Transformations of Henrik Ibsen’s Life-Lie in Eugene O’Neill’s Strange Interlude and Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and the Didactic Approach to the Topic
Diplomarbeit
zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades einer Magistra der Philosophie an der Philologisch-Kulturwissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck
Institut für Amerikastudien
Eingereicht bei: Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Gudrun M. Grabher
Eingereicht von: Lisa Sophia Trixl
Innsbruck, April, 2018
Table of Contents
1. Introduction ...... 4
2. Theoretical Approach to Lying and Life-Lies ...... 7 2.1. Lying and Lies throughout History ...... 8 2.2. Henrik Ibsen and the Life-Lie ...... 17 2.3. Lying versus Life-Lies ...... 29
3. Eugene O’Neill’s Strange Interlude and the Life-Lie ...... 32 3.1. Eugene O‘Neil: Life and Legacy of the First Great American Dramatist ...... 33 3.2. Life-Lies in Strange Interlude ...... 38 3.2.1. Extrinsic Life-Lies in Strange Interlude ...... 38 3.2.2. Intrinsic Life-Lies in Strange Interlude ...... 46 3.2.3. Résumé: Life-Lies in Strange Interlude ...... 53
4. Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and the Life-Lie ..... 57 4.1. Edward Albee: Life and Legacy of one of the Greatest American Dramatists of the Twentieth Century ...... 57 4.2. Life-Lies in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? ...... 62 4.2.1. Intrinsic Life-Lies in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? ...... 62 4.2.2. Mutually Constructed Extrinsic Life-Lies in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?...... 72 4.2.3. Résumé: Life-Lies in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? ...... 73
5. Conclusion ...... 75
6. A Didactic Approach to the Topic of Lying and Life-Lies in American Drama ...... 79 6.1. The Teaching Unit on Lying and Life-Lies and the Austrian Curriculum ...... 81 6.2. Lesson Plans ...... 83 6.2.1. Lesson 1: A Philosophical Introduction to the Topic of Lying ...... 83 2
6.2.2. Lesson 2: Getting to Know American Drama ...... 86 6.2.3. Lesson 3: Strange Interlude‘s Third Act and the Life-Lie ...... 88 6.2.4. Lesson 4: Moral Evaluation of Nina‘s Life-Lie in Strange Interlude and an Introduction to Albee‘s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? ...... 90 6.2.5. Lesson 5: Martha and George‘s Life-Lie in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? ...... 93 6.2.6. Lesson 6: Nina‘s Extrinsic versus Martha and George‘s Intrinsic Life-Lie .. 94
7. Bibliography ...... 96
8. Appendix ...... 101
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1. Introduction
Throughout history, people have always dedicated themselves to discussing the question whether lying and the deception of another person is morally acceptable or not. From approaches of Ancient Greek philosophy to medieval religious debates up until more recent discussions on the topic, the role of the lie has always been of interest. This interest has not ceased to exist through the centuries due to the fact that lies have always been part of everyday life. A moral evaluation of the telling of lies already starts in childhood when parents frequently try to convey to their children that lying is unacceptable. It is estimated, however, that the majority of people lies once or twice a day, which means that lying can be said to be a daily habit comparable to brushing one‘s teeth (Indvik and Johnson 323). In a conversation that lasts ten or more minutes, it is estimated that on average around a fifth of what is said can be considered untrue, which in the course of a week sums up and leads to the conclusion that 30 percent of one‘s interlocutors are being lied to (Indvik and Johnson 323). Despite the fact that the telling of lies is part of most people‘s everyday lives, people‘s reactions are usually negative toward them (Turri and Turri 161). As studies have shown, in general lying for one‘s own benefits is considered more acceptable in the professional than the private life (Cantarero et al. 229). However, differences exist between various cultures since in some countries, such as Mexico or Poland, the deception of a superior is generally considered as unacceptable as lying to a person of one‘s private sphere (Cantarero et al.
229). It can be argued, though, that to tell a lie to a relative or friend is in most societies more negatively connoted than deceiving someone at one‘s workplace if the aim is to create a benefit for oneself (Cantarero et al. 229). It is without doubt that lying, which is the conscious telling of something one believes is untrue with the purpose to deceive
(Turri and Turri 161), and the discovery of a lie cause mistrust among the persons
4 involved (Cantarero et al. 231). In in the course of deceiving, suspiciousness additionally grows within the liar himself and, as George Bernhard Shaw says, ―The liar‘s punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else‖ (qtd. in Indvik and Johnson 325). It may be ―tempting‖ (Indvik and
Johnson 326) to think that if society does away with all sorts of lies, a conflict-free, genuine communal life is guaranteed (Indvik and Johnson 326). However, if one is confronted day by day with nothing else but the plain truth and ruthless honesty, social interactions may not be able to connect people the same way as they do when now and then the truth undergoes slight adjustments (Indvik and Johnson 326). Lies and deception will most likely continue to be connoted negatively by society despite the fact that not every alteration of the truth can be considered immoral and unethical per se.
Lies and deception are, hence, ubiquitous and belong to the human life and nature as well as the dilemma of how to morally evaluate the liar‘s actions. Due to this, it is not surprising that also in literature writers‘ attention has been drawn toward this topic. In various plays by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, a representative of nineteenth-century realism, the role of lying and deceiving is discussed. In his play The
Wild Duck, which was published in 1884, the characters are confronted with lies and the consequences they entail, which are addressed and examined by Ibsen in addition to the topic of lying. His characters are, moreover, faced with the general question of ―how much truth […] a person [can] take‖ (Davis 165) and, in the course of the play, Ibsen portrays how they deal with this truth after the lie has been revealed to them. In The
Wild Duck, the playwright confronts his characters with a certain form of lie which is called the ―saving lie‖ (WD 243), mostly referred to as the life-lie. In contrast to other forms of lies, a life-lie is a carefully constructed lie which has been kept alive and maintained over a longer time span and, thus, influences the respective person‘s life considerably. Doctor Relling, a minor character of The Wild Duck, emphasizes how 5 important it is to keep the life-lie alive and states, ―Take the saving lie from the average man and you take his happiness away, too‖ (WD 244). A person‘s happiness or even the ability to endure life itself depends, hence, on the life-lie (Sternberg 256), which functions, as pointed out by Relling, as ―the stimulating principle of life‖ (WD 243). In
Ibsen‘s The Wild Duck, the life-lies of various characters are destroyed, which forces them to confront themselves with reality. The destruction of the respective life-lie and the implications for the characters‘ happiness is the central theme of The Wild Duck. In the course of his play, Ibsen illustrates how the characters live with their life-lies, shows in which ways they are confronted with them and eventually portrays the consequences that this confrontation with the life-lies entails. With his plays, such as The Wild Duck,
Henrik Ibsen considerably influenced not only European drama but also the American theater. By introducing the topic of the life-lie and its implications for happiness to drama, he drew other playwrights‘ interests toward this topic. American dramatist
Eugene O‘Neill, who was at the beginning of the twentieth century the first American playwright to present more sophisticated plays to the American audience (Dukore 1-2,
6), deals in his play Strange Interlude with Ibsen‘s concept of the life-lie. Around 35 years later in the 1960s, with Edward Albee‘s Broadway success Who’s Afraid of
Virginia Woolf another play was presented in which the characters have to face reality and are confronted with their life-lies. Both plays are, thus, based on Henrik Ibsen‘s concept of the life-lie and discuss the effects that such a life-lie may have on the respective characters‘ happiness. However, the ways how the playwrights approach
Ibsen‘s life-lie differ considerably.
