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CHAPTER : 4

DISCOURSE OF SELF AND OTHER IN LANDSCAPE. SILENCE AND NIGHT

The three plays discussed in this chapter, Landscape. Silence and Niqht^ are important in understanding the cumulative discourse of Self and Other or the conflict between social and existential definitions of Self. In other words, the dialectic between objective and subjective reality which was discussed in chapter three, is further intensified here as the characters try to gather up their own lives through past and present. The gap here between subjective and objective reality is so great that to the characters re-living their past, the subjective truth embedded in the consciousness often appears more authentic than any other reality. The main problem of these plays is that there are versions of truth which are difficult to reconcile, but for the characters analysing their own past and assessing it, it is difficult to accept such fragmentation. The difficulty of verification persistently highlights the importance of perception and perspective in the search for meaning and understanding.

These plays, generally described as "memory plays," are often compared to Beckett's last plays,^ and this makes it important for us to remember that unlike the memory plays of Beckett, these are not static descriptions, but full of possibilities. Within the contours of these plays, there are intense explorations of interrelationships, which vary according to the constraints of gender, social status and knowledge. The most important element of these plays is the acute consciousness of age, time and even death in the midst of a longing for life, for youth and subjectively re-living the past. When life is actually being lived, the meaning is not easy to formulate; but when this is somewhat formulated. 318

relationships are already sour and irredeemable: the subjective emotional persona and the objective, thinking Self are irreconcilable, unable to integrate diverse strains and conflicts.

As shown in the preceding analysis of the discourse of characters in chapter three, Pinterian drama is fundamentally a drama of human relationships, determined by social status, positions of power, institutional forces, self-definitions, perception and perspective. The plays discussed in the present chapter dramatically portray the view that every truth and any reality always exists at various levels, depending upon the point of view from which it is examined. What happens in every Pinterian play - namely, that characters talk more to alleviate their own compulsive desires and ideas, rather than to invite the other's opinions and views - is here intensified to the extent that the characters use a subjective discourse of Self, failing altogether to respond to the Other's need for attention and sympathetic acceptance. The concentration here on self-examination and self-consciousness is part of the cumulative Pinterian discourse on the meaning of truth and reality in the context of individual aspiration versus social constraint. The exploration of social structures through individual micro-realities, especially the realities associated with marital relationships or other kinds of man-woman relationships are particularly significant in these plays and the discourse of characters is marked by a sincere and intense attempt to relate Self and Other without masks and duplicity.

In the first two plays, that is. Landscape and Silence, the characters sit and talk, assessing and analysing their pasts, much as characters in all Pinter-plays do, except that here the entire action of the play is taken over by such a concern, indeed a compulsive concern. The past impinges upon the present and is a means of escaping from the disillusionment of everyday existence. Moments of heightened 319

consciousness, much like the Wordsworthian "spots of time" can alleviate the stasis and boredom of the rest of life, as memory recreates the more intense emotions and feelings of the past. Filtering these moments, assessing them through hindsight and accepting them in the light of immediate social reality, is a mission for the characters here.

Beth, the main player in Landscape, can live by the memory, for instance, of a chance encounter with a man on the beach, even as she puts up with the unimaginative chatter of her egotistical husband. Similarly, in Silence, three characters relive their past, bringing it into their present life as a means of relating to each other and acknowledging themselves. Though all the characters in the plays discussed so far have significant pasts and consequent relationships and motives in the present (for example. The Room, The Birthdav Party, Homecomino. A Night Out), yet, the explicit connections between past and present are never as clear as they are in the present group of plays. The "stream of consciousness" technique used in the modern novel to reveal the drama of the mind is here prominently used to relate past, present and future, indeed to stress that in the psyche, all three moments often merge inextricably to make up the imperfect realities of human endeavour. Alan Bold in an excellent study entitled You never Heard Such Silence, writes that,

... objectively viewed, many of the interests that later emerge in Pinter's plays seem more suitable for fiction rather than realisation on stage ... for example involvement of the reader in the psyche of a single individual, around whom strange or fantastic psychic figurations may be projected, seems a much easier achievement for the novel, where a simple restriction of point of view is sufficient to effect the necessary concentration on individual consciousness as the modernist 320

novel often demonstrates. Despite the possible example of Strindberg's A Dream Play, or of some of Pirandello's work this sort of concentration is obviously more difficult to achieve on stage, where it may seem impossible to make the audience share the point of view of a single character ... nevertheless, the success of Pinter's drama in the theatre as well as on radio and television testifies to the possibility of discovering means for realizing similar effects on stage [and] in comparison to Beckett's more widely-ranging philosophical and metaphysical presentation of the human condition ... the significance of Pinter's characters is more circumscribed by specific individuation and in accent and dialogue as well as stage setting they belong more closely to a recognizable social world.^

Alan Bold is quite right in believing that the memory plays are somewhat experimental in form and technique but concretely realistic presentations in comparison to the memory plays of Beckett, for instance. Even as he started writing Landscape. Pinter was aware that he was experimenting with a new form of drama, but since it was unpremeditated he did not know how it would evolve. This shows that the genesis of the play was a process of growth, dictated by the imminent positions and situations of the characters. The focus according to Pinter, was on the developing interaction between two characters and this was the core around which the play grew. Pinter's emphasis on the concreteness of the situation - that is the human interaction - importantly distinguishes his art from Beckett's, with whom he is often compared. Pinter emphasised the ordinariness of the situation in his account of the evolution of The Landscape and of the later plays in general. "Each play", he wrote, is "quite a different world ... with a totally different environment," where "the starting point is sometimes no more than a 321

situation." The beginning of The Landscape, in particular, interestingly reinforces the idea of process and open-endedness as the basic principle of his art. As he saw it, the germ of the play lay in Beth's consciousness - "Two people in a room. A few words ... I've started a couple of pages of something quite different. A new form and I'm diving. It's simply, as it stands, about a woman around fifty. That's all I bloody well know. I don't know where she is ... I only formulate conclusions after I've written the plays. I've no idea what I'm obsessed with-\usi so pleased to see the words on paper.'*

As Pinter himself admits. Landscape. Silence and Night are different in form from the earlier plays. Here there are "static actions"^ and the stage is quite bare to emphasise the presence of the characters, especially their sense of confronting themselves. The two characters of Landscape. Beth and Duff, are however, not merely voices as in the memory plays of avant-garde drama (Anne Paolucci has spoken of Beckett and Albee's protagonists as voices without selves, records of the individual consciousness merely^), but intensely vivid characters struggling to readjust themselves every now and then with renewed efforts and failing because of a lack of understanding between themselves. Like most other critics, Simon Trussler also feels that the play's two characters "are not merely voices ... in some limbo of lost memories and that active social relationships are constantly being negotiated.^ In this context, Richard Allen Cave too, has recognised that though in Landscape and Silence (the last two works of the sixties) the prevailing tone of his writing changed, yet Pinter never turned inert or vague as Beckett often did in his memory plays. He illustrates that,

... the prevailing tone of his writing changed : the pervasive sense of threat had gone, the nerviness that gave a slightly hysterical timbre to the laughter his wit provoked had relaxed. 322

The fears and desires that gave the characters their particular identities and condition, the quality of the relationships they establish together had in former plays largely to be inferred by the audience from the fluctuating patterns of the characters' behaviour. In Landscape and Silence Pinter began pushing at the frontiers of realism in his work, extending them to encompass a more open statement about the reaches of the mind without losing touch with the character's social being."®

