to a subconscious level. Reality and illusion have merged into a near- schizophrenic surrealism.

Sarah prefers to be thought of as his mistress but he insists, to her discomfiture, on the label of whore. "There's a world of difference" he insists. "I'm very well acquainted with a whore, but I haven't got a mistress." (55). In a harshly chauvinistic statement he defines a mistress as someone with grace, elegance and wit but a whore as a tool to be used for momentary sexual gratification. She is compared to "a quick cup of cocoa while they're checking the oil and water" (55). In her afternoon persona she is "just a common or a garden slut", he says, as if he were categorizing some stray lizard that 441 wandered into his house. She is "not worth talking about", only "handy between trains, nothing more" (55). Michael Billington picks up the importance of these remarks and goes on to formulate a feminist interpretation of the play in which he points out the significance of the Richard-Max duality. Richard defends himself when Sarah shows disappointment in his unfeeling attitude towards his afternoon companion, his refusal to define the afternoon Sarah as a woman of "dignity" (57). RICHARD (laughing). These terms just don't apply. You can't sensibly enquire whether a whore is witty. It's of no significance whether she is or isn't. She's simply a whore, a functionary who either pleases or displeases. SARAH. And she pleases you? RICHARD. Today she is pleasing. Tomorrow...? One can't say.

He moves towards the bedroom taking off his jacket.

SARAH. I must say I find your attitude to women rather alarming. RICHARD. Why? I wasn't looking for your double, was I? I wasn't looking for a woman I could respect, as you, whom I could admire and love, as I do you. Was I? All I wanted was... how shall I put it... someone who could express and engender lust with all lust's cunning. Nothing more.

He goes into the bedroom, hangs his jacket up in the wardrobe, and changes into his slippers. In the living room SARAH puts her drink down, hesitates and then follows into the bedroom.

SARAH. I'm sorry your affair possesses so little dignity. RICHARD, The dignity is in my marriage. SARAH. Or sensibility. 442

RICHARD. The sensibility likewise. I wasn't looking for such attributes. I find them in you. (56 - 57)

Sarah would like both her husband and her lover to appreciate her finer qualities. She does not cease to be Sarah when she plays at lovers. Basically, hers is a very simple sort of role playing. Playing at being mistress and lover in the afternoon is merely meant to add the extra dimension of sexuality-without-guilt to their lives. While Sarah enters whole-heartedly into the enactment, she hopes to bring a little spice into their lives too and probably enjoys the deliciously wicked transgression into the role of mistress. She carries the glow of her sexual satisfaction of the afternoon into her evening interaction with her husband. Still partially in fantasyland, she tends to murmur "mmmnn" (61) in a cat-like purring after a greatly satisfying experience. She speaks to her lover "fondly (67). The afternoon act completes her relationship with Richard, rounding it off, fulfilling her several aspects and needs. "You've always appreciated... how much these afternoons... mean" (78). As she says, "I think things are beautifully balanced, Richard" (61). The intense warmth of the afternoon (52) is at least partly metaphorical and the sunshine spills over into the rest of their lives.

It appears likely that Sarah has needed to play the game in order that she might express her carnal identity - something Richard, with his middle class stuffiness, perhaps cannot allow while she plays the wife. For Sarah the game seems to have fulfilled her expectations. It has provided the opportunity to bring her hidden desires into play and thus given her a wholeness of experience and happiness she might not otherwise have achieved with Richard. And it has probably succeeded for the ten years of their married life together.