The purpose of the following diploma thesis is to examine how the two
American playwrights Eugene O‘Neill and Edward Albee transformed Henrik Ibsen‘s concept of the life-lie and the corresponding implications for happiness in their plays
Strange Interlude and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Therefore, analyses of both plays 6 will be provided with the aim to give insight into how the dramatists worked with
Ibsen‘s concept of the life-lie, and will, moreover, point out similarities as well as differences between Ibsen‘s, O‘Neill‘s and Albee‘s approach to the topic. As a basis for the analyses, lying as a societal phenomenon will be observed and, for this purpose, notions of how to morally evaluate the telling of lies shared by renowned thinkers will be examined. In order to define the term life-lie and to be able to distinguish it from other forms of lying, Henrik Ibsen‘s The Wild Duck will be analyzed in more detail, also with the purpose to show in which ways the characters‘ happiness is influenced by the life-lie. By means of this introductory part on lying and the elaboration on Ibsen‘s concept of the life-lie, which serves as the theoretical basis of this diploma thesis,
O‘Neill‘s and Albee‘s plays will be analyzed with regard to the life-lie and its consequences. In addition to the analyses, it will be examined how Ibsen‘s topic of lying as well as the life-lies with regard to Eugene O‘Neill‘s Strange Interlude and
Edward Albee‘s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf can be made the subject in an English classroom in an Austrian AHS. For this purpose, a didactic approach to the topic will be provided in the form of a teaching unit that consists of six lessons, which will be illustrated in tabular lesson plans.
2. Theoretical Approach to Lying and Life-Lies
In this chapter, the concept of the life-lie, introduced and developed by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, will be closely examined and defined. Before that, however, renowned historical figures, such as Augustine of Hippo or Immanuel Kant, and their notions on lying and lies will be discussed as well as more recent views on the subject by Sissela Bok or Volker Sommer. This chapter will further be concerned with the life- lies set up by various protagonists in Henrik Ibsen‘s play The Wild Duck. In order to
7 ensure clarification regarding terminology, differences between the life-lie and lying in the common sense will be elaborated in the last section of this chapter.
2.1. Lying and Lies throughout History
In the course of the past centuries, lying and its consequences have been subject to many personalities in not only a philosophical but also a religious context. This chapter intends to discuss ideas and opinions of various historically important persons as well as approaches of contemporary thinkers in order to provide the reader of this thesis with an overview of the most well-established notions on the topic of lying.
Already in the fourth century before Christ, Aristotle distinguished between human beings and other species by differentiating between ―logos‖ ‗speech‘, which he assigned to the human race, and ―phonä‖ ‗voice‘, which he allocated to animals
(Baruzzi 175). As stated by Nissing, Aristotle argued that the human being, or rather the
―zoon logon echon‖ (7), belongs to the species which disposes of rationality and the faculty to speak (―logos‖), which enables them to see the truth and convey this truth to others (7).
In spite of the fact that the human species is provided with the faculty to speak and, thus, to lie, various renowned persons are convinced that lying must not be part of everyday life. Augustine, for instance, is among those who strictly reject all forms of lies. He was born in 354 and died in 430 and, according to Matthews, cannot easily be grouped within one philosophical circle or stream (7). Although his thoughts were influenced by Hellenistic philosophy, Stoicism and Neo-Platonism, Augustine can be considered the first medieval philosopher as well as a Christian philosopher (Matthews
7). Born in North Africa, more precisely in today‘s Algeria, and educated in Carthage,
Augustine became Bishop of Hippo Regius, also located in North Africa, after having converted to Christianity in 386 at the age of 32 (Matthews 7-8, 12). Being a Christian
8 philosopher, Augustine dedicated his life to moral and religious questions and also discussed the role of the lie. He provided his readers with a definition of lying stating that ―[m]endacium est enuntiatio cum voluntate falsum enuntiandi‖ (qtd. in Baruzzi 45), which means that a lie is an utterance willingly made falsely. Augustine‘s interest in this topic is not surprising since lying is one of the widely discussed issues in Christianity and Judaism, as stated in Matthews (126). In the Christian holy script, the Bible, or more precisely in the Old Testament, the Ten Commandments were established to serve as a moral guideline that aims at providing the religious community with instructions on how to lead a life concordant with the Christian belief and prohibits, thus, several things. The ninth commandment interdicts the community to lie by saying that ―[y]ou shall not give false testimony against your neighbor‖ (Coogan, Exod. 20.16). Also in
Leviticus, a clear position regarding the matter of lying is provided for the religious community and orders the following: ―Do not steal. Do not lie. Do not deceive one another‖ (Coogan, Lev. 19.11). The Holy Scripture and the Catholic belief, thus, strictly prohibit any form of lying and do not allow exceptions. Augustine, as a representative of the Catholic Church was convinced that ―[…] it is evident that speech was given to man, not that men might therewith deceive one another, but that one man might make known his thoughts to one another‖ (qtd. in Bok, Lying 34). God has, hence, not created the human being with the faculty to speak in order for them to be able to lie and deceive but to speak nothing else but the truth. Consequently, Augustine concluded the following: ―To use speech, then, for the purpose of deception, and not for its appointed end, is a sin‖ (qtd. in Bok, Lying 34). As stated in Baruzzi, Augustine argued that by lying human beings would not only harm each other but first and foremostly harm their soul and, thus, the divine part within themselves (46). The lie would determine the relationship between oneself and God since the act of lying equals to deicide, which means the killing of God (Baruzzi 46). In this context, Augustine does not distinguish 9 between different forms of lies (cf. chapter 2.3.) but regards all lies as condemnable
(Baruzzi 46). However, as pointed out by Bok, the cleric did consider some lies as being more condemnable than others and, therefore, developed an eight-stage hierarchy which reaches from the most abhorrent to the most pardonable lie (Lying 35, 36). If, for instance, a person tells a lie to a criminal in order to protect someone from assault, the lie can be considered less damnable than others (Bok, Lying 35). Baruzzi shows, however, that Augustine argued that if the body was harmed, less damage would be done than if one‘s soul was harmed by the act of lying (47). To allow a crime which could be prevented by a lie, is for Augustine, as a consequence, still the preferable option to being dishonest since to tell a lie always has to be regarded as a sin (Baruzzi
46). Despite the fact that in the Christian belief system altruism is to be found among the two most important values, it has to be pointed out that altruism cannot legitimate a lie even though it does not oblige automatically to speak the whole truth (Alkofer 46).
