CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE

EUGENE O'NEILL'S SLAVES TO STONE WALLS:

DENIAL VERSUS ACCEPTANCE IN DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS

A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honors in

English

by

Richard Paul Buller

May 1988 The Thesis of Richard Paul Buller is approved:

Dr. Lawrence D. Stewart, Honors Advisor

California State University, Northridge

ii Dedications

This thesis is dedicated with love to my parents, Hurley Clyde Buller and Billie Joan

McClanahan, for their unwavering support of and encouragement for my education.

They are truly special, enlightened people.

I also wish to acknowledge Dr. Lesley Johnstone and Dr. Lawrence D. Stewart.

Dr. Johnstone has patiently guided me through this paper, and her advice and meticu­ lous annotations have been greatly appreciated! Dr. Stewart has been my friend and mentor these past five years, and I do not know where I would be without him.

Finally, I want to thank my friend Anthony Miles Escalante, for always being there, for always listening.

iii " .

My special thanks to Teddy Zamora for her invaluable help with the electronic typesetting of this thesis.

iv ABSTRACT

EUGENE O'NEILL'S SLAVES TO STONE WALLS:

DENIAL VERSUS ACCEPTANCE IN DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS

by

Richard Paul Buller

Bachelor of Arts in Honors English

1988 marks the centennial of Eugene O'Neill's birth. Much is being done world- wide to commemorate the event, but at the same time, long-standing questions have resurfaced which challenge his stature as one of the greatest American playwrights. For example, do the bleak, unhappy characters and events in much of his drama actually have redeeming value? Do what have been called the "soap opera" tendencies of his plays allow us to respect them as literature? Was O'Neill really a visionary genius, or was he only a depressed man who penned crude melodrama?

It is my opinion that in order to address such questions, it is necessary to approach

O'Neill thematically. Consequently, in this thesis I will isolate a major O'Neillian theme and will analyze in detail how it emerges in a representative and major play, Desire

Under the Elms. By doing so, I hope to demonstrate that behind the desolation so

v characteristic of O'Neill's theater are firm, intensively formulated thematic ideas. I will thereby create an argument in support of his stature as an important playwright of the

20th. century.

The theme that I have chosen to consider is that of denial versus acceptance. This element, prevalent in much of O'Neill's work, is particularly pronounced in Desire Under the Elms, one of his earliest plays. Desire is built almost entirely upon this important theme; therefore, one should understand this play in order to better appreciate what

O'Neill attempts to accomplish in his canon as a whole.

In O'Neill's universe, to reject escapism or denial in favor of acceptance entails man's struggle to come to terms with and to accept the purer, better parts of his personality, notably his need for companionship and the longing to give and to receive love. Unfortunately, these latent humane elements are often corrupted by an urge to deny them and to pursue instead false goals based upon, for example, substance abuse, avarice, or misdirected sexuality. This conflict casts O'Neillian characters into terrible struggles, but they usually emerge from them somehow strengthened, progress­ ing to a state of accepting their better selves, their more enlightened attitudes and more generous feelings. Variants of this process exist in many of O'Neill's plays; but my thesis will pursue it through an analysis of Desire, where the theme is especially concentrated.

This play crystallizes the kinds of moral and psychological problems O'Neill would devote the rest of his career to investigating.

vi EUGENE O'NEILL'S SLAVES TO STONE WALLS:

DENIAL VERSUS ACCEPTANCE IN DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS

by

Richard Paul Buller

"There is beauty to me even in ugliness," Eugene O'Neill once remarked. "I don't

love life because it's pretty; prettiness is only clothes-deep. I am a truer lover than that. I

love it naked" (quoted in Bowen 152). He made this statement in response to the charge

leveled against him by certain critics and play-goers that his dramas were often unnec­

essarily sordid and gloomy, thereby lacking any redeeming value. O'Neill countered that

in the dreariest and most depressing aspects of his plots existed the brightest and most worthwhile attributes:·

People talk of the "tragedy" in them [his plays] and call it "sordid," "depress­

ing," "pessimistic" - the words usually applied to anything of a tragic nature.

But tragedy, I think, has the meaning the Greeks gave it. To them it brought

exaltation, an urge toward life and ever more life. It roused them to deeper

spiritual understandings and released them from the petty greeds of everyday

existence. When they saw a tragedy on the stage they felt their own hopeless

hope ennobled in art. (quoted in Tornqvist 13)

In this explanation, O'Neill touches upon a major theme which pervades many of his plays: the "urge toward life" and the existence of "hope" achieved through "deeper

1 2 spiritual understandings" and through a casting away of "the petty greeds of everyday existence." This concept is important in some of O'Neill's key works, including Beyond the Horizon (1920), Mourning Becomes Electra (1931), and Long Day's Journey Into

Night (1940); however, it is particularly well defined in Desire Under the Elms (1924), the subject of this thesis.

In Desire Under the Elms, O'Neill conveys the theme by tracing character develop­ ment in terms of denial versus acceptance. At the play's beginning, all of the members of the Cabot family are denying their own better natures, "the urge toward life," in favor of "petty greeds." They are miserable because they have no sense of love, forgiveness, sharing and generosity, those non-material elements which O'Neill considers vital to making life meaningful. But, as the play progresses, two of these characters come to understand the dictates of their better selves. They mature as they begin to see life in tender and loving terms, as opposed to selfish and intolerant ones. And by doing so, they express O'Neill's view, quoted above, that tragic experience, by illuminating what a fruitful life entails, can release people from narrowness and error.