For Richard, however, the play within the play has been a far more complex experience. His annoyance when Sarah fails to cover up all traces of the afternoon's happenings by evening when he returns as 443

Richard puzzle her somewhat. Yet she is willing to do as he says for the sake of the continuance of those moments that are precious for her. "Mistake. Sorry." (54) she mutters when Richard comments critically on the very high-heeled shoes she has forgotten to change out of, calling them "unfamiliar". He displays a rather unnecessary jealousy of Sarah's afternoons, considering it is he who plays her lover. In terms of theatre, of course, the audience's lack of awareness (until they see him in the act) that Sarah's lover is merely Richard in disguise throws them onto the wrong track altogether and makes for suspense. Earlier Richard (who, seen in a domestic situation with Sarah, would seem to be Sarah's husband although it is not explicitly thus implied) has "amiably" (49) asked whether Sarah's lover would be visiting that day. The audience would wonder if this were a super-sophisticated open marriage. "Does it occur to you that while you're spending the afternoon being unfaithful to me I'm sitting at a desk going through balance sheets and graphs?" (53) he asks, with no trace of humour alleviating the intended criticism. "You're not jealous, are you?" (59) asks Sarah. Pinter positions the action of the play at the crucial moment of crisis in their affair. Richard persistently asks questions about Sarah's afternoon affair - something "you don't normally do" (59), complains Sarah. Apparently, though the affair has continued successfully for ten years, the unhappiness and almost paranoid jealousy he reveals is not sudden but has been brewing for a while. "Doesn't he get a bit bored with these damn afternoons? This eternal teatime? I would." (60). His discontent is obvious in the contrast between the way Sarah and he speak of their lovers. Everything Sarah says is complimentary. Her lover is "terribly sweet", "very adaptable", "very loving", "he has a wonderful sense of humour" (60). But for Richard his lover is just a "spare-time whore" (69).

In her insistence that "he respects you" (60) is a clear statement of Sarah's respect for both aspects of their relationship. On the other hand, however, Richard says that he and his whore "discuss you as 444 we would play an antique music box. We play it for our titillation, whenever desired" (58). This hardly bespeaks any kind of respect for either relationship, with wife or with lover. Richard must be aware that he is hurting Sarah by talking of her in such crass terms but he chooses to do so nevertheless. Sarah obviously craves an emotional continuum between his roles of husband and lover and Richard is incapable of providing it. He seems to suffer from a deep-seated neurosis which threatens to ruin the concept of the afternoon affair and thereby the marriage too.

His ridiculous jealousy of his wife's lover (who is, after all, as the audience soon realizes, himself in a conscious role) is about to erode the buffer that has protected the marriage and allowed their relationship to thrive. "I'm beginning to mind," (68) he says, speaking of her afternoon affair while in the role of Max. "Not because of my husband, I hope," queries the astonished Sarah. "It's because of my wife." "I can't deceive her any longer." "I've been deceiving her for years. I can't go on with it. It's killing me." (69). Sarah, in a state of great confusion, tries to point out, "But your wife...knows. Doesn't she? You've told her...all about us. She's known all the time." But Max is unconvinced. MAX. She'd mind if she knew the truth, wouldn't she? SARAH. What truth? What are you talking about? MAX. She'd mind if she knew that, in fact...I've got a full-time mistress, two or three times a week, a woman of grace, elegance, wit and imagination - SARAH. Yes, yes, you have - MAX. In an affair that's been going on for years, SARAH. She doesn't mind, she wouldn't mind - she's happy, she's happy.

Pause.

I wish you'd stop this rubbish, anyway. 445

She picks up the tea-tray and moves towards the kitchen.

You're doing your best to ruin the whole afternoon.

She takes the tray out. She then returns, looks at MAX and goes to him.

Darling. You don't really think you could have what we have with your wife, do you? I mean, my husband, for instance, completely appreciates that 1 - MAX. How does he bear it, your husband? How does he bear it? Doesn't he smell me when he comes back in the evenings? What does he say? He must be mad. Now - what's the time - half past four - now when he's sitting in his office, knowing what's going on here, what does he feel, how does he bear it? SARAH. Max - MAX. How? SARAH. He's happy for me. He appreciates the way I am. He understands. (70).