Regarding the lie‘s origin, on the basis of the New Testament Augustine refers to Satan as the father of the lie and as the creature who lies by denying God (Baruzzi 49). Satan is the one who brings the lie to the earthly world, as pointed out by Baruzzi (51). God, however, is considered the truth itself, and in the course of this, Augustine refers to
John the Baptist, who stated in the New Testament that God is the truth (Baruzzi 48).
As a result, lying leads again to deicide because the liar has taken sides with Satan, and has, therefore, committed a sin (Baruzzi 56). Augustine of Hippo, in summary, rejects all sorts of lies and does not allow any exceptions since the act of telling a lie damages one‘s soul profoundly. As a result, the liar is doomed for having acted sinfully by having told a lie.
Besides Augustine, another representative of the Christian Church reflected upon lying, namely the German cleric and author of the Protestant Reformation, Martin
Luther. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, as shown in Sommer, Martin Luther 10 supported his Christian ancestors‘ beliefs on lying and explained that lies would separate the communities, and he described them as harmful and vicious (21). However, the cleric did alter his thoughts, which were manifested, for instance, in a letter to
Landgrave Philipp of Hesse where he recommended to the aristocrat to rather lie about his double-marriage in order to avoid scandal among his people (Sommer 21).
According to his secretary, Martin Luther argued in this letter the following: ―What harm would it do, if a man told a good strong lie for the sake of the good and for the
Christian church […] a lie out of necessity, a useful lie, a helpful lie, such lies would not be against God, he would accept them‖ (qtd. in Bok, Lying 50). Luther seemingly accepts certain forms of lying given they serve a certain purpose. Hence, he does not accord with Augustine since he cannot detect anything harmful in a lie that is told with a benevolent aim and supports his statement by saying that God would even accept such a specific type of lie. Within the Christian Church and its representatives and throughout the centuries, perspectives on the topic of lying have been, thus, varying.
A more philosophical and less religious approach to the matter is provided around 1400 years after Augustine by German philosopher Immanuel Kant during the
Age of Enlightenment. In his Grundlegung zur Methaphysik der Sitten, or Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, published in 1785, which is considered the first of Kant‘s books in the field of moral philosophy, lying and its consequences are to be found among the discussed topics. For Kant, the act of lying has to be considered the greatest damage that one can do to one‘s duty toward oneself (562). Regarding terminology, the philosopher defines the term lie as being the opposite of veracity (Kant 562). Moreover, from Kant‘s point of view the act of lying is always accompanied by the loss of honor as well as by the destruction of human dignity (562). In Sissela Bok‘s book Lying:
Moral Choices in Public and Private Life, Kant is quoted the following way: ―By a lie a man throws away and, as it were, annihilates his dignity as a man‖ (Bok, Lying 34). 11
Kant, moreover, argues that there is no need for a lie to be regarded as harmful to others in order to be declared abhorrent (563). He states that pure imprudence or benevolence could be, among other things, the reason for telling a lie (Kant 563). However, to accomplish a certain purpose by telling a lie even with the most benevolent intentions needs to be considered a crime toward oneself and is, thus, not justifiable (Kant 563).
According to Baruzzi, Kant‘s view on lying can be regarded as at least as radical as
Augustine‘s (74). Baruzzi states that whereas for Augustine God is the truth, for Kant reason is the truth (74). When Augustine argues that if one lies, one‘s soul is severely damaged, Kant speaks of the loss of honor and the destruction of one‘s dignity. The
Swiss writer and politician Benjamin Constant, who lived and worked in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, dedicated himself to the question of whether lying out of philanthropy is ethically justifiable or not (Baruzzi 81). Therefore, Constant divided humankind into two groups, namely into one group which has the right to truthfulness and the second group which does not have the respective right (Baruzzi 81-
82). Criminals would count among the second group and, therefore, lying to, for instance, a murderer would be justifiable (Baruzzi 81-82). For Kant, however, this approach is invalid since the human being is subjected to the duty to be truthful to him- or herself, which cannot be withdrawn (Baruzzi 84). Both Augustine of Hippo and
Immanuel Kant, thus, reject all sorts of lies, although it could be argued that the cleric
Augustine followed a less radical notion since he developed an eight-stage hierarchy that categorizes lies regarding their gravity as more or less abhorrent. Nevertheless, both philosophers predict a gruesome future for the liar condemning him or her to either a destructed soul, as stated by Augustine, or to the loss of honor and/or dignity, as argued by Kant.
In the nineteenth century, Utilitarians set themselves apart from Kant‘s strict rejection of all lies and emphasized that there are differences with regard to the severity 12 between certain types of lies (Bok, Lying 52). A good cause or purpose would justify a deviation from the truth or would even oblige to lie if one supports the Utilitarian notion on the topic (Bok Lying 25). Utilitarians, thus, weigh the consequences and on that basis decide whether or not to lie. According to Bok, this approach to the matter of lying is, however, rapidly exhausted and, as a consequence, useless due to the complexity of most circumstances that involve lying, which impedes judging if a lie is superior to the truth or not (Lying 52). This is also due to the fact that a lie generally involves not only one but various parties and whereas lying may be the better alternative for one person, it may not be for another (Bok, Lying 52).
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund
Freud contradicted many of his contemporaries by stating that lies are not to be allocated to children only, which was the common belief at that time and is frequently to be found today as well, as stated in Bruder (7). Freud, however, moved the attention toward the adult, who serves as a role model for the child also in terms of lying, as was argued by the psychoanalyst (Bruder 7-8). He concluded that the lie of a child would only be the imitation of the behavior of a lying adult since for a child the telling of something untrue is not in his or her nature in contrast to the telling of the truth (Bruder
8). Sigmund Freud was convinced, hence, that every adult lies and described the coming of age as a process of learning how to lie (Bruder 8). He believed that the child learns how to lie from the adult and, as a consequence, the young person also considers it his or her right to tell the untruth (Bruder 8).