Since O'Neill carefully structures Part One to demonstrate that the Cabot farm, located "in New England in the year 1850" (O'Neill 2), is in an unhealthy state and is by no means a "home" (6) to those who inhabit it, it is useful to analyze each of its four scenes. Scene One opens with a "still" (3).sunset, which reflects onto the "shadow[y] ... pale ... washed out" (3) house. The "sinister" (2) elms are immediately introduced: they are "oppressiv[e], ""crushing," and "jealous," shading "faded" (2) shutters. The house and trees visually establish a sense of constriction, loneliness, physical decay, and through them the audience understands that the natural order has been disrupted. They serve as a kind of Greek chorus, commenting in a sad, haunting way upon the tempest in the play. 3

O'Neill deepens this sense of disintegration and foreboding as he introduces the

Cabot brothers. Eben enters, surveys the farm, and speaks the play's opening line:

"God! Purty!" (3). His remark is intriguing and doubly significant. Firstly and most

obviously, it is upbeat, suggesting that some spiritual sensitivity and love of life are

present in him - attributes which the play's later events will at times confirm, at times

negate. Secondly, it is ironic, coming from a man who as Part One progresses proves to

be very much out of touch with God and who is himself "resentful and defensive,"

"rough," and "fierce" (3). He has "defiant, dark eyes" which "remind one of a wild

animal's in captivity" {3), and each day for him " ... is a cage in which he finds himself

trapped but inwardly unsubdued" (3). Like the elms, he has about him a somewhat

sinister aura, which contributes to the bleak atmosphere O'Neill is creating.

Eben's half-brothers Simeon and Peter are older. "[S]hrewder and more practical"

(3), they "smell of earth" (3) and have, like Eben, worked their father Ephraim's farm for

most of their lives. They speak often with "sardonic bitterness" (4), and are the first to voice the tremendous animosity which they and Eben feel toward Ephraim and toward the hard life they believe he has tyranically forced them to endure. Peter utters this

important denunciation of their lives:

"Here-it's stones atop o' the ground-stones atop o' stones-makin' stone

walls-year atop o' year-him [Ephraim] 'n' yew [Simeon] 'n' me 'n' then

Eben-makin' stone walls fur him to fence us in!" (4)

This bitter declaration expresses a theme which O'Neill devotes much of the play to developing: the destructiveness of laboring for goals based upon materialism. The

Cabot brothers are indeed fenced in, but in large part by their own designs to make

Ephraim's farm more lucrative and eventually to inherit it. They are motivated by greed and by their belief that happiness can be equated only with material possessions.

Hence, when Peter states that Ephraim is the cause of their enslavement to "stone 4 walls," he is not being entirely truthful: they are just as much their own captors. These walls, which they have all built, create barriers which cause separation and tension

between the family members.

In Scene One, then, O'Neill establishes the core of the demoralization, alienation and conflict considered in the play. In Scene Two, he develops this nucleus more specifically. This second scene begins, like the first, in gloom, with the "color fade[d] from the sky" (5). Often O'Neill uses the pathetic fallacy whereby atmospheric conditions reflect the state of his characters, and here the acrid, sterile mood mirrors the disposition of the Cabots. O'Neill includes in the set description another telling detail: on a wall in the kitchen is "fastened a big advertising poster," most likely posted by the older brothers, "with a ship in full sail and the word 'California' in big letters" (5). Here, O'Neill establishes a correlative to the fantasies of the brothers, each wanting to escape to somewhere he expects to be both freer and more materially rewarding, such as

California, a "promis[ing]" (4) Eldorado that Simeon and Peter imagine as being paved with "lumps o' gold" (4). O'Neill's irony, as the physical dolefulness of the characters and the setting suggests, is that they are already embarked upon a journey of their own design, following a course of rapacity and moral squalor, and that even if they do journey to California, they will remain the same unhappy people. Implicitly, as when he refers to these older brothers as "beasts" (6), O'Neill condemns their belief that happiness lies in obtaining material wealth.

This scene further explains the brothers' background, which helps to elucidate their behavior. Simeon and Peter feel cheated of the compensation they believe they merit for their labor on the farm. They remain there only because they anticipate inherit­ ing it. Eben acts under the same premise, but he has deeper reasons for staying: he is certain that Ephraim "killed" (6) his mother and stole the farm, which originally belonged to her. Eben detests his father even more than his brothers do, saying, "I'm Maw-every drop o' blood!" (6), though he seems to be as stubborn and almost as harsh as his 5

father. Believing that his mother's death was not "nateral" (8), he vows to" ... see t' it

[she] gits some rest an' sleep in her grave!" (8). Later in the play, O'Neill will weave this

emotion of vengeful hatred together with the greed element to explain why Eben has

denied his own better nature, adhering instead to a false and unfulfilling value system.

Although Eben is clearly more complex than his brothers, he has in common with them "sinful greed" (9). "[T]he night's wa'm" (9) with their consuming material obses­ sion; they are all victims of misplaced goals and values. O'Neill considers this kind of mind-set to be horribly against the natural order. He believes that such rigidity and such severity stunt a person's capacity for emotional growth, leaving him a virtual automaton, a "slave" (6) to his limitations. As Eben intermittently realizes, such attitudes encourage people to erect barriers between themselves and others, and also, perhaps more impor­ tantly, between their physical selves and their spiritual selves:

"An' makin' walls-stone atop o' stone-makin' walls till yer heart's a stone ye

heft up out o' the way o' growth onto a stone wall t' wall in yer heart!" (7)

The scene ends prophetically with Simeon warning that "Dog'll eat dog!" (1 0), a fore­ shadowing of the ugly conflict to come.

