Eugene O'neill, Mourning Becomes Electra11

Masaryk University Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Denisa Šantová

Eugene O’Neill: Autobiographical Features in Chosen Plays Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Mgr. Tomáš Kačer, Ph.D.

2015

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

……………………………………………..

Author’s signature

Acknowledgment

I would like to thank my supervisor Mgr. Tomáš Kačer, Ph.D. for his patience, support and help he

provided me while writing this thesis, my family for always supporting me and last, but not least, Artic

Monkeys, The Weeknd and Adele for their albums and never-ending supply of music when most needed.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction………………………………………………………...…5-7

2. Eugene as a playwright……………………………………………...... 8-13

3. Eugene as a lover……………………………………………………14-27

4. Eugene as a son and a brother………………………………………28-36

5. Conclusion…………………………………………………………..37-38

6. Works Cited…………………………………………………………39-40

7. Résumé…………………………………………………………………41

8. Résumé………………………………………………………………....42

1. Introduction

“Less than a year ago,” O’Neill wrote the Harvard

professor, “I seriously determined to become a dramatist.

With my present training I might hope to become a

mediocre journey-man playwright. It is just because I do

not wish to become one, because I want to be an artist or

nothing that I am writing you.”

-Eugene O’Neill to George Baker1

To write about Eugene O´Neill is to write about the birth of American drama.

Undoubtedly, there were many playwrights, more or less successful, but as Gore Vidal remarked: “Before Eugene O’Neill . . . there was a wasteland. . . . Two centuries of junk.”

(Dowling 27). An American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright Lewis Sinclair in

1930, 29 years before Vidal, was more specific:

[O’Neill] has done nothing much in the American drama save to transform it

utterly in ten or twelve years from a false world of neat and competent trickery

to a world of splendor, fear and greatness ... [he has] seen life as something not

to be neatly arranged in a study, but as terrifying, magnificent and often quite

horrible, a thing akin to a tornado, an earthquake or a devastating fire.2

O’Neill’s brilliance was not only based on his primacy, but also originality and sense for literature; he was not only a playwright, he was a storyteller and in play after play, characters seize an opportunity to tell each other their stories as well (Chotia 195).

It is not possible and neither a goal of this thesis to cover O’Neill’s whole life – for such an attempt much larger space is needed.

1 O’Neill Selected Letters 26

2 Sinclair Lewis - Nobel Lecture: The American Fear of Literature

The purpose of this thesis is to show that O’Neill’s life, and fruitful life it was, affected or rather inspired his work and that the two are mutually intertwined. As a method of proving this stance, I am going to compare life events and people surrounding him to his plays, searching for any similarities.

As I mentioned, I will not attempt to mention everything that had ever happened to O’Neill, or describe everybody in his life; I have chosen specific aspects of his life, which I found the most suitable for establishing the comparison of his life and work.

These particular aspects will be introduced in three chapters of my thesis. The first chapter will deal with the three features of O’Neill’s life that, in my opinion, had their impact on it and, therefore, his playwriting work – alcoholism, seafaring and sickness of a body and mind. All these issues can be seen in O’Neill’s various plays, specifically in his sea plays and his autobiographical plays A Moon for the Misbegotten and

Exorcism.

Second chapter is focused on a very broad topic – O’Neill’s women. Women in general inspired a lot of his plays; I will concentrate on his mother and lovers and how these women were transformed into the characters of his plays. Not every one of

O’Neill’s lovers and wives has served as a vision for a particular character, but I am convinced that each and every one affected him and shaped his character, which I will try to prove in this part of the thesis. The plays used for comparison in this chapter are Ah, Wilderness! and Exorcism.

The last chapter deals with the most essential and complicated matter of

O’Neill’s life – his family. Member by member, I will describe them and show the way they are depicted in his plays, by analysing the characters of chosen plays: Desire under the Elms, Beyond the Horizon, Before Breakfast, but mainly Long Day´s Journey into the Night, as this play clearly shows the story of O’Neill’s family and is his most autobiographical play.

This thesis uses O’Neill’s plays as primary sources and also numerous secondary sources, but the one I mainly refer to is recently published Robert M. Dowling’s Eugene

O'Neill: A Life in Four Acts. I find this biography significant for my thesis, as it offers unpublished letters, photographs and not well-known events from O’Neill’s life, together with a reference to Exorcism, O’Neill’s suicidal play only discovered in 2011.

2. Eugene as a playwright

“Writing is my vacation from living”

-Eugene O’Neill

This chapter will offer a brief O’Neill’s biography, or rather few facts from his life, which I consider important as the way to get to know O’Neill or at least to get some idea what kind of a man he was. I will later focus on three aspects of his life: alcoholism, seafaring and sickness of body and mind, all of which accompanied O’Neill throughout his life and affected his writing.

It seems like Eugene O’Neill’s fate was decided long before his birth. He was not the first one in his family to be successful, in fact, his father James O’Neill was popular much longer before Eugene was even born. A matinee idol James was a well-known actor and, hence, O’Neill was exposed to the theatre from the very beginning of his life. He was literary born on the Broadway, in the Barret House on October 16, 1888, as a third child of James and Mary Ellen “Ella” O’Neill. Two days after his birth, Eugene was swept away with his family on the first of many national tours with his father and his theatre company (Dowling

27). His childhood was not a typical childhood of a normal, ordinary boy. He was travelling with his family for the first seven years of his life. “Usually a child has a regular, fixed home,” he said, “but you might say I started in as a trouper. I knew only actors and the stage. My mother nursed me in the wings and in dressing rooms.”3 But then he was sent to Catholic boarding school, which he loathed. After that he was transferred to the secular Betts

Academy in Stamford, Connecticut. At Betts he made a good academic records and acquired a solid education, which he amplified by constant wide reading, by writing poems, daily letters to his parents, brother, nanny, and others (Black 7).

3 Sheaffer Son and Playwright 24

From these facts we can see that O’Neill’s was interested in a literature and writing since childhood and it was an inseparable part of his life.

Alcoholism was, unfortunately, the inseparable part of O’Neill’s life, too. It began when he was fourteen, with him finding out about his mother’s morphine addiction, caused by severe pain after giving birth to him. By the age of fifteen, he was a full blown alcoholic

(Black 7) and his drinking continued his whole life, with short off-wagon periods. And it was exactly during these off-wagon periods, when he had written his plays. There was one rule he tried to keep during his whole playwriting career- not to write when drunk. The theme of alcohol did not just occur in O’Neill’s life, but also in his plays. In this part I will focus on

O’Neill’s play A Moon for the Misbegotten, where alcohol appears as an important mean to the story.

In A Moon for the Misbegotten there is, of course, an inn – drinking place where everybody gather and where business is done. The three main characters of the play, Josie Hogan, her father Phil Hogan and their friend James Tyrone, Jr., they all come into contact with alcohol.

James Tyrone Jr., alter ego of O’Neill’s brother James O’Neill, Jr., is a middle-aged alcoholic, who is basically drinking his way to death. Phil and Josie are not non-drinkers, but they treat alcohol with some kind of respect, and serve it only occasionally. For both Josie and James, alcohol is a way to honesty; for Josie even more, it helps her to uncover her romantic side, especially in the scene, where she and James are drinking and later confessing love for each other. (“Let’s sit down where the moon will be in our eyes and we'll see romance. She takes his arm and leads him to her bedroom steps. She sits on the top step, pulling him down beside her but on the one below. She raises her glass. Here's hoping before the night's out you'll have more courage and kiss me at least.”)4

4 O’Neill A Moon for the Misbegotten 54

James realizes how bad alcohol is, or the consequences it has, and he proves it by saying

“I said a drink was a grand idea--for me. Not for you. You skip this one.”5 It is obvious that he tries to spare at least Josie from the aftermath of drinking, since he cannot spare himself.