A more recent notion on the topic of lying was shared in the 1970s by Sissela
Bok. In her book Lying: Moral Choices in Public and Private Life, published in 1978, the philosopher, who was born in Europe but mostly educated in the United States where she has spent great parts of her private and professional life, not only provides her readers with a historical background on the topic of lying by mentioning various 13 renowned thinkers and their opinions but also intends to give a moral guideline herself by discussing various forms of lies and ethical dilemmas. At various sections of the book, Bok points out the difficulty of drawing clear lines (cf. Lying 49, 93 etc.). For instance, Bok regards Kant‘s statement that ―by a lie a man throws away and, as it were, annihilates his dignity as a man‖ (qtd. in Bok, Lying 48) as ―dramatized‖ (Lying 48) and moderates this utterance by suggesting that one could interpret it rather as ―a warning against practices of lying‖ (Lying 49). Nevertheless, Bok agrees to certain extents with
Kant and his argumentation that a liar loses his or her honor and explains that the lying person diminishes him- or herself and forfeits dignity and integrity through the act of telling a lie (Lying 49). Furthermore, she acknowledges that in some situations a lie is acceptable, in particular if telling the truth resulted in, for instance, endangering an innocent person (Lying 48). Bok also mentions the importance of discretion and silence in certain circumstances and argues that if, for example, the truth is told only to harm another person, this may be ―unforgivably cruel‖ (Lying 76) and, therefore, not more excusable than lying (Lying 76). Nevertheless, Sissela Bok can be generally said to be in favor of the idea to avoid lies unless it is the absolute better alternative, which can be observed in her book Secrets: On the Ethics of Concealment and Revelation. In the introduction she unmistakably states the following: ―I take lying to be prima facie wrong, with a negative presumption against it from the outset […]‖ (Secrets xv) and, furthermore, argues that ―every lie stands in need of justification‖ (Secrets xv). In the introduction to her book Secrets, she distinguishes between lies and secrets, admitting, though, that these subjects overlap and suggests that secrecy frequently permits lies to remain undetected (Secrets xv). Bok still argues, however, that in her opinion secrecy and lying differ by stating that, in contrast to lying, secrecy is not generally wrong and is not at all times in need of justification (Secrets xv).
In 1993, German anthropologist Volker Sommer published a book with the 14 provocative title Lob der Lüge, or In Praise of Lying, which already suggests a more positively connoted approach to the subject of lying. He argues that lying and deception are not allocated to humans only but also to animals. Sommer claims that wherever the law of to eat or to be eaten rules, camouflage, lies and deception are inevitable maxims of life (46). The predominant belief for centuries up until today that only the human species is that much deformed to betray and deceive or even kill among one‘s own kind, is, according to Sommer, incorrect (46). Also animals deceive each other when, for example, a male or a female animal aims at attracting a possible counterpart for mating and, thus, chirrs or emits certain fragrances (Sommer 46). In his book, Sommer mentions the behavior of a specific baboon that was observed and made note of by zoologist Richard Byrne in South Africa (67). A young male watched a female digging up a tuber when the male suddenly started to cry out loudly, which is usually only done by monkeys in threatening situations to warn each other (Sommer 68). The female was startled and fled and, as a result, the male was able to tranquilly eat up the tuber
(Sommer 68). The baboon was watched several times when deceiving with similar tactics others of its kind and, therefore, its behavior cannot be dismissed as a single, isolated action (Sommer 68). According to Sommer, the act of lying is, therefore, also to be found among one‘s own kind and is not reduced to the act of deceiving members of another species (68). He supports this by citing the theory of the behavioral ecologists Dawkins and Krebs, who in the mid-1970s published their book The Selfish
Gene and claimed that deception and selfish exploitation took place if the interests of the genes of differing individuals disaccorded (Sommer 52). Dawkins and Krebs state that this is also valid for individuals of the same kind and, therefore, cooperation and truthfulness should not be taken for granted (Sommer 52).
In his work Philosophie der Lüge, published in 1996, Arno Baruzzi attempts to not only give a historical overview by comparing various philosophers‘ opinions but 15 also intends to define the term lie from a less natural scientific but rather philosophical point of view. He states that when talking about lying most people know what is meant
(Baruzzi 27). In contrast to this, the term truth is more difficult to describe although both terms constantly stand in direct relation to one another and are, therefore, interrelated (Baruzzi 27). Baruzzi points out that a lie is the opposite of the truth, hence, the untruth and due to this opposition a lie is related to the truth or can be said to presuppose the truth (27-28). Lying is, hence, the negation of truth and Augustine‘s viewpoint reappears in this context when it comes to the notion that lying can be said to be a conscious and/or deliberate false utterance (Baruzzi 28). Baruzzi suggests that if someone lies, the person is aware of the fact that he or she is taking action against truth, being willing to give way to falsehood (28). The person who lies is, thus, actively altering the truth with the aim of not being detected as a liar (Baruzzi 28). If facts are left aside or ignored and comprehended and interpreted in a way that deviates from the truth, Baruzzi speaks of the denial of facts (35). By lying, facts are not perceived and identified as such and, thus, the truth is declined (Baruzzi 36-37). German philosopher
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz described two types of truths and coined the term
Tatsachenwahrheiten, or truths of facts, as well as the term Vernunftwahrheiten, or truths of reasoning, the latter standing in contrast to the former (Baruzzi 110). Truths of facts are always in direct relation to the truth and can be considered true facts based on a ground (112). Baruzzi adds the term Tatsachenlügen, or lies of facts, since he argues that facts can also be falsified and turned into lies. When the truth originates in reason or is attained via reason, Leibnitz speaks of truths of reason, which are the prevailing form of truths in philosophy and science (Baruzzi 111). In contrast to the truths of facts, truths of reason cannot always show the ultimate truth and can, therefore, be subject for contradiction (Baruzzi 112). To err regarding truths of reason entails the possibility for
16 the occurrence of wrong utterances, which implies that ultimately one cannot attain the respective truth of reason but remains ignorant (Baruzzi 113).
Due to the above mentioned, it can be concluded that lying means to twist the truth, to reverse and to falsify it as well as to give way to the untruth. Lying implies to willingly and deliberately negate and annihilate the truth. Whereas for some thinkers who discussed this matter all sorts of lies are unacceptable and, therefore, have to be rejected, others suggest that deception is part of everyday life and claim that it belongs to the human as well as the animal nature. The next chapter will dedicate itself to examine what role lying and lies play in literature and, for this purpose, a play by
Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen will be discussed in more detail.