Scene Three forms a bridge between this thematic foreboding and Ephraim's imminent return to the farm. In it, Eben shrewdly buys his brothers' share of the farm with hidden money belonging to Ephraim, and Simeon and Peter prepare to leave for

California. Now, Eben alone will have to face grim Ephraim and his new wife, young

Abbie Putnam. Since he considers Ephraim "a devil out o' hell" (11), and since, wanting the farm for himself, he feels threatened by a stepmother young enough to bear chil­ dren, the tension steadily begins to mount. O'Neill has now prepared the way to focus almost microscopically upon the theme of self-defeating denial of love and of virtue through hatred and greed. 6

In Scene Four, Ephraim and Abbie enter the play. According to Simeon, Ephraim

left the farm two months previously, muttering, "It's spring an' I'm feeling damned" (8).

Upon his return, Abbie at his side, he clashes immediately with Simeon and Peter.

Simeon complains, " ... prime manure, by God, that's what I been t' ye!" (15), and Peter

informs Simeon that:

"They's gold in the West-an' freedom, mebbe. We been slaves t' stone walls

here." {15)

The two brothers depart for the West; hereafter, O'Neill scarcely mentions them. Since he drops their storyline so early, he is perhaps indirectly condemning them. For although they do have the courage and initiative to leave an environment ruled by

Ephraim's greed and tyranny, they base their supposed new liberation upon a similar rapacity. To them, the "Golden West" (15) is simply a means by which to become rich faster; thus, they are essentially no better than what they see Ephraim as being. O'Neill's disapproval of them is clear when Simeon cynically remarks, on noting Eben's resem­ blance to Ephraim, "Waal-let dog eat dog!" (14). This remark once more foreshadows what will happen on the farm when they have departed; but it also foretells the kind of world that Simeon and Peter will discover and perpetuate in the gold fields of California.

There is sad irony when the brothers proclaim that they are "free" (17), because in

O'Neill's view they are as enslaved as ever. They have merely moved from rocks to metal.

From this point on, the drama focuses on Ephraim and, especially, on Abbie and

Eben, who will best embody the denial versus acceptance theme. Abbie, who signifi­ cantly enters the play during the first scene featuring sunlight, is necessary to break the deadlock between the two men, even if she does share their greed and hardness. All three mutter the same sentiment about the farm: "Mine!" {14, 18). Abbie has married for financial security, expressing little love for Ephraim. She likes Eben - " ... her desire is 7 dimly awakened by his youth and good looks" (21) - but she sees him as a foe in her quest to own the farm, calculating "his strength as against hers" (21). Acknowledging that she and Eben have "a lot in common" (21), however, she tells him of her deprived and tempestuous past: "Waal-l've had a hard life, too-oceans o' trouble an' nuthin' but wuk fur reward" (21). She has been married before, but both her husband and the child she bore him died. Eben senses that her rationale for marrying his father is insincere, feels threatened, and, rejecting her rather specious appeal for sympathy, angrily calls her a "harlot" (22), a "devil" (22), a "witch" (22). Desperate for security, she retorts:

"This be my farm-this be my hum-this be my kitchen-! ... I got t' fight fur

what's due me out o' life, if I ever 'spect t' git it." (22)

Abbie bases her hunger for material things upon her fear of destitution and her basic need and right to survive, but O'Neill nevertheless censures and pities her for it. When

Part One concludes with a "last faint note of the 'Californi-a' song ... heard from the distance" (23), it comments on Abbie's predicament and materialism just as it echoes the false goals of the two older brothers. Like them, she has substituted one hell for another by seeking escape. In marrying for the wrong reasons she has gone against her nature, rejecting or ignoring her true self's potential for tenderness, honesty and love in favor of what O'Neill sees as delusory and meaningless materialism.

In Part One of the play, O'Neill thus conscientiously establishes the practical and thematic background for what will transpire in Part Two. He can now proceed to believ­ ably develop the difficult and ambivalent relationships between characters whose attrib­ utes have been firmly delineated. Abbie's disdain for Ephraim is clear, as is her attraction to Eben even if he does threaten her. The ancient odi et amo theme has perennial fascination, and from it O'Neill extracts a great deal of moral and emotional tension in the main body of the play. It is precisely the reluctant attraction and hostile electricity existing 8 between Abbie and Eben that O'Neill expands into a series of potent confrontations, which in Part Three will bring about this young couple's seeming destruction but ulti­ mate redemption.

In Part Two, Abbie commands much of the audience's attention and sympathy because she develops into a far more gentle woman than she has seemed until now.

She begins to show sympathetic understanding when she senses that Eben has "been fightin' [his] nature ever since the day I come" (24), and she displays a latent spirituality and constructiveness when, in a pivotal moment, she tells him of the importance and the inescapability of nature:

"Nature-makin thin's grow-bigger 'n' bigger-burnin' inside ye-makin' ye

want t' grow-into somethin' else-till ye're jined with it ... like a tree-like

them elums .... Nature'll beat ye, Eben. Ye might's well own up t' it fust 's

last." (25)

Here, Abbie demonstrates startling sensitivity and insight. Intuition tells her that living in accordance with nature is living in harmony with one's constructive inner yearnings. She also realizes that Eben is miserable and that, like her, he strives for an objective based upon greed for money and property rather than for one based upon emotional, non-materialistic fulfillment. As yet, she is still chained by the same drive; but Eben distracts her from it - a sensation she no doubt finds pleasurable. Yet she truly does resent him, because he presents competition to her pursuit of Ephraim's legacy. In an act she will later deeply regret, she even attempts to turn Ephraim against him by telling her husband that Eben has attempted "t' make love t' me" (28) in hopes of winning her to his side. Nevertheless, she nurtures a growing fondness for Eben, refusing to believe that he is what Ephraim calls him, "queer" and "thunderin' soft" (26). Hence, Abbie is vastly different from Ephraim, in that she is willing to listen to her feelings and intuitions.