Sarah hopes, miserably, that this is a new variation that Richard/Max has introduced within their usual enactment. Her hesitations indicate that this is new territory for her. "What are you doing, playing a game?" she asks doubtfully. "A game? 1 don't play games" scoffs Max. But Sarah corrects him, "Don't you? You do. Oh, you do. Usually 1 like them." Close to having a nervous breakdown, Richard/Max declares an ultimatum: "I've played my last game." (71). That the "game" is no longer make-believe but the real thing implies Richard's schizophrenic involvement. While Sarah has been content to keep her routine marriage activity and the field of tea-time play "separate" in the way Huizinga, Caillois and Suits define them, Richard craves a mingling of the two, at least in the new "play" he initiates. Their "arrangement" (81) has to change its character. 446

Richard slips from his Adult role in which he had made the "arrangement" of play with Sarah into the Child who confuses the game and the reality. Pinter's presentation shows Sarah in the process of discovering an aspect of Richard's personality that she has never suspected before. Even husband-wife interactions, therefore, are perceived to be of the same nature as typical Pinterian interactions between acquaintances. In both cases much is unknown and unexplained.

Though Richard has declared an end to the playing of games, Sarah wonders if he is nevertheless playing yet another game within a game. She realizes that some shock therapy is called for. She saves the situation (and the impending game-less future) by spontaneously starting up another game, adopting another role. Like Albee's George and Martha, Richard and Sarah also seem to be adept at changing the rules of their games without notice and then watching to see how the other adapts to the new situation. As such, they are simultaneously both adversaries and team-mates. Their role playing is also as inveterate as George and Martha's. Role playing has permeated their beings. When Richard changes the rules, Sarah proves equal to Richard in her ability to react to the sudden changes and continues the game after it has changed track. She now pretends to have been more unfaithful to Richard than he has realized. She has several lovers, she says. He has not been the only one. SARAH. You stupid...! [She looks at him coolly.) Do you think he's the only one who comes! Do you? Do you think he's the only one I entertain? Mmmnn? Don't be silly. 1 have other visitors, other visitors, all the time, 1 receive all the time. Other afternoons, all the time. When neither of you know, neither of you. 1 give them strawberries in season. With cream. Strangers, total strangers. But not to me, not while they're here. They come to see the hollyhocks. And then they stay for tea. Always. Always. 447

RICHARD. Is that so? (81).

Richard responds spontaneously to the woman he recognizes newly (again) as a whore, without switching roles consciously. Sarah has expanded her role and preserved her game - for the time being. She has Richard continue to play the role he had agreed to play by "our arrangement" by cleverly modifying her role. Richard begins to tap the bongo drum. Sarah encourages him on until he begs her to change her clothes and calls her "you lovely whore" (84).

Sarah has failed to elicit that "understanding" (78) of her woman's needs that she craves but, on whatever terms, she has succeeded in winning a continuation of their game. When Billington says, "She stoops to conquer",50 he has put his finger unerringly on the real issue involved here. Richard seems to need to debase sex in order to enjoy it in a variation of Berne's game called Perversion. Sarah is likely to have to stoop again and again. She must rescue Richard from his middle class sense of guilt by eternally playing a role more debased than his. Richard may never be able to break through his schizophrenic role playing and acknowledge and appreciate the plurality of the female personality but if Sarah can succeed in keeping him playing variations of their game, there may be a semblance of contentment in their home. Of course, the possibility of explosive developments co-exists all the time in the typically Pinterian uncertainty of the play and its progress. Richard/Max's disgust and sense of humiliation and his utter contempt, in the final analysis, for both wife and lover - "You're just a bloody woman" (71) - indicates dangerous implications for Sarah and their marriage. Since the game has failed, albeit after ten years of success, it is only to be expected that whatever variations Sarah's resourcefulness can come up with will also face rejection sooner or later. Sarah would be living on the edge of a precipice her every role playing moment.