2.2. Henrik Ibsen and the Life-Lie
In the course of this chapter, the concept of the life-lie, introduced and developed by
Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, will be presented and examined in more detail. In order to clarify the matter for later discussions on Eugene O‘Neill‘s Strange Interlude and Edward Albee‘s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, it will be attempted to find a definition for Ibsen‘s concept of the life-lie by examining examples of such life-lies in the dramatist‘s play The Wild Duck, published in 1885. Before looking at the life-lies in
The Wild Duck in more detail, the Scandinavian playwright will be briefly introduced and portrayed. Henrik Johan Ibsen, who was born in 1828 and died in 1906 in Norway, shaped and influenced European and subsequently also American drama notably. In spite of his later success, he had to reach the age of 39 before being publicly recognized as a playwright when he published his work Brand in 1867 (Ystad 142). In the following years and decades, drama became Ibsen‘s foremost genre of interest for which he is widely known up until today (Ystad 158). As suggested by Ystad, ―for
Ibsen life itself is dramatic‖ (158) and something instable, which, in consequence,
17 leaves open various options regarding choice and action (Ystad 158). Davis points out that during the phase of establishing new plays, Ibsen used to day-dream for a year or more developing his characters and their traits (161). The Norwegian himself stated that
―[his] task [was] to create human beings‖ (Davis 161) and by doing so Ibsen, as a representative of a realist playwright producing prose drama, was influencing not only his contemporaries but also the modern drama of the twentieth century in Europe and
America.
Henrik Ibsen wrote and published his play The Wild Duck1 in 1884, which was criticized for seemingly being too obscure and for leaving its audience bewildered and puzzled (Zwart 91). In The Wild Duck, Ibsen created a striking network of relationships among his protagonists. As suggested by Davis, the principal question that is investigated in The Wild Duck is: ―[H]ow much truth can a person take?‖ (165). The
Ekdal family, consisting of Hjalmar, his wife Gina and their daughter Hedvig as well as
Hjalmar‘s father, Old Ekdal, is to be found at the center of the play. Living in humble circumstances, Hjalmar works on an invention in the field of photography, which is supposed to induce the family‘s social advancement. His father, the former lieutenant
Old Ekdal, still suffers from his social downfall and has, therefore, created a replica of the woods in the apartment‘s garret, which he uses as hunting grounds. Next to rabbits and birds, also a wild duck, which serves as the eponym of the play, is to be found among the animals which inhabit the Ekdal family‘s attic. Hjalmar‘s old friend Gregers
Werle rents a room in the family‘s apartment with the intent to financially and morally support his friend. The very same is highly dependent on Gregers‘ father Werle, who
―so highly [pays]‖ (WD 217) Hjalmar‘s father, Old Ekdal, for doing copying jobs.
Hjalmar finds out about the fact that his wife, Gina, had a sexual encounter with Werle,
1 Ibsen, Henrik. The Wild Duck. Three Plays: The Pillars of the Community, The Wild Duck, Hedda Gabler. Trans. Una Ellis-Fermor. London: The Penguin Classics, 1950. Print. Hereafter abbreviated as WD with page numbers in parentheses. 18 her former employer, who ―never gave up till he had his way‖ (WD 219). On Hedvig‘s birthday, Werle writes a letter to the girl in which it is stated that her grandfather does not have to work anymore but will still receive the monthly payment. In the letter
Hedvig is, furthermore, informed about the fact that after Old Ekdal‘s death this payment will pass on to her. Thereupon, Hjalmar‘s suspicion is raised and he tears the paper in two pieces before he asks his wife whether Hedvig is his daughter or not. Gina cannot answer this question with complete certainty, which leads Hjalmar to rejecting
Hedvig as his daughter and he states, ―I have no child‖ (WD 234). Despite the fact that it is never confirmed that Werle is the biological father of Hedvig, it is strongly implied.
On the one hand Gina admitted a sexual encounter between her and her former employer and on the other hand Werle and Hedvig suffer from the same hereditary disease which eventually leads to impaired eyesight. In order for Hedvig to regain
Hjalmar‘s love, Gregers recommends to her to ―sacrifice to him the most precious thing
[she has] in the world‖ (WD 237). After having thought about it, Hedvig is determined to kill her beloved wild duck in order to win back her father‘s affection. When Hjalmar and Gina hear a shot coming from the garret, Hjalmar checks the attic where he finds
Hedvig dead on the floor. The Ekdal family‘s doctor called Relling is asked for help, for whom no alternative remains but to declare the child‘s death. In the course of the play, many of Ibsen‘s characters are directly or indirectly affected by lies. Some of these lies entail fatal consequences, of which one eventually leads to the dramatic ending of the play. Throughout this chapter, various lies which are of importance for The Wild Duck‘s storyline will be discussed as well as the implications that these lies have for Ibsen‘s characters.
The first example of a life-lie in The Wild Duck that will be discussed in this chapter applies to Hjalmar. Being a photographer, he speaks at various times about an invention that he is apparently currently working on. Relling was the one who 19 encouraged Hjalmar to develop something that had not existed in photography yet and supports him in pretending to believe in the success of his invention. In a conversation with Gregers Hjalmar states the following: ―[…] For now I shall soon finish my invention. And Relling thinks, as I do, that then Father will be allowed to wear his uniform again. I shall ask for that as my sole reward‖ (WD 202-203). Relling, hence, seems to have planted the idea of creating something of importance into Hjalmar‘s head in order for him to have something to hold on to in his life, namely the faith in a possible social advancement. Toward the end of the play, Hjalmar informs Gregers about this matter and the influence that Relling had and states the following:
HJALMAR. It was that beast Relling who inveigled me into it. GREGERS. Relling? HJALMAR. Yes, it was he who first persuaded me that I was capable of some notable invention in photography. GREGERS. Aha! It was Relling! (WD 253)
Doctor Relling, as a minor character of the play, is seemingly representing the voice of reason and appears to be the only character that is capable of recognizing that Hjalmar is lying to himself. In a conversation with Gregers he explains, ―I am trying to keep up the saving lie in him‖ (WD 243) and adds that ―[the saving] lie is the stimulating principle of life […]‖ (WD 243). The saving lie, or rather, the life-lie is, as expressed by
Relling, an essential part of Hjalmar‘s life and needs to be maintained and kept alive.
The doctor‘s attempt succeeds for a considerable amount of time during which Hjalmar strongly believes in the success of his invention, and, therefore, he can be referred to, as suggested by Davis, as ―an indulgent self-deceiver‖, who lives in ―a world of fantasy‖
(164). Toward the end of the play, however, Hjalmar discovers that he will most likely not be successful with his invention and reflects upon it in the following way:
HJALMAR. I was so thoroughly happy with that invention. Not so much because of the invention itself as because Hedvig believed in it – believed in it with all the power and strength a
20
child‘s mind is capable of. Well, that‘s to say that I, fool that I was, went about fancying that she believed in it. (WD 253)
Hjalmar, hence, seems to have lost his self-confidence as well as his happiness, which is shown when he describes himself, for instance, as a ―fool‖ (WD 253). A few pages earlier in the play, in a conversation with Gregers, Relling explains to him the following: ―Take the saving lie from the average man and you take his happiness away, too‖ (WD 244). As suggested by Kurt Sternberg, who studied Ibsen already in the early
1920s, a person‘s happiness or even the ability to endure life itself depends on the life- lie (256). In The Wild Duck, Ibsen illustrates this privation of happiness due to the revelation of truth or the recognition of reality not only when it comes to Hjalmar‘s failed invention but also with regard to the fate of his daughter, Hedvig. Before finding out about the life-lie which is about the genetic relationship between him and Hedvig,
Hjalmar discovers that his wife Gina had a sexual relationship with Werle, for whom she used to work. When Gina wants to know whether Hjalmar would have still married her if he had known about the fact that she had a sexual encounter with Werle, he negates it asking her angrily, ―How can you imagine such a thing‖ (WD 219). Hjalmar‘s suspicion then rises and he inquires, ―Does Hedvig belong to me […]?‖ (WD 234).