In a way, James is doomed, as well as James O’Neill was– both are alcoholics, not very successful in the professional or personal lives and the description of James Tyrone is

O’Neill’s “most graphic characterization of the debilitating effects of chemical dependency.”6

What is really apparent in this play, “O’Neill finally captures the despairing paradox of the human condition, as he sees it, in the contrast between the romantic myth of intoxication and the realistic symptoms and effects of alcoholism.”7 There is, even now, some premise how alcohol is a romantic way to deal with problems; there are various writers who work intoxicated and create their best works in this state. But, honestly, there is really nothing romantic about the awful taste in one’s mouth the morning after, headache and other aches, not speaking of bad decisions one makes while drunk. Regret is often following the hangover and that is also the case of James – his nights with whores can serve as one example. The train story he tells Josie is one that says it all; James bought the prostitute for 50 dollars a night to keep him company. When Josie asked him how could he, he simply replied: “How could I? I don't know. But I did. I suppose I had some mad idea she could make me forget-

-what was in the baggage car ahead”8, the baggage being the body of his dead mother. Here we can see how alcohol is used as a way to forget the reality, but in fact it only multiplies the misery. It is the perfect example of above mentioned paradox of romantic myth and harsh reality of drinking.

5 O’Neill A Moon for the Misbegotten 56

6 www.eoneill..com

7 www.eoneill..com

8 O’Neill A Moon for the Misbegotten 70

I will next cover O’Neill’s seafaring years, or rather what these voyages meant for him.

He started his journey in 1912, on the ship to Honduras and since that time he travelled to a lot of countries, either alone or later with his third wife, Carlotta Monterey.

O’Neill wrote seven sea plays, The Long Voyage Home, The Moon of the Caribbees, Bound

East for Cardiff, In the Zone, The Rope, Ile and Where the Cross, which are now united in a cycle called “Seven Plays of the Sea”. They all represent O’Neill’s ability to capture the atmosphere of the sea, together with its rough life. The years on the sea strongly affected his later work and life itself; not only as the inspiration for his plays, but also as a way of experiencing freedom. When asked about his memories, as Edmund in Long Day’s Journey he remarks that

“they're all connected with the sea.” Particularly intense is his subsequent speech:

When I was on the Squarehead square rigger, bound for Buenos Aires. Full moon

in the Trades. The old hooker driving fourteen knots. I lay on the bowsprit,

facing astern, with the water foaming into spume under me, the masts with every

sail white in the moonlight, towering high above me. I became drunk with the

beauty and singing rhythm of it, and for a moment I lost myself—actually lost

my life. I was set free! I dissolved in the sea, became white sails and flying spray,

became beauty and rhythm, became moonlight and the ship and the high dim-

starred sky! I belonged, without past or future, within peace and unity and a wild

joy, within something greater than my own life, or the life of Man, to Life itself!

To God, if you want to put it that way.9

Here O’Neill describes how he was set free by losing himself in the darkness of the sea and the night. The same experience of the new-found freedom can be seen in another part of his monologue:

Then another time, on the American Line, when I was lookout on the crow’s

nest in the dawn watch.

9 Eugene O’Neill Long Day’s Journey into the Night 156

A calm sea, that time. Only a lazy ground swell and a slow drowsy roll of the

ship. The passengers asleep and none of the crew in sight. No sound of man.

Black smoke pouring from the funnels behind and beneath me.

Dreaming, not keeping lookout, feeling alone, and above, and part, watching the

dawn creep like a painted dream over the sky and sea which slept together. Then

the moment of ecstatic freedom came. The peace, the end of the quest, the last

harbor, the joy of belonging to fulfillment beyond men's lousy, pitiful, greedy

fears and hopes and dreams!10

In this quote he uses even stronger term for the description of the freedom, “ecstatic freedom”, and it can be seen that he found himself in the peace that sea offers. From these two quotes it is apparent how important was sea for O’Neill and, therefore, it in no wonder that the sea, or the concept of the sea, affected his work so much.

It might not be so obvious why I decided to include the theme of sickness to this part of the work, but I strongly believe that it as crucial as any other. Because it was exactly at the time when O’Neill fought with tuberculosis, in the years of 1912-13, when he decided to be a dramatist. He spent the time in Gaylord Sanatorium reading drama, philosophy, and most importantly, learning about new theatrical movements in

Ireland, France, Sweden, and Germany. He started to write after his release from the sanatorium, setting the pattern of the autobiographical plays by writing about his own experiences. (Ranald 51). This pattern climaxed in his later plays A Moon for the

Misbegotten and Long Day’s Journey into the Night, which I will deal with in the following parts, mainly Chapter 3.

10 O’Neill Long Day’s Journey into the Night 156

The sickness of the mind is presented throughout O’Neill’s whole life. He never had a “normal” life, but quite the opposite; ever present brother’s death, his mother’s subsequent decay, brother’s jealousy, various love affairs and the burden of being a brilliant dramatist undoubtedly left a mark on his soul, causing depression and loneliness. The best example of this sickness of mind is his suicidal attempt in 1911.

The dramatization of this attempt is the basis of his work Exorcism, which he tried to destroy right after writing it. This play shows his grief and disgust from the way life works, especially when dealing with his divorce, which I will closely examine in the following chapter. I believe that writing was a way for O’Neill to “write out his soul”, as a kind of diary of his life. It is hard to say if everything he experienced was a gift or a curse, but nevertheless, it served him as a great inspiration for his work and as it is often said: good authors have imagination, but great authors have experience.

3. Eugene as a lover and husband

“You said they had found the secret of happiness

because they had never heard that love can be a sin.”

― Eugene O'Neill, Mourning Becomes Electra11

This chapter will summarize and attempt to analyse O’Neill’s relationships and what these relationships meant for him. I decided to focus on all his girlfriends, wives and lovers, as I believe that each of them affected him in some way.

Eugene O’Neill never lacked a female company. His numerous relationships, affairs and marriages may seem like he sought women for one simple purpose, that purpose being intimate relations with no depth. To me it seems that a lonely man was seeking love and companionship, someone to take care for and of him, a sad soul looking for a soulmate. The first woman to determine the development of his love life was his mother Ella. She was the one that affected his further relationships with women; her addiction, which led to sending young Eugene to boarding school, thus growing up without motherly love he so desperately sought for the rest of his life. One does not have to be a psychologist to be aware of how deeply one’s parents affect the mental development of an individual. The love O’Neill did not get at home, he searched for, and in many cases found, in women that were willing to become more than his partners, to become his mother. The aforementioned implications will be analysed in the following part of the present work.

It is said that the first love one remembers for the rest of one’s life. It does not necessarily have to be a life-long love, but it can determine the way other relationships will go in the future. Such first love for O’Neill was Marion Welch. He met her as a young teenager, when she was visiting a friend in New London.