Billington, The Life and Work of Harold Pinter 144. 448

Richard/Max, clearly guilty of gender bias, represents, finally, the patriarch, centre of his own phallocentric universe, who lives entirely for his own pleasure - "the pleasure is mine" (58) - alone. Whether the afternoon play takes over from reality or reality intrudes into the play, Richard/Max remains ultimately incapable of "understanding" (78) his Sarah in her multiple reality.

Richard's final criticisms of his wife are based on his dependence on the concept of conventional roles. As far as Richard's understanding goes, wives cannot be whorish and whores cannot be women of taste and elegance. Richard relegates his mistress to the position of a whore for the express purpose of protecting his wife's feelings. As a wife and (perhaps) a mother Sarah is failing in upholding the stereotype. She is "falling down on [her] wifely duties" (76) when she fails to cook a decent meal because she was engaged with her lover. He seeks to terminate his affair out of concern for his wife's sensibility. The afternoon lover, however, can be spoken to anyhow. He tells her to her face that she is only a whore and that she is too bony for his liking, utterly unconcerned about her feelings. Richard is driven to use "long words" (75) and an air of pomposity as a mask to hide his disgust at Sarah's exhibition of her basic instinct. The dignified wifely stereotype is important to Richard.

RICHARD. I have great pride in being seen with you. When we're out to dinner, or at the theatre.

RICHARD. Great pride, to walk with you as my wife on my arm. To see you smile, laugh, walk, talk, bend, be still. To hear your command of contemporary phraseology, your delicate use of the very latest idiomatic expressions, so subtly employed. Yes. To feel the envy of others, their attempts to gain favour with you, by fair means or foul, your austere grace confounding them. And to know you are my wife. It's a source of a profound satisfaction to me. (75). 449

Richard is obsessed with his public image as husband of this "very beautiful" (75) woman he likes to show off. Of course Sarah's sexual prowess has no place in her list of accomplishments to be publicly paraded. It is unacceptable to Richard that Sarah is an amalgam - both dignified wife and whore. He has so completely internalized the notion of stereotypical roles that it becomes impossible for their exciting and titillating experiment with alternate identities and roles to survive. So strong is Richard's sense of role expectancy that Sarah's appeal to his masked need for naughty and illicit eroticism can only last for a little while till his over-developed sense of decorum takes over. It is certainly true that Richard is very aware of their responsibility as a married couple, possibly with children. However, Steven H. Gale seems to simplify matters a little too much when he cites a concern for the concept of the family as the only reason behind Richard's decision to terminate the afternoon relationship.^i Surely it is a far more paranoid inability to face himself in the role of an extra-marital lover and to see his wife in the degenerate role of a whore that forms the real basis of his desperate need to bring this play acting to a close.

The terrible confusion in Richard's mind is evident when, just a breath after he has insisted the affair be ended and has even threatened to kick the lover's teeth out if he should ever find him there, he calls out "softly* to Sarah, calling her "Adulteress" (80) with transparent longing and desire. It is almost as if he were signalling to Sarah, showing her that, whatever he has overtly said, he is still enamoured of the game of adultery. It is as though Richard has made his token protest against illicit liaisons but begs, in a subtext, for a way out by which he might continue to play the game. This is, then, in effect, yet another game that Richard chooses to play. He needs to

5' Steven H. Gale, "Harold Pinter's Family Voices and the Concept of the Family", Harold Pinter: You Never Heard Such Silence , ed. Alan Bold (London: Vision Press, 1984) 155. 450 speak (in conscious and public articulation) against the playing of the game of Afternoon Lovers but communicates (in subconscious or private articulation) his need for its continuation nevertheless.