When his wife cannot answer this question with certainty, Hjalmar finds out about the fact that it is also possible that Werle is Hedvig‘s biological father. As a consequence of this revelation, he rejects her as his daughter which is why she ultimately commits suicide. This life-lie, which is in its core about concealing the fact that Hjalmar is most likely not Hedvig‘s biological father, emanated from Gina and her former employer
Werle. In contrast to the lie which made him belief in the success of his invention and which has grown within himself, this lie about his fatherhood has been imposed on
Hjalmar and can, hence, be considered a life-lie that has been forced upon him from the outside by his wife and Werle, who is in all likelihood the girl‘s biological father. When
21
Hjalmar finds out about his falsely believed fatherhood, he expresses his sorrow and laments, ―My home has collapsed in ruins about me. [Bursting into tears.] Gregers! I have no child!‖ (WD 234). His despair has increased to such extents that he replies to
Gina‘s request to take a look at their daughter the following: ―I won‘t. I can‘t. I must get out, away from all this!‖ (WD 235). Hjalmar‘s reaction as well as the phrase that for him his ―home has collapsed in ruins‖ (WD 234) reveal his pain and imply that everything he has believed in so far has fallen apart. In consequence, he feels the necessity of leaving and walking away from Hedvig and his wife Gina. By telling Hjalmar that he is presumably not Hedvig‘s father and by informing him about her past relationship with
Werle, Gina can be said to have taken away the saving lie, or the life-lie, from her husband and, hence, has deprived him of his happiness.
Gregers is another character that is of high importance in the course of the play due to the fact that he is, next to Relling, considerably influencing the lives of the Ekdal family. As pointed out by Davis, Gregers attempts to bring about ―welfare‖ or even
―salvation‖ (165) for his oldest friend Hjalmar by interfering notably in his life. In the following scene between Gregers and Hjalmar one can witness, as is described by
Davis, how the former intends to save the latter like a ―dog who dives down to rescue the maimed duck‖ (165):
GREGERS. My dear Hjalmar, I rather fancy you have a strain of the wild duck in you. HJALMAR. Of the wild duck? How? What do you mean? GREGERS. You‘ve dived down and bitten fast hold of the weeds on the sea-bed. HJALMAR. You mean, I suppose, that all but fatal blow that maimed my father, and me too? GREGERS. Not so much that. I don‘t say you‘re wounded. But you‘ve landed in a poisonous swamp, Hjalmar. You‘ve got an insidious disease in you, and you‘ve dived to the bottom to die in the dark. HJALMAR. I? Die in the dark? Now, look here, Gregers, you really mustn‘t talk such nonsense. GREGERS. Don‘t worry. I‘ll see you come up again. I have a purpose in life too now, you see; I found it yesterday. (WD 204)
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Gregers implies, hence, that he has found a ―purpose in life‖ (WD 204) which aims at saving Hjalmar, whom he compares to the formerly stuck wild duck that now lives in the garret of the Ekdal family. Gregers‘ determined way of bringing salvation to
Hjalmar and his family and his constant intrusion into the Ekdal family‘s lives may have had a considerable impact on Hedvig‘s death. This is due to the fact that Gregers recommends to Hedvig, who is then still alive, to do the following if she wants to make up for her father‘s disappointment:
GREGERS. But suppose, now, that you, of your own free will, sacrificed the wild duck for his sake? HEDVIG. The wild duck! GREGERS. Supposing that you were to give up, as a sacrifice to him, the most precious thing you have in the world? HEDVIG. Do you think that would help? GREGERS. Try it, Hedvig HEDVIG. Yes, I will try it. (WD 237)
Instead of striking the wild duck, however, Hedvig shoots herself if one believes
Relling‘s evaluation, who states that ―[n]o one is ever going to persuade me this was an accident‖ (WD 259) and points out that ―[t]he charge has burnt her dress. She must have held the pistol right against her breast and fired‖ (WD 259). Gina and Werle‘s life-lie imposed on Hjalmar and his subsequent reaction as well as Gregers‘ well-intended but failed recommendation that he made to Hedvig, result in a tragedy for the Ekdal family that is the girl‘s death. As suggested by Han, in the end Gregers himself has to face reality and give up his life-lie, which is about the idea that Hjalmar is a ―heroic, uncompromising and truth-seeking‖ (175) person. Gregers attempts to convince Relling that ―Hedvig has not died in vain‖ and asks the doctor if he ―[saw] how sorrow called out what was noblest in him‖ (WD 259). Relling replies dryly that ―[m]ost people are noble in the presence of death‖ and interrogates how long he thinks ―this nobility will last in [Hjalmar]‖ (WD 259). Convincingly Gregers answers, ―Surely it will last and
23 increase all his life‖, to which Relling only responds that ―[b]efore the year is out little
Hedvig will be nothing more to him than a fine subject to declaim on‖ (WD 259). Upset,
Gregers replies, ―And you dare to say that of Hjalmar Ekdal!‖ (WD 259). Relling predicts that ―[they] will talk about it again when the first grass is showing on her grave.
Then [Gregers]‘ll hear [Hjalmar] delivering himself of fine phrases about ‗the child torn untimely from her father‘s heart‘, and see him wallowing in emotion and self-pity‖ (WD
259). His illusion being shattered, Gregers answers, ―If you are right and I am wrong, then life is not worth living‖ (WD 260). Relling answers thereupon that ―[…] life would be tolerable enough, even so, if we could only be rid of these infernal duns who come to us poor people‘s doors with their claim of the ideal‖ (WD 260).
In The Wild Duck, Ibsen does not only address the consequences that lies may entail but also discusses which role ideals play in the lives of certain characters.