11 Eugene O’Neill Mourning Becomes Electra (Part I, Act I)

She was couple years older than Eugene and well-read, intelligent girl, a pleasant distraction for O’Neill. The surviving love letters to Marion read like those of a typical lovesick sixteen-year-old boy—thick with sarcasm and braggadocio, more Tom Sawyer than

Baudelaire (Dowling 45). Although Welch was his intelligent companion, with whom he was exchanging letters about books and plays worth reading and seeing, she was “one of many young women with whom he had friendships or rather one-side relationships” (Shafer 46).

According to this it can be said that O’Neill was from the beginning attracted to the intellectual and well-read girls, whom he can spend time with talking about literature and things related to it.

Although Welch was his first girl, for me she was more an introduction to love life, than a serious girlfriend. The first significant one he met in the summer of 1909. Her name was Kathleen Jenkins, she was a daughter of an alcoholic, and the idea of an imperfect father was the thing that most connected them. O’Neill enchanted her, although he had no money, no job and no prospects, but this was probably a part of his charm.

“The usual young man sent you flowers, a box of candy, took you to the theatre,

but mostly,” she said, since O’Neill never had any money, “we talked and walked.

. . . He was always immaculately groomed, in spite of being unconventional; he

led a bohemian sort of life. . . . The books he read were ‘way over my head.”12

This quote implicates that Jenkins was not his intellectual equal, which probably predicted their future relationship. Kathleen soon ended up pregnant and as a result, they got married on October 2, 1909. Their secret marriage has not remained secret for long, as Kathleen’s mother revealed it to O’Neill’s parents. Consequently, James sent O’Neill to Honduras, and he contentedly accepted this chance to escape the marriage and fatherhood. However, O’Neill was not a heartless man and even he felt a guilt, which he expressed in poems, written during his journey.

12 Sheaffer Son and Playwright 144

The one written on board of Charles Racine, called “Free”, is considered to be

O’Neill’s first literary work (Dowling 52). “Free” one might regard as a confession poem – he acknowledges his remorse about leaving Kathleen and their son, Eugene

Jr., and at the same time revealing spiritual release (Dowling 58):

I have had my dance with Folly, nor do I shirk the blame;

I have sipped the so-called Wine of Life and paid the price of shame;

But I know that I shall find surcease, the rest of my spirit craves,

Where the rainbows play in the flying spray,

’Mid the keen salt kiss of the waves (O’Neill in Dowling 58)

Later in Buenos Aires, he wrote another poem titled “Ashes of Orchids”, later changed to

“The Bridegroom Weeps!”:

There are so many tears

In my eyes

Burning, unshed:

There are so many ashes

In my mouth

Ashes of orchids:

There are so many corpses

In my brain

Of decomposing dreams—

And Columbine, also,

Decomposes! (O’Neill in Dowling 63)

Likewise “Free”, also “The Bridegrooms Weeps!” is about O’Neill’s remorse over desertion from Kathleen and their son, but also over his licentious life in Argentina (Dowling 63).

Probably the weight of this guilt compelled him to call Kathleen and ask her to come visit him with Eugene Jr. The reunion between husband and wife was civil but awkward; of the

16 few words spoken by O’Neill, none of them justified his behaviour over the last year and a half. After a brief stay, he left in silence. O’Neill wouldn’t see Eugene Jr. for more than a decade, and Jenkins he never saw again.13

That, of course, did not mean that they have not been in a contact, or at least knew about each other. The ground for this was their divorce – undoubtedly an expected course of events. In Exorcism O’Neill (as a main character Ned) confesses he only married Jenkins for

“gentleman’s reason”:

Jimmy – [...] I’ve always hoped – you’d go back to her finally.

Ned – (Angrily) You’re an ass!

Jimmy – (Pathetically) But didn’t you – don’t you care for her at all?

Ned – (With a hopeless groan) Oh, my God! (Then vehemently) Not a damn! Not a

single, solitary, infinitesimal tinker’s damn! I never did! Body – that was what I

wanted in her and she in me. And I married her for an obsolete reason – a

gentleman’s reason, as you’d call it – and because a perverse devil whispered in

my ear that marriage was one of the few things I haven’t done. That’s all it was,

so help me – a silly gesture of honor – and a stunt! 14

Undoubtedly, O’Neill was not content with his marriage to Jenkins and he was not a bit ashamed to admit it; as if his behaviour towards her was not indicating it enough.

However, O’Neill was not the only one unhappy in this relationship - the play clearly says that also Jenkins, as her alter ego Margaret, wanted the divorce; when Jimmy asks Ned if

Margaret wanted it, he replies: “Of course,” Ned replies acidly. “She’s rich. She’ll be married again within a year.“

13 Sheaffer Son and Playwright 145, 188

14 O’Neill Exorcism 10

Her negative portrayal is intensified when Ned has been told that Margaret went “out of her mind with grief,” presuming he attempted suicide because she’s suing him for divorce: “Aha!

So that’s what she thinks! The devil!”15

In fact, the night before his suicide attempt, Ned (O’Neill) met with his still-wife’s attorney and they made an agreement. As the only ground the divorce could stand on in that time was adultery, they needed to arrange one; it was a long night of drinking and then visiting a whorehouse – “house of ill fame”. From that night Ned did not remembered much (“I don’t remember much about getting there – or my choosing the correspondent. We arrived in the small hours and I was very drunk. I must have fallen asleep – almost immediately.”)16, but he did not have to. The adultery was witnessed and thus the divorce was valid.

The unfavourably way O’Neill describe Jenkins, as Ned describes Margaret, shows the lack of love, or any other similar affection, towards her. This may be the reason why he omitted her and his son completely in Long Day’s Journey, although the play takes place in

1912, three years after the marriage and conception of Eugene Jr. Whatever their discords,

O’Neill probably realised how badly he described Jenkins in Exorcism and that might have been a reason for destroying the play.

After his divorce from Jenkins in 1912, or rather during the proceedings of it, he did not remain single. His eyes set on his neighbour, Maibelle Scott, in New London, Conc., where he had moved shortly before. They were exchanging love letters daily, despite the fact they saw each other just as much. Scott was from prosperous family and neither her, nor

O’Neill’s mother approved of this relationship. Nonetheless, the two kept meeting behind their backs in secret during the fall. Scott could not comprehend the reputation O’Neill held in the town.

15 O’Neill Exorcism 19

16 O’Neill Exorcism 12

“He was always a gentleman around me, never drunk or anything like that,” she recalled,

“and I couldn’t understand why people talked against him, including his own parents. I felt that he was very much misunderstood.” (Dowling 91), but soon she discovered the reason, as she saw O’Neill’s bad temper at parties and his depression. As she admitted, this was mainly the reason why she never really fell in love with him. “When I met my husband, I realized the feeling was different. I knew then that I had never loved Eugene but had only been fascinated.” (Dowling 91)

Although their relationship did not last very long, Scott served O’Neill as an inspiration for a character of Muriel McComber in his 1933 play Ah, Wilderness!. Even though their ages differ – Scott was eighteen when they met, and Muriel is only fifteen in the play – they both had to deal with a disapproval of their loved one’s families. Muriel’s loved one is Richard

Miller, who, as his counterpart O’Neill, sends her “love letters and racy poetry” (Dowling

90). In contrast with Muriel and Richard, Scott’s and O’Neill’s relationship did not have the happy ending and they soon broke up.