Although she remains adamant in exploiting Ephraim, regarding him with "scorn and 9

triumph" (30), she at the same time gently refers to Eben as a "boy" (28), and is

receptive to his mellowing influence upon her.

In her description of nature's positive shaping power, much is revealed about her

potential for growth. At the beginning of the play the elms are ominous because the desire which they witness is the Cabot brothers' avaricious lust for material wealth, a desire beset with hatred and misery. When Abbie appears she at first compounds this malaise, because she demonstrates that she embraces the same principles. But now, when she refers to the elms while falling in love with Eben, she represents different and nobler kinds of desire: the need to share tenderness with another human being, and a yearning for growth within herself. She begins to offer signs that she is not as hard-boiled as she seems. Soon, it becomes apparent that the desire she feels for Eben goes beyond lust and includes a deeply-felt need to give and to receive trust and affection. Indeed, Abbie is in a chrysalis state, on the point of becoming transformed into a redemptive force, a force of love and humanity as opposed to one of greed and hatred.

In her presence, therefore, the sinister elms now seem harmonious and companionable, burgeoning into auguries of good rather than of evil.

Ephraim contrasts sharply with Abbie in Part Two. Whereas she is in a process of softening, he is a self-described "hard" (31) man, "ten times as strong an' fifty times as hard as Eben" (31 ). Proud of his work on the farm and noting that it has been his labor that has made it successful, he boasts that the story of his life is etched in its stone walls:

"Ye kin read the years o' my life in them walls, every day a hefted stone,

climbin' over the hills up and down, fencin' in the fields that was mine, whar I'd

made thin's grow out o' nothin' -like the will o' God, like the servant o' His

hand. It wa'n't easy. It was hard an' He made me hard fur it." (31)

Sadly, Ephraim has come to resemble - as he dimly recognizes - the stone walls he has erected. He admits to spending the best part of his life "fencin'" things in, a pursuit 10 he believes is a service to God. This is an attitude which O'Neill finds appalling, because

Ephraim, in his desire for power and for material success, has almost completely lost contact with his soul. O'Neill's concern finds voice in Ephraim's admission that as he worked harder on his farm, he "kept gittin' lonesomer" (31 ).

Ephraim may sense that the core of his unhappiness is attributable to his tyrannical harshness and to his unyielding possessiveness, and that, like his sons, he has been a

"slave to stone walls." He has spent his lifetime repressing his own potential sensitivities; his consequent hardening has left him crusty and in turmoil. He is "brooding moodily"

(30), dimly disturbed by the fact that he has essentially been worshipping stone, al­ though he seems unaware of the dire implications of such blasphemy:

"God's hard, not easy! God's in the stones! Build my church on a rock-out o'

stones an' I'll be in them! That's what He meant t' Peter!" (31)

That this distorted view of religion has actually distanced Ephraim from God was con­ firmed earlier when Simeon noted that his father had complained of feeling "damned"

(8). Ephraim is increasingly uneasy, sensing that his life is not as it should be:

"It's cold in this house. It's oneasy. They's thin's pokin' about in the dark-in

the corners." (32)

Prompted by such disturbing feelings, Ephraim left in search of something more, decid­ ing that what he needed was a strong young wife to bring fresh blood into his "wilder­ ness" (32), the sour household.

Unlike Abbie and Eben, however, Ephraim is a static character. They are initially as miserable and as rigid as he, but they shift in the course of the play, come to accept the promptings of their better natures, and as a result experience some genuine happiness.

Ephraim remains "hard" to the end. It may be said in his favor that he does long for a child by Abbie, as a possible solution to his loneliness; but his reasons are basically selfish and materialistic. He does not want a son whom he can love; rather, "The farm 11 needs a son" (30). Much as Ephraim distorts his religious faith and the gospel of work, he also twists the prospect of fatherhood, using it as a way to spite his existing sons, as a means of willing his property to another. Abbie is merely a means to this ungenerous end. In his estimation she is virtually negligible: "Me an' the farm has got t' beget a son!"

(30). His apparent urge, through marriage to a young wife, toward nature and humanity is thus only a ruse to perpetuate the avarice and malice through which he is "damned."

He remains obdurate, stone-like, from beginning to end.

While Ephraim speaks to Abbie about their child-to-be, she has something else on her mind, namely her desire for Eben. In the play's most famous sequence, she and

Eben "stare at each other" (33) through the wall dividing her and Ephraim's bedroom from his. This wall is essentially the same as the repressive stone walls plaguing and alienating the Cabots: here it separates the two who are capable of love. Significantly, it is Abbie who bypasses the wall and rushes into Eben's room. Throughout the play, it is she who initiates the demolition of those walls that do crumble.

In Scene Three, where the complex machinery of the intricate emotional relation­ ship existing between Abbie and Eben is set forth, Abbie determines the course that her marriage to Ephraim will take. The action between her and Eben takes place in the parlor, a "repressed," "tomb"-like (34) room in which Eben's mother had been laid out.