Hjalmar‘s father, Old Ekdal, for instance, pursues various ideals which are connected to his past and has, on the basis of these ideals, carefully constructed a life-lie, which enables him to lead a life in which he can be happy with his current situation. He imposes this life-lie on himself in order to be able to cope with the fact that he is not the lieutenant anymore he used to be and it helps him to deal with his social downfall. This social downfall involves not only Old Ekdal himself but also the rest of his family, especially Hjalmar, who had to give up his studies and become a photographer instead
(Sternberg 257). As pointed out by Sternberg, both father and son disavow reality, as does Hjalmar when believing in the success of his invention and, therefore, being able to get over his dropout of university (256-257). They fixate on the time before their social downfalls, as stated by Han, escaping into the life-lie they have constructed (174) and as a result of living with this life-lie they are capable of withstanding their current situation. In order to be able to return to the time when he was still the reputable lieutenant, Old Ekdal retreats into the garret of the family‘s home where he has arranged 24 the replica of the woods (Sternberg 257). Whenever feeling the need to return to his old life, Old Ekdal puts on his lieutenant uniform, which he is not allowed to wear in public anymore, and goes hunting in the garret to now and then shoot one of the animals. In a conversation between the family‘s doctor Relling and Gregers, the reader gets an insight into how Old Ekdal lives with this life-lie and how it shows:
RELLING. Well, what do you make of it – a bear-hunter going rabbit-shooting in that dark attic? There isn‘t a happier sportsman in the world than that old man, pottering about in there among all that rubbish. The four or five dried-up Christmas trees that he‘s kept are the same to him as all the great, growing forests of Höidal; the cock and the hens were wild birds in the pine tops; and the rabbits loping about the floor of the loft, those are the bears he grappled with when he was a vigorous man under the open sky. GREGERS. Poor, unhappy old Lieutenant Ekdal; yes. He‘s certainly had to let go the ideals of his youth. (WD 243-244)
Old Ekdal recreated, thus, his former life by installing this replica of the woods in his attic and, as stated by Han, is in this separated area ―able to fixate the past in a space of infinite exposure time, kept strictly apart from the destructive light of the public‖ (173).
Han suggests that the garret, a dark and dreary room, can be understood as a metaphor for the reluctance of both Hjalmar and his father, Old Ekdal, to face reality (174). By pretending that the chickens are ―wild birds in the pine tops‖ (WD 244) and the rabbits correspond to the bears he used to hunt, Old Ekdal is capable of returning to his former life and, therefore, as Relling describes it, he is able to be content and happy with his current situation. This leads back to Henrik Ibsen‘s notion which is concerned with the idea that if one takes away the life-lie of an average person, one also takes away that person‘s happiness. Old Ekdal‘s happiness seems to depend on the ability to escape into this world in the garret, which he himself created, by pretending to be still the old, hunting lieutenant he used to be.
When focusing on Gregers‘ notion that Old Ekdal ―had to let go the ideals of his youth‖ (WD 244), Relling interestingly answers the following:
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RELLING. While I remember it, young Mr Werle – don‘t use that exotic word ‗ideals‘. We have a good enough native word: ‗lies‘. GREGERS. Do you mean that the two things are related? RELLING. Yes. Like typhus and typhoid fever. (WD 243-244)
With this statement, Relling pronounces Old Ekdal‘s unwillingness to accept reality and underlines the fact that the former lieutenant lies to himself by aspiring to his ideal of being a good hunter and a renowned public person, which he can currently only be in the garret. This dialogue between Relling and Gregers implies Henrik Ibsen‘s concept of the life-lie and also seemingly anticipates later studies on the notions of self-image and self-ideal. Therefore, it is of interest for this thesis to briefly focus on self-concepts and self-ideals. As described by Krumbein‘s book Selbstbild und Männlichkeit, the self- concept can be comprehended as the integrated and structured totality of self-evaluation and self-assessment and the totality of experiences, which a person recalls directly or indirectly (24). Apart from the self-concept, self-image and self-ideal are concepts which were developed in the field of social identity theory, as pointed out by Krumbein
(26). The self-image is occupied with the question of how a human being reflects on him- or herself and also how the person reflects on the abilities and roles which he or she ascribes to him- or herself (Krumbein 27). The term self-ideal, however, as described by Krumbein, expresses, in contrast to the self-concept and self-image, the idea of how a person ideally visualizes him- or herself (27). The self-ideal can, however, be altered and shaped in ways which do not necessarily correlate with reality and, in Relling‘s words, can, therefore, be considered ―‗lies‘‖ (WD 244). Researchers in the field of self-concept theory claim that a strained relationship exists between the self- image and the self-ideal (Krumbein 26). Discrepancies between self-image and self- ideal can occur and if there is a large nonconformity between the two, inner-psychic tensions may develop which can trigger anxiety and lead to a decrease of self-esteem
(Krumbein 26). When transferring this theoretical approach to Old Ekdal, one may
26 argue that by wearing his old lieutenant uniform and by hunting in the garret and, thus, by living his life-lie, he is capable of acting out his self-ideal. It seems likely that if one took away these trips into the past from him, a discrepancy between self-image and self- ideal, as described above, could occur and lead to a deprivation of happiness.
In addition to Hjalmar, also Hedvig is withheld certain information due to the fact that other characters believe that she would suffer if she knew the truth. The girl is not only living with the life-lie her mother, Gina, imposed on her regarding her biological father but is also lied to with respect to her physical health. In a conversation between Hjalmar, Gina and Gregers, Hjalmar explains that Hedvig is ―in grave danger of losing her eyesight‖ (WD 176). He adds, ―There are only the first signs showing as yet; and it may be all right for a time still. But the doctor has warned us. It‘s bound to come‖ (WD 176). Gregers inquires how Hedvig deals with her disease and Hjalmar replies that he and his wife ―haven‘t the heart to tell her a thing like that. She doesn‘t suspect anything. Gay and light-hearted as she is, singing like a little bird, she is fluttering into a life of everlasting night‖ (WD 176). Both Hjalmar and his wife Gina cannot bear the thought of telling Hedvig the truth about her physical state but prefer to leave her unsuspecting. They seem to fear, as expressed by Hjalmar when describing
Hedvig as ―gay‖ and ―light-hearted‖ (WD 176), that her happiness and lightheartedness may suffer if she finds out about her diagnosis. Since Hjalmar and Gina do not actively tell Hedvig a lie when it comes to her disease but keep it a secret, one may argue that they do not impose a life-lie on her but rather tell her a lie of omission, since information is withheld from Hedvig. In chapter 2.3. this form of lie will be, among others, further explained.