In Landscape, specific kinds of discourse become important in characterising the consciousness and personality of the respective speakers. Beth, who represents a particular point of view and a certain definition of man-woman relationships, uses a discourse of Self v^ich in its emergent perspective, is entirely self-reflexive; it cleverly focuses upon her own needs as it exposes the insensitive, male point of view. Her discourse re-constructs male sexuality just the way she would like it to be, totally ignoring Duff's boorishness and lack of sentimentality. For Duff, woman is little better than a sexual object, but surely an object he cannot appropriate for his own use when it comes to Beth, his wife. Beth threatens and disrupts the stability and dominance of stereotyped male discourse as she re-creates her own idyllic love-scene with a lover. Her husband cannot define their relationship, feels the inadequacy of the situation, and makes a last-ditched attempt to re-invigorate a sour relationship. But Beth has become less vulnerable, as she is in her present state, self-contained and confident. Thus, she can successfully resist the images of male-dominated discourse by creating her own terms by which to define her identity. Duffs discourse is coarse in its imagery, its insensitivity and total disregard of any kind of etiquette or appropriateness. Beth's has a vision and a yearning for beauty, aesthetic balance and a painful awareness of unfulfilment. It is significant that Beth's discourse is distinctly characterised by its 323

intensely emotional tones in contrast to Duff's loud practical and sometimes vulgar discourse. The starkness of the contrasts lends visibility to the inherently opposing point of view evolving through Beth's perspectives:

DUFF You used to wear a chain round your waist. On the chain you carried your keys, your thimble, your notebook, your pencil, your scissors. Pause You stood in the hall and banged the gong. Pause What the bloody hell are you doing banging that bloody gong? Pause BETH So that I never lost track. Even though even when, I asked him to turn, to look at me but I couldn't see his look Pause I couldn't see whether he was looking at me. Pause Although he had turned. And appeared to be looking at me. DUFF I took the chain off and the thimble, the keys, the scissors slid off it and clattered down. I booted the gong down the hall. The dog came in ... I thought you would come into my arms and kiss me, even ... offer yourself to me. I would have had taken you in front of the dog, like a man, in the hall, on the stone, banging the gong, mind you don't get the scissors up your arse, or the thimble, don't worry, I'll throw them for the dog to chase, the thimble will keep the dog happy, he'll play 324

with it with his paws, you'll plead with me like a woman, I'll bang the gong on the floor, if the sound is too flat, lacks resonance, I'll hang it back on Its hook, bang you against it swinging, gonging, waking the place up, calling them all for dinner, lunch is up, bring out the bacon, bang your lovely head, mind the dog dosen't swallow the thimble, slam - Silence BETH He lay above me and looked down at me. He supported my shoulder. Pause So tender his touch on my neck. So softly his kiss on my cheek. Pause My hand on his rib. Pause So sweetly the sand over me. Tiny the sand on my skin. Pause. Oh my true love I said. ( 29-30)

Dianne Macdonell in Theories of Discourse has shown that a particular counter-discourse not only gives visibility to new perspectives but also validates all other transgressing discourses. A particular discourse often constructs itself out of opposition to a given situation.® Beth's discourse in Landscape is one that becomes possible only as the result of a contradicting truth at the heart of her relationship with Duff. The past here becomes a means of controlling the present and of defining the nature of desire and Self. This is achieved through knowledge gained at the expense of a wasted youth. This play exposes the power behind stereotypical roles and the emotions associated with these, suggesting that possibilities of renewal can exist only for the individual who can 325

move into enclaves of knowledge that break the paradigms of gender roles and static class barriers.

Duff is circumscribed by his class, status and situation while Beth is certainly less typical, more imaginative and probably more ready to break from a stifling situation. Discourse here is a means for unburdening, for understanding of Self, and therefore for validating different spheres of life - like the imaginative and the practical - represented by Beth and Duff respectively.

BETH But I was up early. There was plenty to be done and cleared up. ... the dog was up. He followed me. Misty morning. Comes from the river. DUFF This fellow knew bugger all about beer. He didn't know I'd been trained as a cellarman. That's why I could speak with authority. BETH I opened the door and went out. There was no one about. The sun was shining. Wet, I mean wetness, all over the ground. DUFF A cellarman is the man responsible. He's the earliest up in the morning. Give the drayman a hand with the barrels. Down the slide through the cellarflaps. Lower them by rope to the racks. Rock them on the belly put a rim up them, use balance and leverage, hike them up onto the racks. BETH Still misty, but thinner, thinning. DUFF 326

The bung is on the vertical, in the bunghole. Spile the bung. Hammer the spile through the centre of the bung. That lets the air through the bung, down the bunghole, lets the beer breathe. BETH Wetness all over the air. Sunny. Trees like feathers. DUFF Then you hammer the tap in. (25)

This sequence ends with Beth's serene window-frame picture of children playing in the valley -"Through the window I could see down into the valley. I saw children in the valley"- while Duffs concluding reminiscence is that of having scored a point -"he said he thought they piped the beer from a tanker into metal containers. I said they may do, but he wasn't talking about the quality of beer I was. He accepted the point." Earlier too, Beth makes a reference to children when she expresses her yearning for motherhood. Perhaps the only sublime reference to motherhood in the entire canon of Pinter's drama, it is unfulfilled and is full of pain. One critic has described Beth as having a "transcendent being."^° Beth, according to this opinion, does not accept Duff who "offers himself to her" but dreams instead of a lover who will never have any expectations of her, existing only to fulfil her fantasies rather than his own aspirations. This is perhaps partly true because Beth's vision of love, unlike that of Duff, is sublime and romantic. Duff's vision, on the other hand, is reminiscent of Richard in The Lover, who is always, even in fantasy, mindful of his own ego, his own needs and his own refinements. To a certain extent, Beth is oblivious of DufTs presence and needs, but this is because he has been unfaithful to her in the past. They have drifted apart and continue to do so, living in their own circumscribed worlds and failing to make compromises in the present. 327

Like Sarah in The Lover, who is reluctant to give up her role-playing; like Rose in The Room and Len in The Dwarfs. Beth and Duff cannot cope with their social situation, and try to create possibilities of escaping from the impending everyday reality by turning to either their pasts or their dreams and aspirations, instead of accepting things as they are. They actually try to interpret their pasts through their present understanding and beliefs. This is, as shown earlier, a means of reality- maintenance, of reminding themselves how and why their situations are necessarily defined by certain relationships and experiences in a shared past. It is also perhaps, a coming to terms with their disappointments and limitations - perhaps a way of accepting the bitter truth.

As Richard Allen Cave has pointed out, in comparison with Beckett's characters. Duff and Beth are painfully aware of day to day social obligations and adjustments; nor are they like the characters of Beckett, looking for "some vague metaphysical fulfillment." These characters crave emotional support and psychological strength to adjust to the social structures that make up their lives. Both Duff and Beth remain emotionally and psychologically unfulfilled because both of them are unable to find the social means, the objective correlative to his/her fantasies. Both are keen observers - hence every gesture, action and reaction is recalled and explored for meaning. Nothing at all escapes their notice so that they are fastidiously exacting in their everyday rituals. They cannot find a common interest because their sensibilities are completely at variance. Though both like the out of doors, they do so in different ways. For Duff, what is important is the exhilaration of physical enjoyment, while for Beth it is the serene enjoyment of natural beauty. Beth and Duff suffer partly because they refuse to think beyond the self- defined roles that are ingrained in their minds. Life is an unending tragedy for both Beth and Duff because each is alone and imprisoned within the Self, probably because of an inability to perform according to 328

the fantasies that obsess them. Beth would like to be eternally young, beautiful, desirable, cultured and refined. Within the social space that is available to her, this kind of a sensibility is perhaps, not appreciated. Duff, with his taste for a robust, outdoor life and a liking for the local pub- camaraderie is somewhat more suited to the social environment available to him, and this is also the reason why there is less of a gap between his personal and social being. For the same reason too, there is less of a chance in his life for opposition to, and change in, the existing circumstances:

BETH I would like to stand by the sea. It is there. Pause I have. Many times. It is something I cared for. I've done it. Pause

Women turn, look at me. Pause.