In June 1914, O’Neill has fallen for a nineteen-year-old New London girl name

Beatrice “Bee” Ashe. Although Scott was his first romance, “Bumble Bee” can be regarded as his first true love. The depth of his passion has been preserved in more than eighty letters and over a dozen love poems dedicated to her, with titles such as “Just a Little Love, a Little

Kiss,” “Just Me n’ You,” and “Ballade of the Two of Us.” (Dowling 105). In one of them,

“Speaking, to the Shades of Dante, of Beatrices”, he compares his Beatrice with the one of

Dante’s:

Dante, your damozel was tall

And lean and sad—I’ve seen her face

On many a best-parlor wall—

I don’t think she was such an ace.

She doesn’t class with mine at all. (O’Neill in Dowling 105)

He gave her “a scarab bracelet as a sign of his deep commitment and told her that he wished he could buy her an ankle-length sable coat and a silk bathing suit as well” (Dowling 106).

He was in love with her, but to O’Neill, with love comes a feeling of possession, which can be seen in this and also his future relationships. In spite of his failed marriage with Jenkins, he had the intention to marry Bee, although she refused to marry him. “(He) carried a wedding ring for two years hoping I’d change my mind” (106), but she did not, and what is more, she started to realize how different they are and the depths of O’Neill’s difficult personality; for one, he did not respect her dream of being a soprano professional soloist. As if not supporting her career was not enough, she notices his uneasiness around children. “He had a sweet, gentle smile,” she said, “the sort he should have had for children but didn’t.”

(106). All the more, Beatrice was not the only woman to notice that. Regardless of Jenkins, who soon understood that O’Neill will never be “a normal father”, not mentioning being a good one, Agnes Boulton too realised he did not like children. “I don’t understand children,” he told her, “they make me uneasy, and I don’t know how to act with them.” (167).

Ashe’s and O’Neill’s relationship was even more complicated due to the long distance they had to endure, as O’Neill was taking a George Baker’s seminar at Cambridge. They were meeting on weekends and holidays, but O’Neill was still writing love letters to “His Own

Little Wife”. He was so deeply in love and dependent on her, he decided to stay faithful to her and ignore other girls around him. His letters were deeply emotional (“Ah My Own, My

Own, how I love you, and how the relentless hours drag their leaden feet when I am not with you!” (111)) and they contained numerous poems and even a photo of himself in his underwear taken by a Cambridge artist practicing studies in the nude, and he teased her over her refusal to have sex with him (111). However, as O’Neill felt more and more in love with

Ashe, he became more and more dependent on her, even possessive and depressed, as he claimed he could not live without her.17

17 www.arenastage.org

During the following months, Ashe’s love started to cool down and their relationship changed. He expressed his desire for motherly love from her, claiming to be “her tearful little boy” and when she expressed this kind of love, instead of the passionate one typical for lovers, he answered: “Why not? . . . I promise to always be your child. Where you are concerned, like Peter Pan, I shall never grow up.”18 It is obvious here that O’Neill was looking for some more that a woman, his quest to find the motherly love is apparent. But even this love did not last and it was perceptible that their futures are not meant to be the same.

During the simmering down of their relationship, O’Neill met Louise Bryant, a fiancée of his friend, a socialist journalist John Reed. Bryant was strictly against alcohol because of her father’s drunkenness, and as O’Neill wrote only when he was sober, her controlling his whiskey income contributed to O’Neill’s prolific period of writing that summer of 1914 they spent together. They were often seen together and since they were both writers of a kind –

Bryant a journalist, O’Neill a playwright – letters and poems were not absent in this affair.

Dark eyes

you stir my soul

Ineffably.

You scatter

All my peace.

Dark eyes,

What shall I do? (Bryant in Dowling 142) asked Bryant in a poem to O´Neill and he responded in the same impassioned way:

Blue eyes.

You stir my soul

Ineffably.

18 O’Neill Selected Letters 59, 65

You scatter all my peace.

Blue eyes,

What shall I do? . . .

I dream

In a great wide space

Where horizons meet

And the unattainable is possessed.

Blue eyes.

The sky is blue,

I dare not look at it

Because my soul is lonely.

Don’t you know then

Why,

Blue eyes? (O’Neill in Dowling 142)

These two poems clearly indicate the passion and sparking between Bryant and O’Neill. This being said, it is no surprise that their affair was intensive and lasted on and off for almost two years. Surprisingly, Bryant’s fiancée and later husband John Reeds knew about the relationship and did not mind it. Nevertheless, there were people who minded Bryant and they minded her very much, so much they regarded her as “bitch,” a “nymphomaniac,” and a “whore” (Dowling 143); the people were Provincetown Players, a group of the theatre people O’Neill was part of. But Bryant, O’Neill and not even Reed made a big deal of this affair. Although their triangle happened long before hippie period of “free love”, that is exactly what they believed in. Reed even expressed his opinions on extramarital affairs in his one-act play The Eternal Quadrangle which suggests that these affairs bothered him little, and he himself had been involved in a long-standing and public romance with the married Mabel

Dodge (141).

Bryant’s and O’Neill’s affair would probably continue for longer period of time, if not for the war, when Bryant’s journalist duty called her off to Russia, together with her husband

Reed, leaving O’Neill and thus ending their affair.

There is no doubt that Bryant meant a lot to him and she, in a way, haunted him over the course of years. When she returned to New York in March 1918, she wrote him a letter, accusing his then-wife Agnes Boulton of tolerating him his alcoholism and accusing O’Neill of having an affair. He responded pointing out her hypocrisy: “For over a year and a half I loved you. During most of that time you lived with another man. That is undeniable. What does it matter if physically you were faithful to me—especially considering the circumstances.”19; circumstances being Reed´s kidney problem, disabling him from having a sexual intercourse. “It is more than probable,” he told Bryant in this final letter to her, “that you have burned yourself so deep into my soul that the wound will never heal and I stand condemned to love you forever—and hate you for what you have done to my life.” (Dowling

170).

As in previous cases, O’Neill did not stay single for a long time and in November 1917 he met Agnes Boulton in the Hell Hole, bar in New York, where she moved from

Connecticut, leaving behind her parents are step-daughter Barbara “Cookie” Burton, daughter of Boulton’s late husband. It was striking how alike she and Bryant looked. Boulton was exactly O’Neill’s type – “slim of build, long of neck, dark of hair, high of cheekbone”

(163-64). Boulton soon realized what many before did that the man projected an unnerving, contagious vulnerability “that of being himself—an awareness on the part of others of his being always intensely aware of himself. . . . This would account for his shyness or whatever it was—which was really an intense self-consciousness.” (164).

19 Sheaffer Son and Playwright 215

Boulton saw him for what he was and he himself acknowledged it in a letter to Bryant, where he writes that Agnes accepted him at his worst—and [she] didn’t love him for what she thought he ought to be.” “Whether I love her in a deep sense or not,” he went on, “I do not yet know. For the past half-year ‘love’ has seemed like some word in a foreign language of which I do not know the meaning. It dazes me.”(170). Probably his love never really deepened, although they spent together over nine years and conceived two children together- son Shane Rudraighe O’Neill, born October 30, 1919 and daughter Oona O’Neill born on

May 14, 1925, a future wife of Charlie Chaplin. Although the children were probably conceived in love, their mere existence did not help the relationship, on the contrary, it worsened it. As O’Neill himself admitted: “Perhaps I could do with less progeny about, for

I was never cut out, seemingly, for a pater familias and children in squads, even when indubitably my own, tend to ‘get my goat.’ ”20. Despite the general belief that children can save relationship, theirs could probably not be saved and they got divorced, disproving

O’Neill’s words to Agnes the first night they met.: “I want to spend every night of my life from now on with you; I mean this. Every night of my life.”21

What actually ended their relationship – whether they were sick of each other after all these years and could not, or would not, amend it or was there a new, better woman in sight?