Abbie, however, has "lighted all the candles" (35), enhancing the barren room, creating a religious atmosphere much gentler and more hopeful than anything Ephraim could establish. The flickering candlelight reflects, perhaps, her impending transition, sug­ gesting that she is developing a warmer, more enlightened approach to life, and that she has a personal religion which is more tender, more flexible, and which glows softer than the "hard" Puritanical religion to which Ephraim subscribes. The essential difference between her and her husband is demonstrated when she says to Eben words which

Ephraim never utters to anyone: "I love yew" (35). She is rapidly moderating her initial preoccupation with acquiring material wealth, and is experiencing instead "lust" (36) for 12

Eben which is tempered by trust and by deep affection, including a "sincere maternal

love" (36). Eben presents her with an opportunity to give of herself as a woman, and to

derive in turn the satisfaction of an intense emotional bond with him. As their relationship

develops, Abbie discovers within herself feelings of tenderness to which the hardened,

somewhat brassy woman of Part One would not have admitted. Her new feelings emerge when she says:

"Don't ye leave me, Eben! Can't you see it hain't enuf-lovin' ye like a

Maw-can't ye see it's got t' be that an' more-fur met' be happy-fur yew t'

be happy?" (36)

This is the first time that the concept of happiness has been mentioned by name, and when Abbie speaks of it, extending her hope of happiness to embrace Eben as well, the audience can almost hear the repressive stone walls of the Cabots begin to tumble.

She is the first in the play to admit to needing love and companionship for their own sakes. Moreover, her initial greed and self-absorption seem left behind when, com­ plaining that Ephraim "can't 'preciate me!", she tells Eben "I love yean' I'll be good t' ye"

(36). This scene shows her attempting to break through the emotional barriers, her own stone walls, imposed upon her largely by the hardships of her earlier life. The fact that

Abbie progresses in this way makes her one of O'Neill's most likeable and most heart-felt creations. He does, however, in her speech about loving Eben "like a Maw" but in other ways too, begin to suggest a character flaw that will contribute to her subse­ quent threatened ruin: her confusion of a sexual and a maternal love for Eben. This psychological criss-crossing will allow her later to murder her baby in the belief that doing so wi_!l preserve her relationship with her lover.

In the parlor scene, Eben is at first as hard and as callous as Ephraim: he resents

Abbie for "stealin' [his mother's] place" (35), and twice speaks of "hate" (35). For years he has channeled toward his mother any love that he is able to feel, which results in its 13

being tainted by his urge for "vengeance" (37) upon and his hatred for Ephraim, on his

mother's account.

When he tells Abbie "Maw allus loved me" (35), she assures him that his mother's

spirit, which seems to be present in the room, "knows I love yew, too. Mebbe that makes

it kind to' me" (35). But while she speaks repeatedly of "love"(36), Eben still speaks of

stealing and of vengeance, convincing himself that the "grudge" (35) he believes his

dead mother harbors against Ephraim will be avenged by their love:

EBEN (to the presence he feels in the room) Maw! Maw! What d'ye want?

What air ye tellin' me?

ABBIE She's tellin' ye t' love me. She knows I love ye an' I'll be good t' ye.

Can't ye feel it? Don't ye know? She's tellin' ye t' love me, Eben!

EBEN Ay-eh. I feel-mebbe she-but-1 can't figger out-why-when ye've

stole her place-here in her hum-in the parlor whar she was-

ABBIE (fiercely) She knows I love ye!

EBEN (his face suddenly lighting up with a fierce, triumphant grin) I see it! I

see why. It's her vengeance on him-so's she kin rest quiet in her grave!

(36-37)

In this exchange Eben demonstrates that the Cabot stubbornness, aggressiveness, and malice still hold sway in his character. Like his father, he tends to regard Abbie as an instrument, in this case one which will facilitate his revenge upon Ephraim. But because this scene clears his conscience of his mother, Eben is henceforth freer to pursue the purer dictates of his heart. Now he can search for the happiness which neither his mother nor his father experienced. Hence, he softens. This softness is different from the kind Ephraim derided, however. Rather than being a sign of weakness, it is a mellowing of the soul, a refinement of the spirit, a strengthening of Eben's sensitivity. 14

By the next scene, in fact, he "seems changed" (37): "His face wears a bold and confident expression" (37). He and Abbie allude to having had sexual intercourse in the parlor, but their "Iovin"' (38) is clearly felt as much emotionally as it is physically. Since

Abbie's arrival on the farm, both have had other sexual contact - he with the towngirl

Min and she with Ephraim; but neither has been so genuinely happy as a result of those other liasons. This scene is joyous and playful, the only one of its kind in the play, and it optimistically concludes Part Two. These two young people have succeeded in touching each other's souls. They are no longer deforming, by repressing, their gentler natures, but accept the happiness within. Certainly, the perverse forces of fate are thereby activated, and the two may indeed be what Eben terms "Star-gazin' in daylight" (38); but they are, probably for the first time in their lives, relatively other-oriented and contented.

O'Neill's moral theme thus takes clearer shape: humanity - kindness and tender love of one person for another - must supercede selfish materialism and ferocity.

Part Three opens with a party on the farm celebrating the birth of Abbie's son. The baby, of course, has been fathered by Eben, a fact of which everyone present seems aware except Ephraim, who is elated to have what he believes is his "new son!" (42).

The baby makes him feel younger, more vital, more masculine, and in his excitement he is likeable for the only time in the play. Not realizing that the guests regard him with

"cold, hostile eyes" (43), he dances wildly to "The Lady of the Lake" - a water image possibly referring to Abbie's revitalization and partial purification of the Cabot farm - proclaiming "I got a lot in me-a hell of a lot-folks don't know on" (42). Briefly, he is happy enough even to speak kindly of Eben, because a new human life has come to the farm, an aspect of freshness to enhance a stale dour environment. The irony is, of course, that this fresh start, this new life force, is due to Abbie and Eben, not to Ephraim.