Two women looked at me turned and stared. No. I was walking, they were still. I turned. Pause Why do you look? Pause I didn't say that. I stared. Then I was looking at them. Pause I am beautiful. Pause. I walked back over the sand. He had turned. Toes under sand, head buried in his arms. 329

DUFF The dog's gone. I didn't tell you. Pause I had to shelter under a tree for twenty minutes yesterday. Because of the rain. I meant to tell you. With some youngsters. I didn't know them. Pause

BETH Did those women know me? I didn't remember their faces. I'd never seen their faces before. I'd never seen those women before. I'm certain of it. Why were they looking at me? There's nothing strange about me. There's nothing strange about the way I look. I look like anyone. DUFF The dog wouldn't have minded me feeding the birds. Anyway, as soon as we got in the shelter he fell asleep. But even if he'd been awake Pause

BETH I could stand now. I could be the same. I dress differently, but I am beautiful. Silence DUFF You should have a walk with me one day down to the pond, bring some bread. There's nothing to stop you. Pause I sometimes run into one or two people I know. You might remember them. Pause. 330

BETH When I watered the flowers he stood, watching me, and watched me arrange them. My gravity, he said. ... He didn't touch me. I listened. I looked at the flowers, blue and white, in the bowl. Pause Then he touched me. Pause (9-13)

Whereas in the plays looked at so far, the characters hide true intent under their words, often sending misleading signals through superficial encounters and concocted self-images. Landscape in contrast, is actually a sort of confession and a revelation of the emotions that haunt the speakers. The images, personalities, and interactions that are uppermost in their minds are used to construct and re-construct the meaning of their lives. For Beth, the crucial moments are moments of sensuous fulfillment, of aesthetic appreciation, and spontaneous rapport. Re-assurance from an other's gaze is particularly necessary for her well- being and solace. For instance, she believes she is beautiful but is a little upset and dislocated by the unfriendly gaze of other women. She is on the defensive, attributing her difference to the way she dresses. Importantly, while Duff looks for sameness - a commonality between himself and other men - Beth bases her self-analysis on the recognition of crucial differences between herself and others. Even though she states that she "look[s] like anyone else" she is not normally like everyone else, in her opinions and habits and has to make a tremendous effort to be like others. Beth's reconstruction of her past is ovenMielmingly intense as seen by the habitual pauses and silences that convey her emotional exhaustion and inability to deal with the intensity of her experiences. She remembers all the nuances, the gestures, the body-language that constructed her fragile encounter on 331 the beach. Beth's discourse is gender-specific and immediately sets her apart from Duff because it is a discourse of aesthetic refinement and feminine delicacy. Beth's discourse is introverted and only partially visible through the contours of her consciousness. The sheer intensity of her emotions leaves her incapable of revealing all that she is burdened with. What matters to her is the other's meanings and gestures and an assurance of being appreciated and loved. But according to the stage directions at the beginning of the play she neither looks at Duff nor does she respond to him even though both sit at either end of a long kitchen table in their employer's abandoned country house. This means that there is probably a serious flaw in her relationship with Duff, probably a complete difference in interests and understanding of life. Duff also does not looks at her but hears her voice and tries to draw her into the present circumstances without much success. So there is a difference in their "levels of awareness and expression."^ ^ Beth's discourse of artistic detail records every subtlety including the curve of the mouth or the creased nose, underlining that the experience on the beach is so etched in her memory that it is impossible to displace it with anything else:

BETH That's why he'd picked such a desolate place. So that I could draw in peace. I had my sketch book with me. I took it out. I took my drawing pencil out. But there was nothing to draw. Only the bench, the sea. Pause Could have drawn him. He didn't want it. He laughed. Pause I laughed, with him. 332

Pause I waited for him to laugh, then I would smile, turn away, he would touch my back, turn me to him. My nose ... creased. I would laugh with him, a little. Pause He laughed. I'm sure of it. So I didn't draw him. Silence (18)

It is remarkable that Beth is rather serious and sensitive. Duff complains that, "when you were young ... you didn't laugh much. You were ... grave." Duff is totally out of tune with Beth throughout, because Beth's aspirations and sensibilities set her apart from the social-class and status they belong to. This situation is like Disson's (in Tea Party), who though wealthy, remains in a different world, psychologically, and therefore, cannot relate to his high-class wife, Diana and his own public- school educated sons. Diana, like Beth, is too serious and dignified for Disson's liking. Similarly, in The Homecoming. Ruth cannot find fulfillment with Teddy who has moved up the social-ladder not only in status, but more important, in his preoccupations and commitments too. Ruth, as shown earlier, finds fulfillment only in the milieu in which she grew up. Beth similarly, is clearly unable to relate fully to Duff who in turn finds her unsympathetic, and cruelly unresponsive to his needs. He remembers a day out in the park when she fed the birds, and tries hard to persuade her to repeat that moment again but she ignores his request completely. Though Beth prefers to ignore the present and Duffs companionship, her past is not too perfect either, it is not at all clear whether Beth was fully happy with the man she met on the beach. He does not match her gravity and seriousness, and is quite unimpressed by her talk of motherhood, her art, and her sensitivity. 333

Beth finds it necessary to repeat certain statements to convince herself as it were, of their reality and truth. She is impressed with her own seriousness, and is carried away by her own overpowering emotions. We are not at all sure to what extent these are reciprocated. The sexual experience she describes for instance, is analysed and judged by her twin ideals of proportion and balance. The idea of subtlety, of delicacy and refinement, is probably a result of her knowledge of art. This also affects her image which she self-consciously maintains. Her gravity is so ingrained, it even prevents her from smiling. She laughs only when it is necessary to reciprocate to her lover. In fact Duff, when he sees young people in the forest is struck by the idea that he never had laughter in his life because as a young couple he and Beth never laughed. She did not laugh; was always grave, so that the only moment in her life when she did laugh, is outstanding in her memory. Indeed, Beth takes life so seriously that she is constantly weighed down by propriety and perfection. As a result she cannot bear much reality, preferring idealised love and imaginary, fictive perfection to imperfect reality even in her best moments. Duff, in contrast, is more practical and fully accepts and internalises his social role even as he perceives the anomalies and contradictions involved: For instance, within his professional role, he is fully competent and committed but not blind to his own situation vis-a-vis his employer's deeper motives. His assessment is, therefore, sharp, suggestive of meanings but judiciously understated. More importantly he accepts it because expediency dictates that he should do so. Beth, on the other hand, is quite incapable of facing up to reality, even common everyday reality so that she is, like Rose in The Room, perennially dissatisfied and even deluded. But paradoxically enough she is a suitable candidate for change, indeed shocking change as she desires renewal strongly but is afraid to face it. Her act of shutting herself from the reality, from Duff, and her action of shutting her eyes are indications of this fear. She emphasises her moments on the beach blocking out the 334

unpleasant moments completely, whereas Duff traverses the entire sequence of events from beginning to the moment in which he is situated. But while he does not imagine the future she does, showing that she prefers to live either in the past or in the future - ways of circumventing the impending reality. While Duff tries desperately to establish a rapport with Beth in the present and is pathetic in his imploring tone, she on the other hand, is lost in her own world and is content to perpetuate her memory of one particular interlude on the beach:

DUFF Do you like me to talk to you? Pause Do you like me to tell you about all the things I've been doing? Pause About all the things I've been thinking? Pause Mmmmn? Pause I think you do. BETH And cuddled me. Silence {2^)

Beth's discourse of beauty, emotion and aesthetic appreciation is subtle and self-centred. While Duff can express his resentment of Mr. Sykes, and include his betrayal of Beth in his recollections, Beth does not speak of that "shock" nor does she touch upon her relationship with Duff at any other time in their lives. Discourses evolve from the experiences that characters want to verify/objectivate or make real in their present life. 335

Thus Duff's set of experiences have a range that determine his changing discourses. The authentic discourse of wine-making, the crudeness of his seduction of Beth, the discourse of the jealous husband and the out-of doors, the discourse of the skilled worker and his discourse of confession and guilt ensure that there is less of a gap between his objective and subjective realities. Beth, in contrast, remains completely trapped within her subjective definitions, her exclusivity and her regrets:

DUFF Mr Sykes took to us from the very first interview, didn't he? Pause He said I've got the feeling you'll make a very good team. Do you remember? And that's what we proved to be. No question. I could drive well. I could polish his shoes well. I earned my keep. Turn my hand to anything. He never lacked for any thing, in the way of being looked after. Mind you, he was a bugger. Pause 1 was never sorry for him, at any time for his lonely life. Pause The nice blue dress he chose for you, for the house, that was very nice of him. Of course it was in his own interests for you to look good about the house for guests. BETH He moved in the sand and put his arm around me. S/7er?ce 336

DUFF Of course it was in his own interests to see that you were attractively dressed about the house, to give a good impression to his guests.

DUFF We're the envy of a lot of people you know, living in this house all to ourselves. It's too big for two people BETH He said he knew a very desolate beach, that no-one else in the world knew, and that's where we were going. DUFF I was very gentle to you that day. I knew you had a shock, so I was gentle with you I held your arm on the way back from the pond. You put your hand s on my face and kissed me. BETH All the food I had in my bag was I had cooked myself, or prepared myself. I had baked the bread myself. DUFF The girl herself I considered unimportant. I didn't think it necessary to go into details. I decided against it. BETH The windows were open but we kept the hood up. Pause DUFF Mr. Sykes gave a little dinner party that Friday. He complimented you on your cooking and your service. Pause (20-23)

This play has more meticulous, biographical details than any of the plays discussed so far. Whereas, the pasts of the characters are 337 insufficiently sketched in the plays discussed so far, here the past is not only the main theme, it also helps in interpreting the present and a possible future. In this sense, all the three plays discussed in this chapter, are a departure from the early plays, and the plays written in the sixties, as these plays connect motive and action quite plausibly.

Importantly, Self, mind and Other, are here inextricable parts of an emergent self-consciousness and each of these constitutes the vital links in the individual's evolving perception and acknowledgement of his/her social location. Social structures like marriage, class, community and social conventions are meticulously examined in this play through a social discourse that describes different kinds of interactions among individuals through the diverse situations of the play. Landscape thus examines the relation between class/status and Individual, as also between the existential self and social self. One example of this is Duffs professed unfaithfulness towards Beth. As a man he gives it as much importance as he does to his visit to the pub or his walk with the dog. By acting as he does, he is only endorsing the exploitative class structure whereby Duffs employer discreetly makes use of his wife. Duff enacts a travesty of this by transgressing Beth's rights and his own obligations towards her. Thus Sykes and Duff act on the basic instinct of disempowering a weaker individual for the sake of defining a typically male ego. The man of means as well as the resourceful, street-smart Duff are both ultimately exploitative. Thus the action and idea of using vyADman as object of self-enhancement and pleasure is part of the social environment in which diverse and subtle pacts are made or dissolved between different partners and in different circumstances.

Duffs matter-of-fact confession sends Beth into a shock that affects her self-esteem and confidence. In turn she has a pointless encounter with an unnamed person in order to recover from her sense of betrayal. At 338 this point of time she acts only to assuage her feelings and to overcome shock and grief. It is not clear who her companion at the beach is but there is a possibility that it is Sykes, her employer. Duff's reiteration of the fact that in the past Sykes has chosen a fine dress for Beth, and has been repeatedly over-appreciative of her household skills, is suggestive of a motivated move on the part of their employer. The relationship of Sykes and Beth is, as Duff hints, certainly devious, and is obviously irritating and offensive to Duff. It is also a probable reason for Duffs cynicism and despair. Sykes shows interest in the couple right from the start as he has ulterior motives. He obviously has designs on Beth and probably employs Duff to covertly make use of the arrangement for his own advantage. Duff is aware of all this and this is probably the reason why he has no sympathy for "the bugger," as he calls him.

The fine details spelt out by the characters in Landscape, for instance their painstakingly minute and sequential narration of the events, is a familiar characteristic of the discourse of characters in all the plays discussed so far. But here it is a means of dissecting and truthfully dissecting the Self in terms of the Other. As seen earlier, this is an almost impossible task because it is difficult to enter fully into the intended meanings and motives of another's stream of consciousness. Each character has, therefore, to search for agonising answers within his/her imperfect understanding of Self and Other. DufTs need is to discover why Beth spurns his advances, and whether his knowledge of his environment can integrate him into the mainstream of life. Beth, on the other hand, has a consciousness of being different, of growing older, and of an impending future that will bring more changes and newer roles. She also has a painful awareness of being in socially inadequate company and circumstances - though capable of much refinement, taste and sensibility. The gap is tragic and this is the characteristic mode of her discourse; Duff, on the other hand, though unsuccessful in his 339

relationship with Beth is otherwise better integrated within his environment. His discourse is a recognition of the social diversity of life around him whereas Beth's discourse is stunted by her inability to move beyond the confines of a narrow focus. While Duff can partially bridge the gap between social and existential self, Beth can only lose herself further in exclusivity and alienation:

BETH Of course when I'm older I won't be the same as I am, I won't be what I am, my skirts, my long legs, I'll be older, I won't be the same. DUFF At least now ... at least now, I can walk down to the pub in peace and up to the pond in peace, with no-one to nag the shit out of me. Silence BETH All it is, you see ... I said ... is the lightness of your touch, the lightness of your look, my neck, your eyes, the silence, that is my meaning, the loveliness of my flowers, that is my meaning. Pause I've watched other people. I've seen them. Pause All the cars zooming by. Men with girls at their side. Bouncing up and down. They're dolls. They squeak. Pause All the people were squeaking in the hotel bar. The girls had long hair. They were smiling. 340

DUFF That's what matters, anyway. We're together. That's what matters. Silence (24)

For Duff the important thing is that he needs Beth in the present even though he has been unfaithful to her in the past and he is grateful for the fact that they have managed to stay together. While he tries to relate to her, she, on the other hand, moves further and further away into her memories of other men, other matters. Though Duffs discourse is of practical good sense and unsentimental yet he constantly includes Beth within his total perspective. But in Beth's emotionally charged discourse of wish-fulfilment and sense-impressions, there is absolutely no mention of Duff, showing how utterly unsuccessful her relationship to him has been, and is:

BETH But I was up early. There was still plenty to be done and cleared up I had put the plates in the sink to soak. They had soaked overnight. They are easy to wash. The dog was up. He followed me. Misty morning comes from the river. DUFF The fellow knew bugger all about beer. He didn't know I'd been trained as a cellarman. That's why I could speak with authority. BETH I opened the door and went out. There was no one about. The sun was shining. Wet, I mean wetness, all over the ground. 341