O’Neill’s actions proved both options, but mainly the latter.

O’Neill and Carlotta Monterey met during his relationship with Boulton, when she played Mildred in O’Neill’s play The Hairy Ape. Back then O’Neill ignored her and the only thing he said about her was “What a dumb bitch she is.”22. Four years later they met again.

“You don’t like me, do you?” O’Neill remarked that July 15 to the woman

accompanying him down to Bess Marbury’s bathhouse.

20 O’Neill Selected Letters 210

21 Boulton Part of a Long Story 29, 21

22 King Another Part of a Long Story 149

“You’re the rudest man I’ve ever met,” came an icy reply from the actress

Carlotta Monterey. “When I went into that play of yours [The Hairy Ape], I didn’t

want to. I had just finished one thing and wanted to go out to California and see

my mother and daughter. But Hoppy [Arthur Hopkins] kept after me, so I did,

with hardly a rehearsal, and you never had the decency to thank me.” (Dowling

322)

It can be seen from this quote that their love was not the one “on the first sight” and they had a rocky start, but later they started to spend time together and if nothing else, there was a thing they had in common- the feeling of loneliness. O’Neill’s soberness took him the comfort of the alcohol and he lost his “phantoms and obsessions” and Monterey felt alone after her divorce. Although still married to Boulton, they grew closer and closer to each other. Boulton, still oblivious to the threat Monterey represented, declared: “I didn’t worry about him because she didn’t seem smart enough for him. It seemed to me he was more amused by her than anything else”, proving what I claimed before that O’Neill was attracted to the intelligent women. But then at the same time she admitted that O’Neill did say that

Monterey had eyes just like his mother’s.23. And when on October 13, 1926 Boulton stayed behind in Maine to decamp from Loon Lodge, O’Neill took an overnight train back to New

York—and back to Carlotta Monterey (Dowling 328). After returning to Boulton, although

Carlotta was not present, she was constantly on O’Neill’s mind. He was sending her love letters, somehow strangle, but at the same time, honest. “As soon as I reached here I told

Agnes exactly how I felt about leaving you,” he told her. “I said I loved you. I also said, and with equal truth, that I loved her. Does this sound idiotic to you? I hope not! I hope you will understand. . . . It is possible to love like that.” (330). Well, to love like that is not very common, but O’Neill himself was not a common man. His love to Monterey, or the infatuation with her, had its stronger and weaker moments.

23 Sheaffer Son and Artist 217

One time he swore his love to Boulton, claiming: “I was never in love with her. That was nonsense. . . I love you and only you, now and forever.”24. But as future showed, his “now and forever” did not last long, and in 1929 he finally married Carlotta Monterey, she thus becoming his third, and last, wife. They spend the rest of O’Neill’s life together and she was, in many ways, more like his mother than wife.

If Carlotta was a good wife is a matter that raises many questions. One may say she was an exemplary wife, taking care of O’Neill and his needs; she was a housekeeper, lover, friend, mother and everything else he needed. She took care of typewriting his plays, dealt with his letters, and managed the visitors. On the other hand, she completely took control of his life and tried to (and succeeded) to cut off his old friends. However, perhaps this was not such a bad thing, as his friends were mainly drunkards who encouraged his alcoholism.

She tried hard to provide O’Neill a home he did not have and “done everything possible to make him forget the self-conscious, uneasy, slovenly atmosphere in which he lived.”

(Dowling 375). Her strong impact on him is visibly shown in her “invention”, a new time scale for her husband’s life, “B.C.”—“Before Carlotta.”(Dowling 375)

Although it may seem like O´Neill completely devoted himself to her and did not make his own decisions, and despite their passionate fights and misunderstandings, it is undeniable that Monterey took care of him when most needed and she fulfilled the wedding vows- “for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part”.

In O’Neill’s most autobiographical play Long Day´s Journey, it is Monterey he dedicated his play to:

For Carlotta, on our 12th Wedding Anniversary

Dearest: I give you the original script of this play of old sorrow, written in tears

and blood.

24 O’Neill Selected Letters 239, 240

A sadly inappropriate gift, it would seem, for a day celebrating happiness. But

you will understand. I mean it as a tribute to your love and tenderness which gave

me the faith in love that enabled me to face my dead at last and write this play—

write it with deep pity and understanding and forgiveness for all the four haunted

Tyrones.

These twelve years, Beloved One, have been a Journey into Light— into love.

You know my gratitude. And my love!

Gene

Tao House

July 22, 194125

Eugene O’Neill is known for his autobiographical features in his plays, and the women of his life are no exception. More or less, every one of them affected his life in some way, beginning with his mother, whose character was an inspiration for Mary Tyrone in Long Day´s

Journey into the Night, (which is closer examined in following chapter 3), through his first wife

Kathleen Jenkins in Exorcism or Maibelle Scott in Ah, Wilderness! Although Carlotta Monterey did not appeared as one of his fictional characters, she was significant in another sphere – she rendered him home and care he needed so much all his life and later in their life, she was more like his mother than his wife and it can be said that finally O’Neill found what he lacked all his life – the love of a mother.

25 O’Neill Long Day´s Journey into the Night

4. Eugene as a son and a brother

“None of us can help the things life has done to us. They’re

done before you realize it, and once they’re done they make you

do other things until at last everything comes between you and

what you’d like to be, and you’ve lost your true self forever.”

― Eugene O'Neill, Long Day's Journey into Night (63)

This chapter deals with the family members of Eugene O’Neill and how each and every one affected O’Neill’s life. Additionally, I will show on various examples, how these people inspired numerous characters from O’Neill’s plays, thus proving that his life and work are close-knitted. Starting with the person who most affected O’Neill’s life, his mother Ella, I will describe her life and personality, depicted mainly in the image of Mary

Tyrone.

Mary Ellen “Ella” Quinlan, later O’Neill, was a member of Irish family which escaped the famine disaster happening from 1845 till 1852. Ella was, as her alter ego Mary in Long Day’s Journey, a convent girl and a promising pianist, whose life took an unexpected direction. Her father Thomas was a tobacco and liquor merchant, and it was through

Thomas Ella met James, twelve years older bachelor. They married five years later and had three sons- James Jr. in 1878, Edmund Burke in 1883, and Eugene Gladstone in 1888.

What seemed to be a normal family, if we can refer to the family of an actor as a

“normal”, soon turned out to be a tragedy affecting each member of the family. The first misfortune came with an unfortunate and needless death of Edmund, when he was only eighteen months old, on March 4, 1885. The O’Neills, while James was performing in

Colorado, had left Edmund and Jamie in New York, under the supervision of Bridget, Ella’s mother. In their absence Jamie caught measles and was not allowed in Edmund’s presence, but he visited his brother anyway, infecting Edmund and thus causing his death. Hard as it

28 is, to outlive one’s child, it is even harder when the death was caused by one’s other child.