His ecstasy might suggest that he has turned from his stiff possessiveness and material­ ism to a softer, more loving outlook. For a short while it seems so; but it soon proves that 15 the bedrock harshness and negativism of his granitic self persists. The scene ends, accordingly, with Ephraim voicing a suspicion that all is still not right on the farm:

"Even the music can't drive it out-somethin'. Ye kin feel it droppin' off the

elums, climbin' up the roof, sneakin' down the chimney ... Somethin's always

livin' with ye." (45)

Here, the elms once more become sinister and foreboding, partly because the charac­ ters are still unsynchronized with nature, but chiefly because their re-orientation towards each other is fraught with dangerous potential for betrayal, for hatred, and for violence.

Abbie and Eben have just begun, tentatively, to accept their warmer, better selves; but

Ephraim has not made, nor will he ever make, that breakthrough.

Sadly, the baby is used by all of the adults as a weapon. Eben sees fathering the child as the ultimate revenge upon Ephraim. Ephraim views the infant as a weapon to be used against his other sons, a means of depriving them of their inheritances. And Abbie will at the end sacrifice it in what she believes to be a demonstration of her love for Eben.

The baby, pure and sweetly guileless, poses a strong contrast to the other characters, serving as O'Neill's symbol of the tender, gentle qualities which humanity should cultivate.

Although love asserts itself in Scene Two, the intense emotions which lead to the play's violent climax are thereby inflamed. Father and son argue, and Eben, brain­ washed by his father, comes to express disgust and disdain for Abbie. Ephraim tells his son that Eben is "blind as a mole underground" (46) in believing that Abbie's feelings for him are sincere:

"-ye won't git round her-she knows yer tricks-she'll be too much for

ye-she wants the farm her'n-she was afeerd o' ye-she told me ye was

sneakin' 'round tryin' t' make love t' her t' git her on yer side ... ye ... ye mad

fool, ye!" (46) 16

Abbie had indeed made the statement which Ephraim attributes to her; but Eben takes it at face value, not comprehending the transformation she has undergone since making it. Out of hurt feelings and wounded pride, he vows to "murder" (47) her. Aroused, the two men struggle, Ephraim pushing Eben to the ground. Seeing what happens, Abbie attempts to comfort her lover:

ABBIE ... It's me, Eben-Abbie-don't ye know me?

EBEN (glowering at her with hatred) Ay-eh -I know ye-now! (He suddenly

breaks down, sobbing weakly).

ABBIE (fearfully) Eben-What's happened t' ye-why did ye look at me's ifye

hated me?

EBEN (violently, between sobs and gasps) I do hate ye! You're a whore-a

damn trickin' whore! (47)

That Eben gives vent to such abusive hysteria is a sign that he has been deeply hurt. His father has effectively damaged his relationship with Abbie - proof of Ephraim's patriar­ chal power over the farm. Symbolically, Ephraim's possessiveness spoils the love be­ tween Eben and Abbie, just as it had earlier wrecked any affection between him and his sons.

With the advent of this new stress, Eben does behave like a "mad fool," full of

"tortured passion" (48), and lapses into the same suspicion and resentment he had felt earlier on. This regression is seen in the remarks he hurls "fiercely" (48) at Abbie:

"I'll git squar' with the old skunk [Ephraim] -and yew! ... Then I'll leave ye

here t' pizen each other ... an' I'll go t' the gold fields o' California whar Sim

an' Peter be!" (48)

Feeling betrayed and abandoned, bereft of his tentative recent happiness, Eben resorts to the old shallow values, slipping both into his father's and his own previous obsessive vengefulness and into his brothers' materialistic delusion that happiness can be equated 17 with property, while he also, in effect, echoes Simeon's cynical belief that "dog'll eat dog." He does not realize that Abbie is the true gold in his life, nor that he is now playing an active part in the vicious devouring process which enslaves them all. Part of his tragedy is that he comprehends these truths too late.

At this point Abbie has matured, emotionally and in psychological intuition, more than either of the men involved with her. Having deserted her preoccupation with wealth, she embraces her love for Eben, basking in the happiness it brings her. She is the character who follows her soul most completely, even if this devotion entails delusion and results in her murdering her baby. She commits this crime because of what Eben tells her "torturedly" (48) in rage:

"I wish he [the baby] never was born! I wish he'd die this minut! I wish I'd

never set eyes on him! It's him-yew havin' him-a-purpose t' steal-that's

changed everythin'!" (48)

Eben is ignorant of the fact that Abbie is now, somewhat like the baby, virtually guileless. Whereas she may initially have viewed the child as a political weapon, she came to see it only as an extension of her love for Eben. But now, with the tunnel vision of that consuming passion, she can say, and mean,

"If that's what his comin's done t' me-killin' yewr love-takin' yew away-my

on'y joy-the on'y joy I ever knowed-like heaven t' me-purtier'n

heaven-then I hate him, too, even if I be his Maw!" (49)

In this poignant statement, she declares with significant ambiguity that Eben and his love for her are "like heaven" to her, just as her baby, "purtier 'n heaven," seemed. Clearly, she is confusing the two different relationships. Her references to heaven, moreover, serve to remind the audience that Eben and Ephraim are always, as is the habit of farmers, gazing at the sky. But their conception of heaven lacks the sense of love and compassion that it connotes for Abbie. She does follow constructive nature - her need 18 for love. Granted, she goes to terrible extremes to do so, but her actions are prompted largely by the Cabot's lack of love. All three yearn for happiness; but it is she who takes the biggest, most intense and daring steps to achieve it.

