UNIVERSIDAD COMPLUTENSE DE MADRID FACULTAD DE FILOLOGÍA Departamento de Filología Inglesa II TESIS DOCTORAL La familia como destino Eugene O'Neill y Sam Shepard MEMORIA PARA OPTAR AL GRADO DE DOCTOR PRESENTADA POR James William Flath Directores Félix Martín Gutiérrez Gustavo Sánchez Canales Madrid, 2014 © James William Flath, 2013 UNIVERSIDAD COMPLUTENSE DE MADRID Departamento de Filología Inglesa II TESIS DOCTORAL LA FAMILIA COMO DESTINO EN EUGENE O’NEILL Y SAM SHEPARD James William Flath Madrid, 2013 Directores: Dr. Félix Martín Gutiérrez Dr. Gustavo Sánchez Canales 1 Preface and acknowledgments This dissertation represents a culmination of work, reading and learning that has taken place over the past few years. I first became interested in the plays of Eugene O’Neill when I was an undergraduate in the United States. I came upon playwright Sam Shepard much later but from the beginning the similarities between the two struck me as uncanny. What moved me particularly was the way each playwright portrayed the time-honored American institution of the Family and how both focused on the idea that I’ve come to refer to as “family as fate.” I began to ask myself, why did these playwrights write such gut-wrenchingly harrowing portrayals of the family? To exorcise their own ghosts? To come to terms with themselves? But even more compelling is the question why are we so attracted to these plays? What do we see in these plays? Ourselves, our nation? I began my research to see if anyone had devoted a full-scale study to this phenomenon and discovered that others had also noticed the similarities but none had done as in-depth a study as I wished to do. To carry my research out, I decided to take the approach of a comparative analysis with a diachronic focus. I soon realized that this type of approach is not without its difficulties and pitfalls yet felt that the rewards far outweighed the adversities. When attempting to compare two writers it is easy to get trapped by just one of them or to become so enthusiastic about your approach that you see parallels everywhere even where they might not actually be. However, when the study is narrowed down and focused, the gains are immense. I feel that this type of analysis and that the work put forward in this dissertation will be of great help to those interested in a number of different fields of interest that include not only American drama but the American family, Modernism, Postmodernism, tragedy and tragicomedy as well. In addition, this type of analysis can help to fill in some of the gaps in literary studies in the sense that it provides more complete ideas about the plays studied as literary works and can also shed light on the work and trajectories of both playwrights and lead to a richer and deeper understanding of their dramatic works. Finally, I hope it will inspire others to carry out more analytically comparative studies of other writers. In writing this dissertation I have had indispensable collaboration from a number of people. In am greatly indebted to Dr. Ana Antón-Pacheco Bravo, who was the first to support my efforts and encourage me, and without whom I may never have discovered the works of Sam Shepard or have found the right footing. I am equally grateful to Dr. Félix Martín Guitiérrez for taking me on and for his wise and valuable suggestions. I feel a special gratitude to Dr. Gustavo Sánchez Canales for his unstinting faith and inestimable help. Among others to whom I feel a special gratitude is the staff at the libraries at the University of South Florida in Sarasota and Tampa along with friends and colleagues in America for their friendship, input, comments and suggestions throughout the years. For other valuable help I am indebted to several colleagues at the CES Felipe II in Aranjuez as well as at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Finally, I take the opportunity to express my gratitude to my wife, Emma and my family for their love, unfailing encouragement and support. I would like to dedicate this dissertation to my parents, who unfortunately are no longer with us. 2 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................... 4 1 FAMILY IN THE AMERICAN VEIN ............................................................ 10 1.1 Eugene O’Neill: Family as Burden .................................................................................................. 13 1.2 Sam Shepard: Family as Trap ......................................................................................................... 25 Notes: ............................................................................................................................................................... 54 2 DANGLING BETWEEN MODERNISM AND POSTMODERNISM .............. 59 2.1 Eugene O’Neill and Modernism ...................................................................................................... 63 2.2 Sam Shepard and the Urgency of Theatricality .............................................................................71 Notes: ............................................................................................................................................................... 75 3 TRAGEDY AND TRAGICOMEDY: BREAKING GENERIC BOUNDARIES 77 3.1 Eugene O’Neill: The Classical Tradition Revisited........................................................................ 83 3.2 Sam Shepard: The Classical Tradition Challenged ..................................................................... 123 Notes: ............................................................................................................................................................. 145 4 THE POSTMODERN MOMENT ................................................................. 149 4.1 Sam Shepard: (Post?)Modernism .................................................................................................. 156 Notes: ............................................................................................................................................................. 186 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................... 190 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................... 205 3 INTRODUCTION Writing or talking about the family rarely produces indifference and many have provided their thoughts on the matter throughout history. Since the Ancient Greeks until the present century much of the greatest literature and art is based on family. Another common topic is that of how family shapes and breeds a person’s character. It was Heraclitus (c. 535-c. 475 BCE) who said the “a man’s character is his fate” and it was Sophocles (c. 496-c.406 BCE) who showed the ineluctability of trying to avoid one’s fate. More recently Mary Renault (1905-1983) wrote that “[g]o with your fate, but not beyond. Beyond leads to dark places.” Hence the title of this dissertation, “Family as Fate.” For better or worse family is fate and family breeds character because normally a person cannot choose his/her family. Though usually attributed to French Abbot Jacques De Lille (1738-1813), many use the expression “fate chooses our relatives, we choose our friends” to describe this very difference between family and friends. Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) put it into comical nutshell when she wrote that “[w]ith him for a sire and her for a dam,/What should I be but just what I am?” As explained in the previous paragraph, family has been a constant throughout the history of mankind in general and the history of drama in particular. The plays of Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953) and Sam Shepard (1943) are not an exception in this respect and we can safely say that a large amount of their best work is precisely devoted to family. Both playwrights wrote early experimental plays about the family and then later on in their careers turned to a more intimate look through the prism of dramatic realism. Much has been written about O’Neill and Shepard, the two dramatists under study in this dissertation. Sheila Rabillard (1993), Jim McGhee (1993) and William Demastes (1996, 2002) have devoted attention to realist and fantastic elements, whereas critics like John Orr (1989, 1991) Vanden Heuvel (1991), Stephen Watt (1998), Joel Pfister (1995), Christopher Bigsby (2000, 2002) and Carol Rosen (2004) have studied their work from a modernist and/or postmodernist point of view. In addition, the use of language has been extensively studied by critics like Jean Chothia (1979, 1998), Bonnie Marranca (1981), Michael Manheim (1982), Deborah Geis (1993) and Thomas Adler (2002). Moreover, the use of time has also been explored by Laurin Porter (1988, 1993), Jeannete Malkin (1992, 4 1999) and John Raleigh (1988). Psychoanalytic studies have also been made by critics like Patrick Nolan (in Di Mauro 1993 [1981]), Luther Luedtke (1989) and William Kleb (1998), as well as studies devoted to the influence of European—e.g. Shakesperean, Chekhovian, Strindbergian, Racinian—drama on (contemporary) American drama like Travis Bogard (1972), Murray Hartman (in Di Mauro 1993 [1961]), Jay Ronald Meyers (in Di Mauro 1993 [1967]), John Patrick Diggins (2007), Doris Alexander (1992, 2005) and the influence of classical Greek drama on American dramatists like Peter Hays (1990), Richard Sewall (1991), Bennet Simon (1993) and Sophus Keith Winther (in Di Mauro 1993 [1960]). The basic aim of this dissertation is to show how