O’Neill was convinced that Ella never forgave his older brother and he himself was suffering from tormenting mixture of survivor’s guilt and death envy (Dowling 34). In Long Day´s

Journey he even named his alter ego Edmund, and the dead child Eugene, thus switching the roles with his deceased brother. Even Mary Tyrone, who makes clear that she gave birth to her third son to replace the deceased Eugene, and only at the insistence of her husband James

(“Above all, I shouldn’t have let you insist I have another baby to take Eugene’s place because you thought that would make me forget his death”) 26, made it clear that she did not want another baby, probably under the weight of guilt. “I knew I’d proved by the way I’d left

Eugene [Edmund] that I wasn’t worthy to have another baby,” Mary Tyrone says to James,

“and that God would punish me if I did. I never should have borne Edmund [Eugene].”27

What was even worse outcome of Eugene’s birth, was the unbearable pain after the labour, for which she was prescribed morphine by the hotel doctor. This triggered her morphine addiction, which lasted till 1914 and affected all four lives of Tyrones/O’Neills.

What could have helped Ella might have been a kind of safe haven, which one normally finds at home, but even in this her family was unique. Years of travelling with James and his theatre company meant she was always on the road. The only thing slightly resembling home was their Monte Cristo Cottage, summer house, which she did not considered proper home, although it was as close as the family would ever come to a true home (Dowling 40). Ella as

Mary Tyrone acknowledged that she “knew from experience by then that children should have homes to be born in, if they are to be good children, and women need homes, if they are to be good mothers.”28

26 Eugene O’Neill Long Day’s Journey into Night 90

27 Eugene O’Neill Long Day’s Journey into Night 90

28 Eugene O’Neill Long Day’s Journey into Night 90

It was probably the lack of such home that caused her being not very good mother and drowning her sorrows in morphine.

When under the influence of morphine, she often felt depressed, moody and melancholic. In one such case she finds consolation in the fog: “I really love fog…It hides you from the world and the world from you. You fell that everything has changed, and nothing is what it seemed to be. No one can find or touch you any more [sic]”29. Her depression culminated one night in 1903, when she attempted suicide. She ran out of morphine and only in her night gown, she cried and ran towards the Thames River; stopped right before she could jump from the dock (Dowling 43). This accident has not been a surprise for James and Jamie, who have been aware of her “problem”, but decided to keep it from Eugene. “Jamie told me,” he recounts as Edmund in Long Day’s Journey, “I called him a liar! I tried to punch him in the nose. But I knew he wasn’t lying. His voice trembling, his eyes begin to fill with tears. God, it made everything in life seem rotten!”30

It can be said without any doubt that this revelation change O’Neill’s attitude towards his mother. In his eyes, drug addiction was a problem of “prostitutes and derelicts” (Dowling

43) and this was the main trigger for his life-long problem - alcoholism. What was another outcome of this problem, probably worse, although being an alcoholic is a bad thing itself, was destruction of a “mother figure” for O’Neill. This could not go unnoticed in his plays, especially Long Day´s Journey, but also in other plays, where his mother was an inspiration for other characters. Biographers like Louis Sheaffer and critics including Michael Manheim,

Doris Alexander, and Laurin Porter identify aspects of Ella in many, if not most of the playwright’s female characters (Barlow 169). And it is true, in many of O’Neill’s plays his mother is present, not exactly (like) her, but rather as an inspiration for “bad mother role”, unable to care for neither her husband, nor her child.

29 Eugene O’Neill Long Day’s Journey into Night 100

30 Eugene O’Neill Long Day’s Journey into Night 121

Following examples show what tragic lives the characters lead, mainly because the wife and the mother does not care at all, or at least not enough to save them, and they all end up drunk or dead.

In Before Breakfast, both Mrs. Rowland’s still born child and her husband face death, the first one unintentionally, the second one by suicide. Mrs. Rowland shows no remorse for her dead infant: “It’s lucky the poor thing was born dead, after all. What a father you’d have been!”31 She has no respect for her husband, blaming him for her misfortune, calling him drunkard who does not appreciate her: “You never did have any gratitude for what I’ve done”, and rebuking him for his laziness: “Don’t you think it’s about time you got up? Do you want to stay in bed all day? Not that I’ve got any doubts about your being lazy enough to stay in bed forever”32. Death of a child and husband is also present in Beyond the Horizon, where Ruth Mayo’s inability “to appreciate her husband’s aspirations is mirrored in her impatience with their daughter, who is far more attached to her ‘daddy’” (Barlow 171). Her husband Robert dies shortly after his daughter. Another example, where death of a child and bad marriage is presented, can be found in O’Neill’s tragedy Desire under the Elms. There are several features connecting the main character Abbie to Ella – their craziness, death of a child (although Abbie murdered her son to prove her love to her lover and at the same time son-in-law Eben, as in opposition to Ella, who had to face the death of her child) and marital issues (Ella not being satisfied with her life with James, Abbie falling for her husband’s son).

The most distinct contrast, however, between the two is that Abbie Putnam has nothing else to offer, so she must sell herself in marriage in order to stake a claim on the farm (her first real home) which father and son struggle over as a matter of right (Nelson) and Ella marries

James to build her own family, not as a way to gain money.

31 Eugene O’Neill Before Breakfast

32 Eugene O’Neill Before Breakfast

Yet the most significant example, is the one of Mary Tyrone; she is the woman drowning her sorrows in morphine, unable to care for her men- husband and two sons, tortured by the death of her son Edmund.

Character of Mary Tyrone, Ella O’Neill’s alter ego, is O’Neill’s most fully realize female character (Bowler 172). Rather unsurprising matter, she was, after all, his mother and a woman who influenced O’Neill and his life the most. O’Neill’s attitude towards Mary is rather ambiguous; he is understanding of her “troubles” and it could be said he pities her, but at the same time he blames for her failures, as a mother as well as a wife. Mary’s character, as well as perception of it is full of contradictions. It is possible to look at her as a vain woman (Mary always checking her hair and complains about her fingers), unsuccessful piano player, failed mother and wife and a drug addict on top of it; but what if she is just a broken woman who cannot live under the burden of death guilt, her husband’s and older son’s intensifying alcoholism and her younger son’s illness? Would it be possible to say that she is just a sad woman, not living fulfilling life and she uses the drugs as a way of escape from reality? I would say the truth is somewhere in between, but what is certain is that she blames herself as well as Jamie for the death of Edmund:

I blame only myself. I swore after Eugene died I would never have another baby.

I was to blame for his death. If I hadn't left him with my mother to join you on

the road, because you wrote telling me you missed me and were so lonely, Jamie

would never have been allowed, when he still had measles, to go in the baby's

room.

Her face hardening.

I've always believed Jamie did it on purpose. He was jealous of the baby. He

hated him.

As Tyrone starts to protest.

Oh, I know Jamie was only seven, but he was never stupid.

He'd been warned it might kill the baby. He knew. I've never been able to forgive

him for that.33

She is thus proving that the guilt is ever present and she is not to forgive Jamie.

O’Neill’s father, whom I will describe in this part of the thesis, in comparison to Ella

O’Neill, is rather secondary in a sense of impact he had on his son. However, similarly to

Ella, he also showed his son how not to do certain things in life, rather than vice-versa. This goes mainly to the question of theatre, as O’Neill despised the theatre of his father, its artificiality and longed to try new, more natural ways, together with experimentalism.