In a psychoanalytic interpretation, Lucina Paquet Gabbard offers a reading of the play in which Richard obliquely confesses his need for greater stimulation. Gabbard shows that this is typical of stale relationships. She offers the interpretation that Richard seeks more and more stimulation to revitalize a relationship gone stale. At first it was enough to debase (in his eyes) his wife to the role of the other woman, a mistress he meets in the afternoons. Some time later, however, and we witness this situation in the play, Sarah is alarmed to note that he now thinks of her as a mere whore. At the end of the play Richard needs to denigrate her status even further and elicits the role of "real" whore from her. In support of this theory it can be said that there is indeed the evidence of Richard's lack of interest near the beginning of the action. "1 thought you wanted to go to that exhibition" he says, revealing a reluctance to play the lover that afternoon. Again, later, he mentions that his afternoon's meeting was "rather inconclusive", perhaps implying an unsatisfactory sexual experience. Richard persuades Sarah to adopt a changed version of their love game, modifying her role.^'^

Pretending to wonder how it came to be in his house, Richard picks up the bongo drum and begins to play it. In response Sarah begins to enact the role of a "real" whore, one who is unfaithful to her husband "all the time" (81), enticing him into another session of Afternoon Lovers, played, this time, with a variation, in the evening. Bernard Dukore notices that Sarah's final triumph over Richard's middle class inhibitions is through the role of whore rather than mistress. Although Richard's lover aspect seems to win over the husband aspect every so often, Sarah has quite definitely been forced to

52 Gabbard, The Dream Structure of Pinter's Plays 158, 160 - 61. 451 surrender her role of mistress and succumb to the part of the whore.53 This reading would certainly confound the so-called feminist interpretation that Billington offers wherein he makes a case for Sarah's success in articulating both aspects (wife/mother and whore) of her womanly identity. Richard, in the complexity of his responses to sexuality, requires Sarah to be debased in order to respond to her in a carnally satisfactory way. Yet, pver^ so often, the husband deplores her whorishness and winds up the affair and her role in it. Thereafter he must return to a yearning for her in her whore role and debase her even further in order to enjoy his relationship with her. It is a cyclical situation of longing for a whore followed inevitably by chagrin that his wife should be one. Richard is doomed to end up a nervous wreck with his pathologically incompatible (in fact, contradictory) dual needs. It seems to be a "Catch-22'' situation in which Sarah is doomed.

However, Sakellaridou sees a definite progress in Richard when he takes up his lover's role in the evening and while still dressed in his business clothes. When he holds his wife in an embrace while she is still in her demure clothes, he is, according to the critic, embracing the wholeness of her personality. The fact that he still calls her his "lovely whore" (84) is dismissed by her as a mere "trace" - and the only one - left of his old attitude. Sarah does not now object to being called "whore", she postulates, because it is used in conjunction with "lovely", thus making it synonymous with "mistress", her chosen term for her role in Richard's afternoons.^'' Sakellaridou seems to ignore the quite undeniable fact that the last scene has Sarah obeying Richard (again) while he sends out messages in code. Richard both insists on an ending of the affair - saying he has paid his whore off because she was too bony (79) - and a continuance of the affair (calling her "adulteress", and asking about the drum). He

53 Dukore, Harold Pinter 69.

^^ Sakellaridou. Pinter's Female Portraits 104. 452 begins playing the fantasy game, forcing her to join in. Like Bartholomew Drag's associates (in TheGrasshopper), Sarah is forced to play the supporting role indicated by Richard's choice of role for himself. It is important to notice that it is because she knows her husband's needs so well that Sarah offers to change her clothes, to return to another version of their former, mutually understood relationship. He does indeed want her to change her clothes. She is to be the whore again. Perhaps his complaint that his whore is too bony is an oblique way of demanding a further fleshliness, a carnality that is pure "lust with all lust's cunning" (57) that only a degenerate whore can deliver. There is no change in her status and she desists from insisting on a change. The only change is that Richard has had a chance to refute the relationship openly, that is, to reiterate his conventional dislike of overt sexuality within marriage. Thereafter he reverts to the affair by subliminally telling Sarah to change her role. Like the well-trained "servant''^^ she is, she understands and does modify her role. The new game is created "out of the ashes of their old game".^^ As Quigley declares, "Their relationship is not the single negotiated balance of compromised differences; it is an ongoing process of distributing and balancing differences".^^ The act, like the reality, is eternally in a state of flux. The rules and the roles are bound to keep changing. Sarah varies between yielding and resisting but it is always Richard who takes the initiative and he is the one who finally gets bored with the game and starts to break its rules, dragging the apparatus of the afternoon (the bongo drums) into the evening and forbidding Sarah to go on receiving her lover.