DUFF A cellarman is the man responsible. He's the earliest up in the morning. Give the drayman a hand with the barrels. Down the slide through the cellarflaps. Lower them by rope to the racks. Rock them on the belly, put a rim up them, use balance and leverage, hike them up onto the racks. BETH Still misty, but thinner, thinning. DUFF The bung is on the vertical, in the bunghole. Spile the bung. Hammer the spile through the centre of the bung. That lets the air through the bung down the bunghole, lets the beer breathe. BETH Wetness all over the air. Sunny. Trees like feathers. DUFF Then you hammer the tap in. BETH I wore my blue dress. DUFF Let it stand for three days. Keep wet sacks over the barrels. Hose the cellar floor daily. BETH It was a beautiful autumn morning. DUFF Run water through the pipes to the bar pumps daily. BETH I stood in the mist. DUFF Pull off. Pull off. Stop pulling just before you get to the dregs. The dregs'll get you the shits. You've got an ullage barrel. 342

Feed the slops back to the ullage barrel. Send them back to the brewery. BETH In the sun. DUFF Dip the ban^els daily with a brass rod. Know your gallonage. Chalk it up. Then you're tidy. Then you never get caught short. BETH Then I went back to the kitchen and sat down. Pause DUFF The chap in the pub said he was surprised to hear it. He said he was surprised to hear about hosing the cellar floor. He said he thought most cellars had a thermostatically controlled cooling system. He said he thought keg beer was fed with oxygen through a cylinder. I said I wasn't talking about keg beer. I was talking about normal draught beer. He said he thought they piped the beer from a tanker into metal containers. I said they may do but he wasn't talking about the quality of beer I was. He accepted that point. Pause BETH The dog sat down by me. I stroked him. Through the window I could see down onto the valley. I saw children in the valley. They were running through the grass. They ran up the hill. Long Silence. (25-27)

Duff, like Mick in The Caretaker, is a man who can "earn his keep" by dabbling in a variety of jobs. He is not only well-adjusted to the loner's pub-life and is a typical survivor, with native resources, unspoilt by 343 sophistication. Thus he is capable of overcoming much of his disappointment and depression. Beth, on the other hand, is completely paralysed by her excessive finesse and intensity of emotional response. She is the artist who, while she lives the reality of everyday existence, is also at the same time looking beyond it for a poetic experience too lyrical to be possible. However, she can certainly indulge herself in the mists, fogs and shadows as these help her to circumvent the prosaicness of ordinary existence. She has "watched other people" and found them insensitive. The women are "dolls" who "squeak," as do the men beside them. Beth is obviously disenchanted with the "squeaking" men and women she observes in the bar and she recognises the Other as too loud and vulgar. The description ("bouncing up and down. They're dolls. They squeak") is an understanding of her own psyche as different from the general run of humanity.

The central lines of the play, namely Beth's apprehension of "meaning" ("the lightness of your touch ... the silence, that is my meaning, the loveliness of my flowers ... my hands touching my flowers, that is my meaning.") though conclusive in their grasp are quite limited in their understanding of social life. If social life is viewed as an emergence of social relationships leading to a broader perspective, Beth is clearly a failure. From the point of view of an emerging self-consciousness she is all too confined and stunted in her growth. However, unlike the earlier plays, it seems here as though the moment of intensity has been grasped as the moment of truth, najriatter howsoever superficially. Through her commitment to art, and her sensuous appreciation of nature, Beth attempts to find new ways of enriching herself, and these, partly at least, provide her with sustenance and consolation. Fulfillment for Beth is momentary, transient and fleeting. Inspite of this, the play is a poetic tribute to beauty in the midst of heartache and desire. Knowledge and understanding, are the fruits of suffering for it is Beth rather than 344

Duff - the man of practical good sense - who is discerning and profoundly correct in her observations and analysis of Self and Other. In the Pinter canon, Beth appears to be the most intelligent and sensitive of all the women characters, her discourse of aesthetic refinement, defining her completely both as individual and as social being:

BETH I remembered always, in drawing, the basic principles of shadow and light. Objects intercepting the light cast shadows. Shadow is deprivation of light. The shape of the shadow is determined by that of the object. But not always Not always directly. Sometimes it is only indirectly affected by it. Sometimes the cause of the shadow cannot be found. Pause. But I always bore in mind the basic principles of drawing. Pause So that I never lost track. Or heart. Pause (27-28)

The persistence of minute analysis by Beth in this play can be described as the subjective onslaught of a consciousness in search of the meanings inherent in social gestures, social mannerisms and social rituals. Nothing at all escapes Beth's notice as she examines every common habitual and ordinary action for motive and meaning. In her mind marriage and love undergo the sort of scrutiny that can be described as psychologically intense. Duff also has a knack for conveying nuances and intentions with brutal honesty and without reservation.

The next play, that is Silence, is also important for the character inter­ relations, especially man-woman relationships. This play highlights the 345 important social phenomenon of inter-subjective understanding and the problems encountered in penetrating the consciousness of an Other. This concept is crucial in locating the mutual positions of the three characters: A girl in her twenties, and two men, in their forties and thirties respectively. Each of the two men has a relationship with the girl and the relationship in each case is defined by the general attitude of the men towards life. Social realities such as Bates' social status for instance, throw him into an area of constant conflict with his neighbours and others around him. He lives in a working class neighbourhood where his privacy, dignity and individuality are hopelessly lost in a sea of insensitive, cantankerous men and women who find every opportunity to rattle Bates' sense of peace and quiet. Rumsey too is not well adjusted socially, as he lives in almost total seclusion, demonstrating some kind of a fear, probably a problem of finding enough sympathy and empathy. Ellen suffers from an inability to relate to people, and like the others is unable to bridge the gap between personal fulfillment and social obligation. This play clearly shows why the average individual fears intimate interaction with the social other. The protagonists of this play are victims of curiosity and over-exposure to social mixing. Each of them experiences the nagging and prying of inquisitive neighbours and associates. The play turns claustrophobic, with stark images of social squalor, violence, cruelty, meanness, and overcrowding.

The main theme of this play is the complexity of human relationships, as is evident through the multiple levels at which the characters interact and respond. This play, like Landscape, stresses the importance of perception and perspective in human relationships. Beth looks at the world from an artistic point of view, taking into account the minutest of nuances, gestures, body language, tonal variations, and unspoken sentiments. Similarly, Bates in the present play is guided by his assumption that social life is mean, exploitative and violent. He does not 346

know the meaning of mutuality, cooperation and sociability because he is constantly hounded by hostile and abusive neighbours. Bates' discourse is marked by exasperation, exhaustion, and a sense of claustrophobia. In his discourse of social trauma, even nature is inaccessible:

BATES I walk in my mind. But can't get out of the walls, into a wind. Meadows are walled, and lakes. The sky's a wall. (40)

Bates' world-view is completely marred by pessimism, so much so that his landlady wonders if there has ever been a lighter moment in his life. The social images of this play define the meaning of loneliness and distress so intensely that silence is the only apt expression for them. Ellen is overcome by the silence of her own heart, by the impossibility of speech and interaction while Bates appears to be "suffocating' himself in his silence:

ELLEN ...My heart beats in my ear. Such a silence. Is it me? Am I silent or speaking? How can I know? ... I must find a person to tell me such things. BATES ... My landlady asks me for a drink ... You can smile, surely, at something? Surely you have smiled, at a thing in your life? At something? Has there been no pleasantness in your life? No kind of loveliness in your life? Are you nothing but a childish old man, suffocating himself ? I've had all that. I've got all that. I said. (41) 347