James O’Neill, was a son of Edward and Mary O’Neill, Irish immigrants who left

Ireland to escape the potato famine in 1850, when James was only five years old. He was the seventh child, but after his father’s departure and subsequent death, six years after his return to Ireland, James was forced to provide for his family, at the age of ten. He was working at a machine shop, making files for 12 hours a day. He remembers (as a James Tyrone in

O’Neill’s play Long Day´s Journey) this place as “a dirty barn of a place, where rain dripped through the roof, where you roasted in summer, and there was no stove in winter, and your hands got numb with cold, where the only light came through two small filthy windows, so on grey days I’d have to sit bent over with my eyes almost touching the files in order to see!

And what do you think I got for it? Fifty cents a week! It’s the truth! Fifty cents a week!”34.

After moving to Cincinnati, where he and his family was supported by Edward’s sister

Josephine, James discovered his talent for acting. In 1872, he shared one stage with famous actor of that time, Edwin Booth, brother of Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth. Booth remarked that “That young man is playing [Othello] better than I ever did.” (Dowling 30)

33 Eugene O’Neill Long Day’s Journey into the Night 90

34 Eugene O’Neill Long Day’s Journey into the Night 151

This was the high point of his career and probably something that drove him to pursue his acting career. The most significant moment came, when he accepted the role of Edmund

Dantès in Charles Fechter’s adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo, the title of which was reduced to Monte Cristo (Dowling 30). The play was such a success that James decided to buy rights to the script for $2000. He would perform the role for almost thirty years, earning nearly forty thousand a year. Like Edmund Dante in the play, James escaped the poverty, he was living in most of his life. But why was the play so successful that audiences came to see it night after night for so many years? “The answer, of course, was my father. He had a genuine romantic Irish personality—looks, voice, and stage presence—and he loved the part.

. . . Audiences came to see James O’Neill in Monte Cristo, not Monte Cristo,” answered O´Neill

(Dowling 32).

James’ alter ego in Long Day’s Journey is a man of sixty-five, but according to O’Neill he

“looks ten years younger”. He is described as a man of fine stature and according to his son:

“The stamp of his profession is unmistakably on him. Not that he indulges in

any of the deliberate temperamental posturing of the stage star. He is by nature

and preference a simple, unpretentious man, whose inclinations are still close to

his humble beginnings and his Irish farmer forebears. But the actor shows in all

his unconscious habits of speech, movement and gesture. These have the quality

of belonging to a studied technique. His voice is remarkably fine, resonant and

flexible, and he takes great pride in it.”35

The story of James Tyrone is basically identical with the one of James O’Neill. They, unfortunately, also share the burden of their wife’s addiction, whom they still love and treat with upmost affection (“But I did truly have beautiful hair once, didn't I, James?”

“The most beautiful in the world!”)36, but at the same time they are tormented by the outcomes of this addiction.

35 Eugene O’Neill Long Day’s Journey into the Night 13

36 Eugene O’Neill Long Day’s Journey into the Night 28

Overall, it can be said that James is described in a sympathetic light, as if O’Neill tried to make peace with his dead father, at least through the character of James Tyrone.

The third significant member of O’Neill’s family is his already mentioned brother Jamie. As I will demonstrate on certain examples, their relationship was contradictory, and Jamie did not serve as a good example to his brother, but regardless, they loved each other. James Jr. O’Neill, or Jamie, was ten years older than his brother, born as the oldest son of James and Ella in 1878 and a failed actor who could not hold a job, was always close to the bottle and far from money. Relationship between O’Neill and his older brother can be regarded as complicated, which might have been caused by the age difference, but also by Jamie’s envy. This problem is apparent in Jamie’s heart-rending and honest confession in Long Day’s Journey into the Night:

“Mama and Papa are right. I've been rotten bad influence. And worst of it is, I did it on

purpose. [...]Nix, Kid! You listen! Did it on purpose to make a bum of you. Or part of

me did. A big part. That part that's been dead so long. That hates life. My putting you

wise so you'd learn from my mistakes. Believed that myself at times, but it's a fake. Made

my mistakes look good. Made getting drunk romantic. Made whores fascinating vampires

instead of poor, stupid, diseased slobs they really are. Made fun of work as sucker's game.

Never wanted you succeed and make me look even worse by comparison. Wanted you

to fail. Always jealous of you. Mama's baby, Papa's pet! He stares at Edmund with increasing

enmity. And it was your being born that started Mama on dope. I know that's not your

fault, but all the same, God damn you, I can't help hating your guts—But don't get wrong

idea, Kid. I love you more than I hate you. My saying what I'm telling you now proves it.

I run the risk you'll hate me— and you're all I've got left. But I didn't mean to tell you

that last stuff— go that far back. Don't know what made me. What I wanted to say is,

I'd like to see you become the greatest success in the world. But you'd better be on your

guard. Because I'll do my damnedest to make you fail. Can't help it. I hate myself. Got to

take revenge. On everyone else. Especially you.”37

37 Eugene O’Neill Long Day’s Journey into the Night 169

In this quote we can see two things: already mentioned paradox of the romantic myth of the alcohol and how one can perceive whores as some “fascinating” creatures, but the truth is they are not, and drinking is not romantic. The second thing is the clarification of the relationship between two brothers and what is obvious now, jealousy of the older one, but at the same time, a kind of hope that Eugene will do better than Jamie.

What the character of James Tyrone represents is the man with the wounded soul, unsatisfied with the course of his own life and together with his parents, James and Mary, they present two selves—the selves that might have achieved their potential and the selves they’ve been fated to endure (Dowling 433).

The character of O’Neill’s other brother Edmund is not present, but it is the memory of him and, more importantly, his death that haunts all of the members of the

Tyrone/O’Neill family. His presence is significant as an embodiment of the death: in

Long Day’s Journey it is the cause of family’s misery and there is also parallel in Exorcism, where the main character Ned tries to commit suicide; Ned is short for Edmund.

5. Conclusion:

Eugene O’Neill was undoubtedly one of the most noticeable and distinctive playwrights in the history of American drama, and many believe that he is to be considered

‘the first American playwright’ or that the drama really begins with O’Neill.

The goal of this thesis was to prove the belief that Eugene O’Neill was the autobiographical playwright. As a tool for this I used the analyses of his plays and certain significant events from his life, together with the important people he met or lived with. The thesis started with three chosen aspects of O’Neill’s life – alcoholism, seafaring and sickness, which I determined as important features of O’Neill’s biography. The examples from the plays A Moon for the Misbegotten, Exorcism and Long Day’s Journey into the Night has shown how these aspects affected O’Neill’s work and the path he took in his writings. I proved that alcoholism was his problem, a demon, which he could not get rid of, that he found his freedom, at least temporary, while on the sea and that the sickness of body and mind was the important part of his life as well, as it helped him determine his purpose and gave him a lot of inspiration for his work.

The chapter about O’Neill’s women showed that also the ladies in his life had great impact on him, beginning with his mother Ella, who caused his life-long quest for motherly love, which he was able to found, more or less, in some of his women, but the one to help him finish this search was his third wife Carlotta Monterey, often loathed and blamed for the partition of O’Neill and his friends. Nevertheless, no one can deny that she was the one who took care of him, provided him home and companionship, and what is more – love. The plays used in this part were Ah, Wilderness! and Exorcism; mainly the latter showed how closely intertwined were the life and work of O’Neill, on the example of his first wife, Kathleen

Jenkins.