55 Sakellaridou, Pinter's Female Portraits 102.

56 Steven H. Gale, Butter's Going Up: A Critical Analysis of Harold Pinter's Work (Durham, North Carolina: Duke U P, 1977) 136.

57 Austin E. Quigley. Quoted by Martin S. Regal, Harold Pinter: A Question of Timinp (London: Macmillan, 1995) 53. 453

Out of the blue, when Max talks of ending the affair, he tells Sarah she is too bony. This is obviously the first time he has ever criticized her on this point, especially since she says she is plump and has always been so and he has apparently appreciated it all these years. Later, as Richard, he insists he is "fond of thin ladies" (76), thus confusing Sarah even further but clearly demarcating his two separate roles. However, this still does not bode well for Sarah since she is not a "thin lady". Sarah's bewilderment is shared by the audience. Sarah and Richard's struggle between their two roles belonging to two different realities continues with no definite outcome predictable. Certainly the relationship is rife with the uncertainty that Huizinga describes as a characteristic of play.

When Sarah pretends she has not had time to cook dinner because of her time spent with her lover in the afternoon, Richard is annoyed. It is her way of teasingly and fondly reminding him of their afternoon sojourn. It is, thus, a mild effort to suggest a continuum between their afternoon and rest-of-the-day identities. Whether Sarah only means to tease him or remind him that she is the same person as the woman with whom he has spent a sexually charged afternoon, it is tantamount to a declaration of unity of the wife and the other woman. But Richard cannot stand the two identities being blended together. Sakellaridou makes an attempt to explicate his determination to keep "the splitting of roles at all costs". She points to his professional persona as the really important identity in his eyes. With Sarah split into two subservient women - beautiful, domestically inclined wife and whore - he has two women ("servants", as Sakellaridou calls them) who pander to his diverse needs. This way he can keep sacrosanct his professional persona. "Richard typifies the male ideology that makes man's primary interest his work and induces him to suppress his natural self, the other side of his personality."^^

Sakellaridou, Pinter's Female Portraits 102 - 3. 454

When all this is said and done, there is still, unnervingly, the possibility of another, "Sarah-damning" reading of the play. There is nothing in the play that excludes the possibility of Sarah being a schizophrenic curiosity or a nymphomaniac and the one who started the game in the first place. Sarah could have the need to play a role that society does not sanction. As Martin Esslin asks: "is Sarah, deep down, a whore forced by society into a guise of respectability; is she a respectable woman seeking an occasional outlet for her desires in erotic fantasy? Is Richard unable to find sexual satisfaction with a respectable woman and mother, and therefore compelled to the fantasy that he is buying satisfaction from someone experienced in 'all lust's cunning? Or is he really at heart a pimp whom society has forced into the mould of the bowler-hatted commuterP'^^ There is no way the audience can get any "verification". As always, Pinter plays with his audience, arousing their curiosity and refusing to give any conclusive answers or even any telling clues. Much of the pleasure of a Pinter experience is this very unpredictable interplay between the play-maker and the play-player, as Selden calls them.