In the course of the play, the three characters are tortured and rendered quite inactive by the tyranny of a past which holds them in total subjection. Bates does make an attempt to come out of the claustrophobia of his socially impoverished life by trying to establish a rapport with Ellen but fails because she does not respond to his needs, having more pressing problems of a philosophical and existential nature. The pattern is complete because Ellen in turn is rejected by Rumsey upon whom revolves the possibility of rescuing the former from total withdrawal and loneliness. The play, like Landscape before it, portrays a conflict between social role and subjective choice. There is a great deal of self-reflexivity as the entire discourse of characters is sometimes (as in the case of Bates) marked by a cynical and self-conscious parody upon the social and existential meanings of life. Ellen, Bates and Rumsey, gravitate towards the same concerns and form a symphony of meanings through their responses to a similar, shared preoccupation. These are the simultaneous moments of awareness complementing and enlarging as it were, the thoughts and ideas of each other:

BATES Caught a bus to the town. Crowds, Lights round the market. Rain and stinking. Showed her the bumping lights. Took her down around the dumps. Black roads and girders. She clutching me. This way the way I bring you. Pubs throw the doors smack into the night. Cars barking and the lights. She with me, clutching. Brought her into this place, my cousin runs it... ELLEN I go myself with the milk to the top, the clouds racing, all the blue changes, I'm dizzy sometimes, meet with him under some place. 348

One time visited his house. He put a light on. It reflected the window, it reflected in the window. RUMSEY She walks from the door to the window to see the way she has come, to confirm that the house which grew nearer is the same one she stands in that the path and the bushes are the same that the gate is the same. When I stand beside her and smile at her, she looks at me and smiles. BATES How many times standing clenched in the pissing dark waiting? The mud, the cows, the river. You cross the field out of darkness. You arrive. You stand breathing before me. You smile. I put my hands on your shoulders and press. Press the smile off your face. ELLEN There are two. I turn to them and speak. I look them in their eyes. I kiss them there and say, I look away to smile, and touch them as I turn. Silence (34-35)

While this sequence has images of surreptitious meetings in crowded streets and dark fields, the next expresses both oppressive social encounters as well as individual freedom in the midst of social living. While Bates is like an animal on a leash, Rumsey is at peace with his natural surroundings and is free from the trammels of social obligation. The contrast explains the difference in their attitudes towards Ellen in the sequence quoted above. Bates' violent behaviour towards her is in keeping with his persecution complex and is a retaliatory expression of cruelty and sterility. Rumsey, though he is serene outwardly, is certainly 349 aware of his loneliness and though he insists that he has lost nothing he has an uncanny sense of a timeless waiting for some significant and meaningful event in his life. Ellen too assesses her social existence and finds that her personal life is constantly under scrutiny so that she has to exercise deception and social hypocrisy in order to protect herself:

RUMSEY I watch the clouds. Pleasant the ribs and tendons of cloud. I've lost nothing. Pleasant alone and watch the folding light. My animals are quiet. My heart never bangs. I read in the evenings. There is no-one to tell me what is expected or not expected of me. BATES. I'm at my last gasp with this unendurable racket. I kicked open the door and stood before them. Someone called me Grandad and told me to button it. It's they should button it. Were I young ... One of them told me I was lucky to be alive, that I would have to bear it in order to pay for being alive, in order to give thanks for being alive. It's a question of sleep. I need something of it or how can I remain alive, without any true rest, having no solace, no constant solace, not even any damn inconstant solace. I am strong but not as strong as the bastards in the other room, and their tittering bitches, and their music, and their love. If I changed my life, perhaps, and lived deliberately at night, and slept in the day. But what exactly would I do. What can be meant by living in the dark? ELLEN Now and again I meet my drinking companion and have a drink with her. She is a friendly woman, quite elderly, quite 350

friendly. But she knows little of me, she could never know much of me, not really, not now. She's funny. She starts talking sexily to me, in the corner, with our drinks. I laugh. She asks me about my early life, when I was young, never departing from her chosen subject, but I have nothing to tell her about the sexual part of my youth. I'm old, I tell her, my youth was somewhere else, anyway I don't remember. She does the talking anyway. I like to go back to my room. It has a pleasant view. I have one or two friends, ladies, They ask me where I come from. I say of course from the country. I don't see much of them. (35-36)

The characters in this play speak in measured rhythms, repeating the obsessive thoughts which possess them. The speech patterns are not as halting and inarticulate as actual spoken speech because basically these are narratives of remembered images that have already been crystallised in the mind. In contrast to the monologues of The Birthdav Party or The Caretaker, these are more like the measured words of A Slight Ache in their general articulateness. This is because these characters have already lived out their lives and have nothing to gain from telling lies to enhance their positions. Though the characters have moved in and out of relationships and made moves to change their positions vis-a-vis others, y,&\ they are not entirely free. They still have to account for their pasts, because as the plays show individuals cannot assess and fulfil themselves without re-traversing their pasts along with those who formed part of their lives. This is the precise reason why though isolated, they are yet in touch with each other through their pasts, their thoughts and reminiscences. The stage-directions ensure that each is separated from the other but the sequences ensure that the flow of their consciousness intersects at crucial points implying thereby 351 that the past connects individuals and influences them in strange ways. The evolution and interactions of society are dependent upon the Self, and the relationship of Self and Other. In other \A«)rds, as shown earlier in chapter three, the social self has to exist along with personal, existential self, in quest of personal meanings and fulfillment. This means that the individual who ultimately lives a balanced, serene existence is the one who can successfully mediate between these areas of existence, without upsetting the balance as it were. In this context. Bates finds it difficult to accept age and loneliness as he has become a social misfit ("Were I young ...") while Rumsey can make the necessary adjustments without bitterness and despair. Ellen too is able to mediate between the private and social life, cleverly disguising her past and her many personal lives from the gaze of the public eye.

Rumsey's appreciation of an unfettered life is reminiscent of DufTs sense of relief at being able to take his walks in the open without anyone to nag him. Social constriction and stratification is, as shown in chapter two, the bane of life for the Pinterian social actor. The entire purpose of life is to steer clear of disagreeable and demanding others who can destroy and degrade individual sanctity and create havoc in the fine balance between personal and social life. This is what happens to Bates; but It is not clear why Bates is treated so cruelly by his neighbours; perhaps he is different from the community that dominates the show, perhaps he is treated as such by the young people around him simply because he is older and depressed. In any case, the horror and claustrophobic images of Bates' existence are reminiscent of Sartre's dead souls condemned to live under the constant and piercing gaze of their enemies.^^ Bates has to annihilate the self in order to appease the other, while Rumsey is in danger of isolating himself so completely from the dictates of social obligation that existence becomes more and more shadowy for him. According to George Herbert Mead 352 who described the sociology of thinking and consciousness, there is a dynamic relationship between mind, Self and society. Francis Abraham in Modem Sociological Theory explains that,

As mind and self negotiate the parametres and operational rules of social discourse, society's order and institutions are sometimes altered reconstructed or disassembled. ... The institutions of society which represent the organized and patterened interaction among a variety of individuals, are dependent for both their emergence and persistence upon mind and self. For Mead the fundamental processes to be studied and understood from the point of view of social interaction and social change are the emergent self- consciousness, and the dynamic, destructive, and constructive relationship between mind and self.^^