In Scene Three, which again takes place in the darkness, "Just before dawn" (50),

Abbie smothers her baby with a pillow. By killing the child, she subconsciously feels that she is proving her devotion to another and abused child, Eben, for whom she has expressed maternal love. She has tragically confused the two kinds of love she feels. In

"desperate triumph" (50), she tells Eben:

"I done it .... I told ye I'd do it! I've proved I love ye- better'n

everythin'-so's ye can't never doubt me no more!" (50)

Obviously, she has not acted intelligently nor rationally; but. she does sincerely believe that she has acted for the best, imploring Eben to believe that "they's nothin' come b'tween us now-arter what I done!" (51). She continues:

"I didn't want t' do it. I hated myself for doin' it. I loved him. He was so

purty-dead spit'n' image o' yew. But I loved yew more-and yew was goin'

away-far off whar I'd never see ye agen, never kiss ye, never feel ye pressed

agin me agen-an' ye said ye hated me fur havin' him-ye said ye hated him

an' wished he was dead-ye said if it hadn't been fur him comin' it'd be the

same's afore between us." (51-52)

Abbie has committed an atrocity, but her confusion is so deep and her emotions are so intense and heartfelt that it is hard to completely condemn her for her crime.

Eben is understandably upset when he hears this speech, but for the wrong reasons. At first believing that she has murdered Ephraim, he expresses satisfaction, plotting with no moral compunction how to make Ephraim's supposed death appear as suicide. When he realizes it is his baby that she has killed, he explodes with typical

Cabot selfishness: "he was mine, damn ye!" (51). Adamant with his father's Puritan 19

self-righteousness, he coldly rejects Abbie's pleading explanations and leaves to fetch

the sheriff. Once again, Eben resorts to the possessive and vengeful perspective that he

had held in Part One, misjudging Abbie's motives and denying the positive change that

she sought to make in his life:

"Hal I kin see why ye done it! Not the lies ye jest told-but 'cause ye wanted t'

steal agen-steal the last thin' ye'd left me-my part o' him-no, the hull o' him

... I know ye! Ye killed him fur bein' mine! ... But I'll take vengeance now! I'll

git the Sheriff! I'll tell him everythin'! Then I'll sing 'I'm off to Californi-a' an'

go-gold-Golden Gate-gold sun-fields o' gold in the West!" (52)

Stricken, Abbie sobs simply,

"I love ye, Eben! I love ye! ... I don't care what ye do-if ye'll on'y love me

agen." (52)

The last scene of the play reveals how the furious and rejecting Eben of the previous scene mellows, comes to accept and embrace for himself the non-materialistic and non-vindictive values which Abbie has discovered in herself. This scene also deline­ ates, at the opposite extreme, Ephraim's rigidity in following his "hard" god. It takes place under a "sky brilliant with the sunrise" (53), a sign of hope suggesting that the benign natural order soon will be somewhat restored to at least part of the Cabot family.

Ephraim, who will exclude himself from this order, utters an appropriately contrasting violent image in the scene's first line: "Thunder 'n' lightnin', Abbie!" (53). When Abbie confesses her crime to him, he at first seems more affected by the news than Eben did.

"That was it," he mourns, "-what I felt-pokin' round the corners" (54). He "blinks back one tear" (54), but immediately "stiffens his body into a rigid line and hardens his face into a stony mask" (54). By this characteristic bleak evasion of feeling, he retreats once more to his fortress - or spiritual prison - of stone walls: "I got t' be -like a stone-a rock o' jedgment" (54). 20

Although he is shocked and hurt by Abbie's revelation, Ephraim's suppression of

his grief neutralizes much of the sympathy the audience may feel for him, especially

when he wills himself to be "stony" much as he did in Part One. Whenever he verges on

showing any emotion, Ephraim conceals it both from himself and from other people, a

denial which in O'Neill's universe is criminal. He still "stares up at the sky" (55), but as

usual misunderstands, or misses, the benign or peaceful message of nature; he is

"lonesomer'n ever" (55). And in response to what has happened, he seeks a misguided

escape identical to that his older sons took:

"I'm leavin' it! I've turned the cows an' other stock loose! I've druv' em into the

woods whar they kin be free! . . . I'm freein' myself! ... I'll be a-gain' to

Californi-a-t' jine Simeon an' Peter ... an' the Cabots'll find Solomon's Mines

t'gether!" (57)

A man sporadically capable of sensitivity, Ephraim has admitted to experiencing the

horror of "feelin' damned." Yet he will persist in misery because his meager ideas of

happiness are based upon possession, both of fool's gold and of other people. The hard god he stubbornly worships is actually his own implacability, his refusal to accept the

sensitivity of his nature. He denies any warmer feelings by being meanly spiteful and tyrannical and by pursuing the misleading lure of the inorganic. Ephraim can free his livestock into the unknown wilderness, but he will not explore the hinterland of himself, will not risk exploring the recesses of his own psyche. The play concludes with him unenlightened, never having realized the potential in his life, never having understood that the best to be found in this world cannot be bought, but demands the willingness to give. As imprisoned spiritually as Abbie and Eben soon will be physically, Ephraim continues to be enslaved by his own stone walls and is virtually dead in life, showing no sign that he will ever see the light. By marrying Abbie, he did attempt to change his life; but his old numbing addiction to greed, selfishness, and malice poisoned that potential. 21

Eben, on the other hand, accepts his better nature's promptings belatedly but whole-heartedly. When he returns to the farm after having informed the sheriff of the

murder, he has changed. With time to cool down and think, his rage has calmed. At last understanding that Abbie's love for him is genuine, he tells her "I love ye! Fergive me!"