The fact that they "live out here, so far away from the main road, so secluded" (61) can be construed to imply that the two have created and preserved a whole microcosm of their own where the outside world and its standards of normalcy barely intrude, thus encouraging the notion of the off-beat, weird and kinky. Ganz discusses Pinter's favourite setting, the enclosed room as a refuge for those who have cut themselves off from some vital part of life. He offers some examples as illustrations of this thesis. Stanley's retreat into the room at Meg's can be seen as a refuge from the family and the organization that he has severed his links with. Similarly, Aston holes up in his room in order to seek sanctuary from the world that

59 Esslin, The Peopled Wound 135. 455 denied him his natural existence in his chosen role and tormented him until he had been adequately reduced to "normalcy". Edward, in A Slight Ache, retires to his secluded countiy house to write "theological and philosophical essays" .^o The Collection and The Lover are both concerned with women for whom their marriages have become stifling and begun to represent a "withdrawal from a satisfyingly vital sexual life". As Ganz points out, Sarah remedies her situation by taking a lover with her husband's consent.^i It is interesting to take this interpretation further by pointing out that the lover persona of Richard, Max, comes in from outside the house and provides for Sarah what she needs: a chance to play the role of a sexually vibrant woman. Pinter leaves the question of who started the game inconclusive (57) and, all in all. The Lover remains an enigma even after close analysis.

Elizabeth Sakellaridou makes a case for a development in the female portraits in Pinter's plays. She shows how the image of the assertive woman who makes a stake for satisfaction in her marriage is presented in several plays, each image sequentially more skilled and life-like than the earlier one. Flora in A Slight Ache is possibly the first of Pinter's women to assert her sexual identity and her needs. Sally in Night School portrays the dual nature of woman that was to be developed in several plays thereafter. She shows that the roles of a school teacher and a night club hostess can co-exist in one woman. Stella (The Collection) makes a protest against her neglect by her husband. In spite of being a professional woman she feels the absence of companionship and is shown alone and eternally waiting in their house in the evening. The story about the seduction/rape by the gay Bill (never really convincingly verified) may be a rather pathetic ploy but it is at least a concrete effort to regain her husband's attention. After Stella, who is shown pitifully silent and

60 Harold Pinter, A Slight Ache and Other Plays. London: Eyre Methuen, 1982.

6> Ganz, "Introduction'', Pinter: A Collection of Critical Essays 13 - 14. 456 alone, Sarah is a bold example of an articulate woman who, at least at first glance, seems to actively ensure the satisfaction of her sexual needs. Ruth is, of course, one kind of climactic expression of a woman who knows what she wants and goes out and gets it. Though Pinter has written a large number of plays without any women characters at all and seems somewhat uncomfortable with the delineation of females, his very first significant piece of writing, the unpublished novel The Dwarfs, incorporates a "very independent, resolute and clear-minded''^^ gjj-i called Virginia who tries to refute male stereotypes and establish herself in an identity independent of these. Virginia is somewhat summarily set aside and denied a full exploration in the novel but there is a steady improvement in the depiction of women in plays that follow. Emma, in Betrayal, is presented as a professional woman who (unlike Stella) is actually seen to be busy with her work (of running an art gallery). In spite of a sort of betrayal by both the men in her life, she is able to forge a new, more meaningful relationship that shows some promise.

While it is rewarding to read The Lover as a pro-feminist statement, it is even more fascinating as a study of role playing gone awry. Like Pirandello's six Characters who, once created, must break their umbilical cords and tumble to their destinies, or like his Henry IV who is doomed to live trapped within his play-within-the-play even though he has become conscious of reality, Sarah and Richard are also destined to survive only if they embark on game after game, role after role - each more frenzied than the one before. The "old play* that wits like Mirabell and Dorimant scorned has been replaced by a new play and it has spilled from afternoon into evening, from stage to home. As a player Richard proves to be "a spoilsport" (82), refusing to support the illusion indefinitely after agreeing to join the cast. Sarah has managed to outplay Richard this time but Pinter keeps us guessing about the future. Dissatisfaction and the need to improvise

62 Sakellaridou, Pinter's Female Portraits 12. 457 is a cyclical experience that will keep these actors on the stage. Though it is unclear who the director and scriptwriter are - whether Richard or Sarah - yet the deep-seated need to play their roles will keep the actors going with their spontaneous complementary performances.