In the three plays under consideration in this chapter, there is a "dynamic" relationship between mind and Self, generating particular social attitudes and social problems. Mead felt that "due to its constituent elements of mind and Self, society is constantly in a state of flux and rife with potential change."^'* Ellen, Bates and Rumsey commune with their own consciousness and often re-evaluate the Self in terms of their experiences with others. Their self-reflections give us an insight into the quality of their minds and thoughts. This process of self- examination is honest and intense, enabling the characters to nurture an identity for themselves - an identity that is forged out of self evaluation as well as through a perception of the other's opinion of themselves. The compulsive and persistent stream of consciousness in the play can be understood as the attempt of the mind to solve problems of social adjustment: 353

The self not only activates the mind; indeed it makes that activity possible at all. Because of mind, human beings develop an active relationship to their environment rather than just responding to stimuli, they evaluate environmental stimuli and consciously select appropriate responses. Mead notes: "Consciousness is involved where there is a problem, where one is deliberately adjusting one's self to the world, trying to get out of difficulty or pain. One is aware of experience and is trying to readjust the situation so that conduct can go ahead. There is, therefore, no consciousness in a world that is just there ... when the self interprets an identity as unacceptable ... mind treats it as a problem and proceeds to work out a strategy to deal with the situation."^^

These three plays provide insights into the patterns of discourse, the incompleteness of discourse and the nature of inter-subjective relationships. Alfred Schutz in The Phenomenology of the Social World explains much of the interaction of these plays when he says that,

... The postulate that I can observe the subjective experience of another person precisely as he does [his own] is absurd ... [there are] difficulties standing in the way of comprehending the intended meaning of the other self ... such comprehension can never be achieved and the concept of the other person's intended meaning remains at best a limiting concept.^®

The problem of what Schutz has described as "intersubjective understanding" is the main theme of Silence. The characters sit in the same area in proximity to each other and try to explicate more to themselves than to others the experiences that make up their 354 relationships. However, since the main theme of their own discourses is inter-subjective relationships in the first place, it is important for them to have others confirm or in some sense participate in their self-analysis. All the three plays (Landscape. Silence and Night) are also dramatisations of Pinter's belief that reality can never be either unidimensional or completely shared. As Schutz has explained, to precisely participate in or understand the Other's stream of consciousness is almost impossible because,

... this could happen only within my own experience ... and this experience of mine would then have to duplicate his experience down to the smallest details including impressions, ... reflective acts, phantasies, etc. But there is more to come: I should have to be able to remember all his experiences and therefore should have to live through these expectations in the same order that he did; and finally I should have had to give them exactly the same degree of attention that he did. In short, my stream of consciousness would have to coincide with the other persons, which is the same as saying that I should have to be the other person. This point was made by Bergson in his "Time and Free Will." "Intended meaning" is therefore, essentially subjective and is in principle confined to the self-interpretation of the person who lives through the experience to be interpreted. Constituted as it is within the unique stream of consciousness of each individual, it is essentially inaccessible to every other individual. It might seem that these conclusions would lead to the denial that one can ever understand another person's experience. But this is by no means the case. ... the point is that the meaning I give to your experiences cannot be 355

precisely the same as the meaning you give to them when you proceed to interpret them.^^

One reason why the worlds of Landscape , Silence and Night are often seen as "fragmented worlds," is because in these plays the process of re-constructing one's own stream of consciousness, is laid bare, revealing how difficult it is for others to share the perspective of even shared experiences. The emphasis here on the difference of perspective and interpretation of experience also throws light on all the forays made into the area of "meaning" and "understanding" in plays like The Homecoming. The Dwarfs. The Lover, and A Slight Ache. Beth, in Landscape, reminisces a romantic interlude with her lover but ignores her husband in the present because the past appears more alive to her than her present. Like her, Ellen in Silence re-creates her past and re­ lives the more intense moments but is not sure whether she is only remembering passively or whether she is in fact interpreting and creating new dimensions and perspectives for herself. Even though she moves back and forth between the present and the past, it is one continuous experience really, in her stream of consciousness. Her analysis of the meaning of memory is significant because the typical Pinter-character is always trying to re-create the past in order to either justify the present or because the past as always appears more attractive and therefore more bearable than the present; and it is not uncommon for these characters to distort the past if it interferes with their social status and social location in the present.

Similar to Ellen's fear of remaining locked deep within herself without giving the slightest clue on the outside of her attempts to review her painful past, Bates too is Imprisoned within his consciousness because there is no social outlet. This is a frightening picture of loneliness in old age style. Both Bates and Ellen yearn for youth and open spaces while 356

Rumsey is probably better equipped to live out his years as he is in the countryside. If Bates and Ellen are trapped in a maze of their own, Rumsey, who has no cuhous drinking companion and certainly no noisy aggressive neighbours to deal with, is nevertheless caught up, and trapped, as it were, because he is hounded by the images of people turning away from him, of a loss of human understanding and contact which he probably craves for. As he says,

... Sometimes I see people. They walk towards me, no, not so, walk in my direction but never reaching me, turning left, or disappearing, to disappear into the wood. So many ways to lose sight of them, then to recapture sight of them.... (40)

Towards the end of the play (by no means the end of the characters' musings) there are dramatic moments of "simultaneous truths," where the characters seem to arrive at the same point because the paths traced by the characters have intersected and reached a point of no return. Each of them has externalised the most significant images of his/her life but cannot proceed further, reaching a point where silence is safer than any conclusive statement because in a discourse of Self, consciousness and awareness grows, as truths are externalised, resulting in multiple perspectives and unresolved moments:

RUMSEY She was looking down. I couldn't hear what she said. BATES I can't hear you. Yes you can, I said. RUMSEY What are you saying? Look at me, she said. BATES I didn't. I didn't hear you, she said. I didn't hear what you said. 357

RUMSEY But I am looking at you. It's your head that's bent. Silence (49-50)

This sequence hints at some sort of a converging, a focus, and a kind of final realisation that none of them is aware of the other's need. There are other sequences also that come towards simultaneous moments of revelation, because the three characters have after all been through more or less the same kind of experiences even though their respective interpretations vary. Simultaneous truths are inter-subjective moments of intuition and intensity, "spots of time" that can be felt by the other:

ELLEN After my work each day I walk back through people but I don't notice them. I'm not in a dream or anything of the sort. On the contrary ... I'm quite awake to the world around me. But not to the people. ... It is only later, in my room, that I remember. But I'm never sure that what I remember is of to-day or of yesterday or of a long time ago. My drinking companion for the hundredth time asked me if I'd ever been married. This time I told her I had. Yes, I told her I had. Certainly. I can remember the wedding. Silence. (46)

Even Bates has his past relentlessly scrutinised for the more personal details and clues to his solitary existence. This play serves to highlight the sort of questions the reader of the Pinter play might well ask about the past of the characters: 358

BATES Stupid conversation, My landlady asks me in for a drink. What are you doing here? Why do you live alone? Where do you come from? What do you do with yourself? What kind of life have you had/You seem fit. ... (41)

There is some kind of finality in the "bits and pieces" of reconciliations and acceptances towards the end of the play, but these are mere resignations to tiring questions - "the calm moment[s]", when the dust "drains out and the grit slips away":

BATES You cross the field out of darkness. You arrive. ELLEN I turn to them and speak. Silence. RUMSEY And watch the folding light. BATES And their tittering bitches, and their music, and their love. ELLEN They ask me where I come from. I say of course from the country. Silence (47-48)