(55}. She does -"I'd fergive ye all the sins in hell fur sayin' that!" (55} - and he

"tenderly" (56} explains to her that while he was waiting for the sheriff,

"I got to thin kin' o' yew. I got to thinkin' how I'd loved ye. It hurt like somethin'

was bustin' in my chest an' head. I got t' cryin'. I knowed sudden I loved ye

yet, an' allus would love ye!" (56}

Unlike his father, Eben is able to cry, to express his feelings, to cleanse himself. With this purification, the ugly emotions from which he has suffered - suspicion, possessiveness, revenge - have vanished from his heart, and with them his misery.

Part of Eben's acceptance of the peace within includes his insistence that he share in Abbie's punishment for the murder, recognizing that since he provoked her to do it, he is as responsible as she. By invoking literal imprisonment, he ironically escapes the narrowness, hardness, and loneliness of the "cage" (3} which his life has been until now.

As he says,

"An' I'd suffer wust leavin' ye, goin' West, thinkin' o' ye day an' night, bein' out

when yew is in ... 'r bein' alive when yew was dead ... I want to share with ye,

Abbie-prison 'r death 'r hell 'r anythin'! ... If I'm sharin' with ye, I won't feel

lonesome, leastways." (56}

This concept of sharing is of tremendous importance to the play's theme. Eben's new desire to share is a major advance for him, vanquishing the self-absorption he has all along expressed. He has discarded what he now knows to be dross, i.e. materialism and hostility, in favor of what his soul yearns for. By doing so, he achieves tenderness and 22 gains companionship, experiences which Ephraim cannot know because he rejects gentleness and has little willingness to share with anyone.

Both Abbie and Eben have by fits and starts matured into relatively rich, sensitive people. The death of their child and their impending punishment for it are not in vain, because they have discovered the meaning of their existences. They have accepted what their hearts will them to be: loving, caring, trusting, and generous people. It is interesting that although they do not mention God as often and as seriously as Ephraim does, they now seem far more in tune with Him. They have stopped running, stopped fighting. They exit the stage under arrest but nevertheless wonderfully free and in harmony, both agreeing that the "Sun's a-rizin'. Purty, han't it?" (58). Eben's first line had been similar but hollow; now, the sentiment resounds with conviction and serenity.

O'Neill underlines his theme when he has the sheriff speak the play's last lines:

"It's a jim-dandy farm, no denyin'. Wish I owned it!" (58). The sheriff here embodies the same thoughtless greed and lust for ownership that had for so long afflicted the Cabots.

Hence, the jailor seems more a prisoner. Again, O'Neill wants his audience to under­ stand that because Abbie and Eben have followed their better natures, they are the only truly free people in the play.

With Desire Under the Elms, then, O'Neill creates significant literature, because he supports the drama's provocative and sensational aspects with a fastidious thematic framework, namely the important psychological drama of denial versus acceptance. He once remarked that "the battle of moral forces in the New England scene" is "what I feel closest to as an artist" (quoted in Schlueter 111); and he acknowledged his highly psychological approach to the play's characters by referring to himself as an "intuitively keen analytical psychologist" (quoted in Gelb 577). Because of its thematic force and the insight and sensitivity of its characterization, Desire is universal and escapes being dated or melodramatic. Audiences often feel uplifted at the conclusion of this play in 23

which O'Neill expressed one of his dominant beliefs, in " ... the spiritual significance

which life attains when it aims high enough, when the individual fights all the hostile forces within and without himself to achieve a future of nobler values" (quoted in

To.rnqvist 14}. Detractors argue that this type of O'Neill "individual," struggling with these

"hostile forces," is oppressively somber and unduly saddening; but in O'Neill's view,

Such a figure is necessarily tragic . . . to me he is not depressing; he is

exhilarating! He may be a failure in the materialistic sense. His treasures are in

other kingdoms. Yet isn't he the most inspiring of all successes?" (quoted in

Tornqvist 14} 24

Works Cited

Bowen, Croswell. The Curse of the Misbegotten: A Tale of the House of O'Neill. New

York: McGraw, 1959.

Gelb, Arthur, and Barbara Gelb. O'Neill. New York: Harper, 1973.

O'Neill, Eugene. Desire Under the Elms. Three Plays of Eugene O'Neill. New York:

Vintage, 1959. 1-58.

Schlueter, June, and Arthur Lewis. "Cabot's Conflict: The Stones and Cows in O'Neill's

Desire Under the Elms." Critical Essays on Eugene O'Neill. Ed. James J. Martine.

Boston: Hall, 1984. 111-14.

Tornqvist, Egil. A Drama of Souls: Studies in O'Neill's Super-naturalistic Technique.

Uppsala, Sweden: University of Uppsala Press, 1968. @ •

25

Works Consulted

Floyd, Virginia, ed. Eugene O'Neill at Work. New York: Ungar, 1981.

-----. The Plays of Eugene O'Neill: A New Assessment. New York: Ungar, 1985.

Leech, Clifford. O'Neill. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1966.

Ranald, Margaret Loftus. The Eugene O'Neill Companion. Connecticut: Greenwood,

1984.

Sheaffer, Louis. O'Neill: Son and Playwright. Boston: Little, 1968.