In Anger and After. John Russell Taylor introduces an interesting angle to the analysis of Pinter's plays. He shows how there is a gradual shift from the need for verification of the exact nature of events and people presented on stage in the earlier plays to a desire for understanding sought by the characters about their own situations. Little by little the desire for verification has shifted from the audience into the play they are watching; instead of watching with a degree of mystification the manoeuvres of a group of characters who seem perfectly to understand what they are doing but simply offer us no means of sharing that understanding, we are now required to watch understandingly the manoeuvres of people who do not understand their situation but are trying laboriously to establish the truth about it. And this truth goes beyond the mere verification of single facts to a quest for the how and why, the who and what, at a deeper level than the demonstrable fact. This involves a new preoccupation with the means of communication, since the question comes back, will people tell the truth about themselves, and if they will, can they?^^ In the case of Sarah and Richard what they really need to discover about themselves is "the one coherent being underneath", the "one face behind the faces" and this belongs perhaps to the realm of the "unknowable".^'* If Pirandello were to be considered an authority on

^3 John Russell Taylor, Anger and After: A Guide to the New British Drama (London: Methuen, 1962) 257 - 58.

s-* Taylor, Anger and After 258. 458 this issue after his lifelong enquiry into the nature of the man and the mask, one would have to consider this question as one that belongs to the realm of the metaphysical. Just as Pirandello's Father has many aspects other than the one his Stepdaughter so fatally surprises, so too do Sarah and Richard have many aspects to their personalities. Taylor speaks of The Lover as a landmark play marking the "furthest exploration of human nature in its irrevocably fragmented form": an acceptance that each person is the sum of many reflections.^^ Still, the need for verification that audiences of Pinter's plays experienced in the early years is seen in the interaction of the two characters in this play. But Richard and Sarah put aside their desire for the truth (as Pinter would like his audiences too to develop a sense of Keatsian negative capability) to surmount their problems and continue their role playing. Their "joint pretence", their enactment, has, after all, been that upon which they "depend to continue" (The Dwarfs). To go beyond Taylor, it can also be said that Sarah's falling into a variation of the erstwhile role of whore upon Richard's "subtextual" suggestion is what Len refers to as "contrived accidents" (112). As Ronald Hayman shows, in The Lover and The Collection part of the tension for us is the game that Pinter plays in making us tiy to sort out the fiction from the facts.''^

There are indeed "Pirandellian complications"^^ to be found in Pinter's plays. His characters are seen to be players of roles and of games. At the very least his characters assume masks in order to hide their real selves out of a sense of some kind of self-protective instinct. Thus, characters like Mick and Davies use words like screens to hide behind rather than to articulate their realities. In The Lover Richard and Sarah partially reveal the tangled web of mutual roles that they have been using. We can only begin to guess

65 Taylor, "A Room and Some Views: Harold Pinter", Pinter: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Arthur Ganz 119.

56 Hayman, Harold Pinter 55.

67 Trussler, The Plays of Harold Pinter 113. 459 at the complexity of their relationship. The Homecoming reveals a complicated matrix of power relationships within a single family. Peter Hall, Pinter's director of choice for his plays, has said that the power games that Teddy is greeted with are an indication that games are second nature to the family. Pinter's depiction of roles and games seems to make a statement about his reading of human interaction: the tendency to take roles, to conceal one's true self, and to relate with another through games is basic to the species. A thorough knowledge of the "other" is something to be attempted but unlikely ever to be achieved.

Although Pinter's characters display none of the "fun" that Huizinga describes as an important characteristic of play, they do show a drive, an instinctive need to play games and take roles that is elemental to their being and, apparently, necessary for their happiness. Far from being a luxury or an intermission in life, as Jacques Ehrmann calls play (deriving from the definitions offered by Huizinga and Caillois)^^, their games are essential to their survival and form an integral part of their mainstream lives.

68 Jacques Ehrmann, "Homo Ludens Revisted", Yale French Studies 41 (1968): 44.