Though the characters come to terms with their broader social environment, they cannot do so within their more intimate circle of bygone relationships, because the stakes, the problems, are much more enormous here. Besides, there is little possibility of deception in these relationships since the entire mode of their existence in this sphere is 359

transparent, more intimate and shared, as compared to the larger social group they exist with. Here, identities and self-conceptions, as well as feelings, are more at stake than they are in the broader social sphere because they are crucially tied up with the quality of inter-subjective relationships and obligations. The interactions of Landscape. Silence and Night constitute a complex drama of recall, observation, interpretation and self-reflection. Alfred Schutz in The Phenomenology of the Social World describes the problems involved in these manoeuvres:

... If I wish to observe one of my own experiences I must perform a reflective Act of attention ... But in this case, what I will behold is a past experience, not one presently occurring ... You are in the same position as I am: you can observe only your past, already-lived-through experiences. ... This means that, whereas I can observe my own lived experiences only after they are over and done with, I can observe yours as they actually take place. This in turn implies that you and I are in a specific sense "simultaneous" that we "coexist", that our respective streams of consciousness intersect ... We are concerned with the synchronism of two streams of consciousness here my own and yours. ... My consciousness perceives those streams as a single one whenever it pleases to give them an undivided act of attention; on the other hand it distinguishes them whenever it chooses to divide its attention between them. Again it can make them both one and yet distinct from one another, if it decides to divide its attention while still not splitting them into two separate entities I see then, my own stream of consciousness and yours in a single intentional act which embraces both ... the term simultaneity is ... an expression for the basic and necessary assumption 360

which I make that your stream of consciousness has a structure analogous to mine and It endures in a sense that a physical thing does not: it subjectively experiences its own aging and this experience is determinative of all its other experiences. While the duration of physical objects has no duree at all ... you and I, on the other hand, have a genuine duree which experiences itself, which is continuous, which is manifold, and which is irreversible. Not only does each of us subjectively experience his own duree as an absolute reality in the Bergsonian sense, but the duree of each of us is given to the other as an absolute reality. What we mean then, by simultaniety of two durations or streams of onsciousness is simply this: the phenomenon of growing older together .^°

« Night, in comparison to Landscape and Silence, is a play that is more positive, as the characters are more integrated individuals than are the characters in the other two plays. Here, the characters are not named; they are simply called man and woman. When the play opens they are sitting down for coffee and reminiscing the past. The man speaks about a time by the river but the woman cannot remember. He also speaks about their "first walk," trying earnestly to remind her what he has noted as the most important event in his life; the woman on the other hand, remembers other scenes and other landmarks as the background of their first meeting. Time and memory have wrought differences in perspective. For each the reality is that which he or she remembers. And, memory too, is bolstered by the general interests, motives, impressions and perspectives of the particular speaker. Thus, memory or the images of the mind, are not bits and pieces of the dead past, but obsessive impressions struggling constantly to come alive. The "man" and "woman" of this play, are in this sense everyman and everywoman but with a difference: both are immensely alive, individualised and fully 361

developed characters even though they appear in just one short scene, the only scene of the play:

MAN The fist time? Our first walk? WOMAN Yes, of course I remember that. Pause We walked down a road into a field, through some railings. We walked to a corner of the field and then we stood by the railings. MAN No. It was on the bridge that we stopped. Pause WOMAN That was someone else. MAN Rubbish. WOMAN That was another girl. MAN It was years ago. You've forgotten. Pause I remember the light on the water.

It is important, apparently, for the man to make her understand, to make her agree. She is not driven by any such compulsion, but only by the simple need to externalise, to share the sights and sounds within her. For instance, while he thinks of their first party together, she dreams of little children. The play is, not, however, vague and unrealistic; both 362

characters are aware of their daily lives, its chores and rituals, and yet they want to pause, re-consider and re-construct the past:

MAN You agree we met at a party. You agree with that? WOMAN What was that? MAN What? WOMAN I thought it was a child, crying, waking up. MAN The house is silent. Pause It's very late. We're sitting here. We should be in bed. I have to be up early. I have things to do. I have to be up in the morning. Pause MAN A man called Doughty gave the party. You knew him ... You liked my eyes.

The play is lyrical - and perhaps the only play in this group of plays which ends in serenity, with no regrets, bitterness or reservations. The man accepts that his wife may have known other men and she too understands that he may be reminiscing moments of involvement with other women; in spite of everything, both are contented and achieve a happiness that is extremely rare in the world of the Pinter-play: 363

WOMAN And you had fallen in love with me, and you said you would take care of me always and you told me ... you would adore me always. MAN Yes, I did. WOMAN And you did adore me always. MAN Yes I did. WOMAN And then we had children and we sat and talked and you remembered women on bridges and towpaths and rubbish dumps. MAN And you remembered your bottom against railings and men holding your hands and men looking into your eyes. (60-61)

Though this play is the shortest of the three plays considered in this chapter, it is broad in its sweep, and takes into consideration not only the past, but also the present and the future as well. It has broad perspectives and tolerant interactions and is a fitting finale to the trilogy of self-awareness and understanding.

In all these plays, there are different dimensions of reality and multi­ dimensional perspectives of character because characters both reflect upon their own experiences as well as upon those of others. Ellen in particular also observes herself as a thinking person in the act of thinking. She thinks about thinking and brings a highly self-reflective dimension to the play. Coherence of meaning and interpretation is hardly possible because it is impossible for the characters to see 364

themselves as others see them. It is also difficult for them to think in a chronologically straight sequence. The movement of thought is skittish, unpredictable and unverifiable. Thus, Richard Allen Cave in an insightful perspective on these plays concludes, that "not since Strindberg has a dramatist, set actors quite such a formidable task in achieving a coherent characterisation ... [because] action moves, often by highly rapid though always smooth transitions through many different dimensions of reality - blending dream, memory and life."^® 365

Notes

^ Harold Pinter, Landscape and Silence (London: Methuen,1969). Harold Pinter, "Night," Landscape and Silence (London: Methuen,1969). References to the above plays are from this edition.

^ See Richard Allen Cave, New British Drama in Performance on the London Stage: 1970 to 1985 (Colin Smythe: Gerard Cross, 1989) 2 and Alan Bold ed., Harold Pinter: You Never Heard Such Silence (London: Vision press, 1984) 51.

^ You Never Heard Such Silence 44.

^ Quoted by Martin Esslin, Pinter: The Plawvright (London : Methuen, 1970)56-57.

^ Simon Trussler, The Plays of Harold Pinter: An Assessment (London : Victor Gollancz,1973) 154, desaibes the manoeuvres of the characters in Landscape. Silence and Night as "static actions."

® Anne Paolucci, From Tension to Tonic : The plavs of Edward Albee (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1972) 10.

^ Trussler, The Plavs of Harold Pinter 154.

^ You Never Heard Such Silence 1.

® Dianne Macdonell, Theories of Discourse: An Introduction (Oxford : Basil Blackwell, 1986) 112-14.

^° Cave, New British Drama 2.

^^ Esslin, Pinter: The Playwright 173.

^^ See Jean Paul Sartre, No Exit and Three other Plavs (New York: Vintage books, 1955). In No Exit. Garcin, the protagonist of the play is condemned to live in hell along with Estelle and Inez, the two women he would much rather avoid.

^^ See Francis M. Abraham, Modern Sociological Theory : An introduction (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1982) 229.

^"^ Ibid. 229.

^^ Ibid. 228. 366

^® Alfred Schutz, The Phenomenology of the Social World trans. George Walsh and Fredrick Lenhart (London : Heinmann Educational Books, 1972)98-99.

^^ Ibid. 99.

^® Ibid. 103.

^^ New British Drama 6.