The last part of the thesis, the one dealing with O’Neill’s family revealed the tragedies and misfortunes they had to endure and deal with. They all had a way to do it, Ella with drugs and later craziness, as a way to protect her mind by losing herself in the past and things that might have been. James and James Jr. abused alcohol as their way of dealing with things,

James with his wife’s addiction, James Jr. with his unsatisfactory life. The one who got away, but in a way caused all these tragedies was Edmund, the middle son of James and Ella, whose death pulled the trigger of Ella’s addiction and subsequent miseries. The most important play in this part is Long Day’s Journey into the Night, which is considered to be O’Neill’s most autobiographical play.

All of the presented examples in the thesis served one goal- to prove the statement that O’Neill is the autobiographical author and show these proofs on the basis of the chosen plays and significant parts and quotes of the plays. It is, therefore, undeniable, that O’Neill gained the inspiration for his plays from his life and experiences.

6. Works Cited:

Barlow, Judith E. "O'Neill's Female Characters." The Cambridge Companion to Eugene O'Neill.

Ed. Michael Manheim. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998. 164-77. Print.

Black, Stephen A. "Celebrant of Loss: Eugene O'Neill 1888-1953." The Cambridge Companion

to Eugene O'Neill. Ed. Michael Manheim. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998. 4-17.

Print.

Bogard, Travis, and Jackson R. Bryer. Selected Letters of Eugene O'Neill. First ed. New Haven:

Yale UP, 1988. Print.

Boulton, Agnes. Part of a Long Story. Garden City: Doubleday, 1958. Print.

Chothia, Jean. "Trying to Write the Family Play: Autobiography and the Dramatic

Imagination." The Cambridge Companion to Eugene O'Neill. Ed. Michael Manheim.

Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998. 192-205. Print.

Dowling, Robert M. Eugene O'Neill: A Life in Four Acts. New Haven: Yale UP, 2014. Print.

King, William Davies. Another Part of a Long Story. Michigan: U of Michigan, 2010. Print.

Nelson, Doris. "O'Neill's Women." The Eugene O'Neill Newsletter. Ed. Frederick Wilkins.

N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Nov. 2015.

O'Neill, Eugene. "A Moon for the Misbegotten." Project Gutenberg Australia. N.p., Jan. 2004.

Web. 13 Dec. 2015.

O'Neill, Eugene. "Ah, Wilderness!" Project Gutenberg Australia. N.p., May 2013. Web. 23 Oct.

2015

O'Neill, Eugene. "Desire under the Elms." Project Gutenberg Australia. N.p., Jan. 2004. Web.

13 Dec. 2015.

O'Neill, Eugene. Long Day´s Journey into the Night. New Haven: Yale UP, 1955. Print.

O'Neill, Eugene. "Mourning Becomes Electra." Project Gutenberg Australia. N.p., Jan. 2004.

Web. 06 Dec. 2015

Ranald, Margaret Loftus. "From Trial to Triumph: The Early Plays." The Cambridge

Companion to Eugene O'Neill. Ed. Michael Manheim. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998.

51-68. Print.

Shafer, Yvonne. Eugene O'Neill and American Society. First ed. Valencia: Universitat De

Valencia, 2011. Print.

Sheaffer, Louis. O'Neill Son and Playwright. Fourth ed. Boston: Little, Brown, 1968. Print.

"Sinclair Lewis - Nobel Lecture: The American Fear of Literature". Nobelprize.org. Nobel

Media AB 2014. Web. 1 Dec 2015.

"The Women of O´Neill." Arena Stage. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Nov. 2015.

7. Résumé

The objective of this thesis is the claim that Eugene O’Neill is an autobiographical playwright and proving this statement by comparing his real life and plays, while searching for similar aspects by describing his women and family and, additionally, his life-long problem of alcoholism, seafaring years of his youth and sickness. As a tool for such comparison serves analysis of his dramatic works, mainly plays from his sea years and plays in an autobiographical canon, in comparison with life events and also characters who appeared in the plays as well as in his biography.

The thesis is divided into three main parts. The first one deals with the three significant parts of O’Neill’s life – alcoholism, seafaring and sickness of body and mind. This part offers and overview of O’Neill’s life and how these aspects evince in his work and plays. The key points of this part are depiction of O’Neill’s depression and loneliness, together with the feeling of freedom while on sea.

The second part of the thesis focuses on the women of O’Neill. This chapter describes his lovers, wives and other affairs who affected O’Neill’s life and attempts to find any connection between the actual women and fictional characters of his plays. Not every woman serves as an inspiration for such a character, but all of them help to determine the kind of relationship O’Neill had with women, with one significant aspect being the search for motherly love. This quest begins with O’Neill’s mother, morphine addict, who did not serve as a good mother example and who was probably not capable of expressing her love to her son.

The link connecting chapters 2 and 3 is O’Neill’s above mentioned mother. What is only indicated in chapter 2 is fully elaborated in chapter 3. This chapter also deals with other members of O’Neill’s family – his father and two brothers. In this part I describe these members and compare them with their alter egos in O’Neill’s plays.

8. Résumé

Cílem této bakalářské práce je potvrdit výrok, že je Eugene O’Neill autobiografický dramatik, což bude provedeno komparací jeho skutečného života s divadelními hrami, které napsal. Budou představeny jeho ženy a rodina, roky, které strávil na moři v době svého mládí a jeho nemoc, ale také jeho celoživotní problém, kterým byl alkoholismus, to vše za účelem najít podobné prvky i v jeho literárním díle.

Nástrojem k porovnání bude analýza jeho dramatických her, především her v jeho autobiografickém kánonu v komparaci s událostmi v jeho životě a s postavami, které se objevují jak v jeho hrách, tak i v jeho biografii.

V souladu s uvedenými cíli je práce rozdělena do třech stěžejních kapitol. První část se zabývá třemi významnými aspekty O’Neillova života – alkoholismem, plavbou po moři a onemocněním duše i těla. V této části je uvedeno, jak se tyto skutečnosti promítají do jeho práce a her. Důležitým bodem je zobrazení O’Neillovy deprese a osamělosti spolu s pocitem svobody v době, kterou strávil na moři.

Druhá část bakalářské práce je zaměřena na O’Neillovy ženy. Tato kapitola představuje jeho milenky, manželky a další vztahy, které ovlivnily jeho život, zároveň se snaží najít spojitost mezi těmito ženami a fiktivními postavami z jeho her. Inspirací pro jeho postavy nebyly všechny ženy, ale každá z nich pomáhala definovat typ vztahů, které O’Neill udržoval.

Nejvýznamnějším prvkem je nepochybně jeho hledání mateřské lásky. Jeho matka nebyla příkladem správné matky, byla závislá na morfiu a svému synovi nedokázala projevit svou mateřskou lásku. A právě matka je tou, která spojuje kapitoly 2 a 3. Vše, co je pouze naznačené v kapitole 2, je následně plně rozvedené v kapitole následující, která rovněž pojednává o dalších členech O’Neillovy rodiny – o jeho otci a dvou bratrech. Tato část poskytuje popis těchto postav s jejich alter egy v O’Neillových autobiografických hrách.