Considering the above, a life-lie can be defined to be ―the stimulating principle of life‖, to put it in Relling‘s words (WD 243). As pointed out by Sommer, this form of deception has a stabilizing function for the person‘s life, as has been shown in various 27 psychotherapeutic practices (145). With the help of life-lies, hence, a personality can be stabilized and even have, in extreme cases, a life-saving function (Sommer 145). The life-lie, thus, forms an essential part of that person‘s life and needs to be preserved in order to maintain his or her happiness. Also Sternberg points out that a person‘s happiness or even the ability to endure life itself depends on the life-lie (256). In the course of psychotherapy, as stated by Sommer, confronting a person who lives a life-lie with reality is a complex and time-consuming process that requires cautiousness on behalf of the therapist (145). As can be observed from the examples in The Wild Duck elaborated on above, not only do life-lies that originate in self-deception exist but also life-lies that are imposed on a person by others. In this thesis those two types will be referred to as the intrinsic life-lie on the one hand and the extrinsic life-lie on the other hand. Hjalmar and his failed invention, in whose success he used to believe in by lying to himself, his father, Old Ekdal, who holds on to the ideal of his youth, unwilling to accept his social downfall, as well as Gregers, who is unable to see the real Hjalmar but only an idealized version of him, can be said to live intrinsic life-lies since they impose them on themselves. An intrinsic life-lie, hence, originates within the person who can be said to lie to him- or herself in order to be able to cope with reality and lead a content or happy life. When, on the contrary, observing Gina‘s and also Werle‘s lie regarding
Hjalmar‘s falsely believed fatherhood, it has to be noted that they actively impose their life-lie on Hjalmar. The person who is being lied to transmutes into the role of the ignorant whose happiness relies on the life-lie which was forced on him or her from the outside and originated, hence, independently from this person.
Before the role of the life-lie and its implications will be examined in the plays by Eugene O‘Neill and Edward Albee, the next chapter will intend to elaborate on the differences between conventional forms of lying, such as white lies, lies of omission and commission, and the life-lie discussed above. 28
2.3. Lying versus Life-Lies
When examining Sissela Bok‘s fifth chapter ―White Lies‖ of her book Lying, one finds that, according to her, white lies are ―the most common and the most trivial forms that duplicity can take‖ (60). As pointed out by Talwar et al., in spite of the fact that a white lie is substantially a form of deception, it has to be considered a ―prosocial‖ (1) one since it functions as an everyday way of preserving social relationships (1). Certain set phrases, such as ―How nice to see you!‖ (Bok 61), are at certain points of a conversation taken for granted and not questioned with respect to their truthfulness. Even though the speaker may not have the expressed feelings, in a Western society pure honesty would be considered as inappropriate in situations which require such a certain set phrase (Bok
61). Bok argues that the usage of set phrases, such as ―How nice to see you!‖ (61), is justifiable since the interlocutor is not deceived but aware of the function of such a phrase, that is politeness (61). Other forms of white lies which Bok categorizes as harmless lies include, for instance, the making of insincere compliments, the thanking for presents that are not wanted or the pretending of not having time to see someone even though this does not correlate with reality (61). For Bok, all those white lies are excusable as long as they do not occur excessively (61-62). According to Baruzzi, a white lie can even be considered beneficial since it may lead to common welfare (98).
In D‘Agata‘s entry on white lies in the Encyclopedia of Deception, she provides a definition that argues that ―[a] white lie is a form of deceit that is generally socially acceptable because it holds the potential to prevent or minimize another person‘s emotional pain‖ (936) and supports a similar notion on the matter as do Bok and
Baruzzi.
As other types of lies, the so-called lies of omission or commission can be named, which are, though different in their nature, related to one another. As stated by
Levine et al., lies of omission refer to the act of deliberately depriving someone of 29 information or staying taciturn (30) (cf. Hjalmar and Gina remaining silent regarding
Hedvig‘s gradual blindness). In their article, Levine et al. mention a frequently discussed issue regarding lies of omission when it comes to physicians questioning themselves whether withholding the information of a deadly diagnosis from a generally optimistic and still hopeful patient is more reasonable than being completely honest
(29). A doctor may instead of only omitting the truth as well deceive the patient actively and tell a lie of commission, which can be considered a prosocial lie, with the aim of offering hope and comfort, as suggested by Levine et al. (30). As pointed out by Bok, physicians sometimes tell their patients a lie not necessarily to help them but rather with the aim to prevent them from being harmed, which is to be found among her four principles that excuse lying (82). Levine et al. observed in experiments that when it comes to evaluating whether omitting information is acceptable or not, opinions on this matter differ between sender and receiver (30). Withholding information and, thus, telling a lie of omission can be said to be generally more acceptable for the respective sender (Levine et al. 30). In contrast, many of the participants who were told a lie of commission or were withheld certain information considered a comforting lie more acceptable than being entirely deprived of the respective knowledge, as was also reported to apply to medical contexts (Levine et al. 30).
If one compares white lies or lies of commission or omission to life-lies, the main difference that can be observed is in all likelihood the degree of influence that the lie has on the person‘s life. Whereas on the one hand white-lies are regarded as the most common and trivial form of lies and of ―little moral import‖ (Bok 61) and lies of commission or omission, if prosocial, are usually told with a benevolent intention
(Levine et al. 30), a life-lie on the other hand gravely and lastingly affects a person‘s life. Another difference that characterizes the life-lie but not the other mentioned types of lies, which are always in need of a sender and receiver, is that a life-lie does not 30 necessarily depend on an exterior influence but can be established and kept alive by a single person in form of self-deception. This absence of an exterior influence applies to the intrinsic life-lie. As pointed out by von Hippel and Trivers, to persuade oneself of the truthfulness of a lie can be considered as ―[t]he classic form of self-deception‖ (10).
Furthermore, the life-lie provides the concerned person with a certain degree of stability in life and secures his or her happiness. Von Hippel and Trivers argue that a certain degree of happiness positively affects one‘s social as well as financial accomplishment
(12). Furthermore, the life-lie, being either extrinsic or intrinsic, takes up an immense amount of space in the person‘s life and influences his or her happiness considerably and is, therefore, in stark contrast to other forms of lies. Moreover, it has to be mentioned that whereas conventional forms of lies, such as white lies, emerge suddenly and arbitrarily in random moments, life-lies are carefully erected constructs which are formed and maintained over a long period.
Henrik Ibsen and his well-elaborated concept of the life-lie in his play The Wild
Duck have considerably influenced in consequence various American playwrights.
Among these, Eugene O‘Neill is to be found, who was considerably impacted by the
Scandinavian playwright (Krasner 270). With O‘Neill and his plays the literary genre of drama made its way to America (Dukore 1-2). Before O‘Neill, at the beginning of the twentieth century, American theater productions were said to have been ―mostly unsophisticated, sentimental, puerile and hopelessly contrived‖ (Dukore 6) and did not aim for stimulating the audience intellectually but strived for ―harmless entertainment‖
(Dukore 5). Theaters would then gradually start to import European drama productions such as plays by Ibsen (Dukore 9). Additionally, universities started to provide their students with drama courses, for instance, at Harvard University, where George Pierce
Baker was the first who begun to teach drama (Dukore 9). Among Baker‘s students one encounters Eugene O‘Neill, who was encouraged and inspired greatly by his teacher 31
(Dukore 9). As pointed out by Dukore, O‘Neill explained that his goal was to create plays of artistic value, which had not been the general aim of plays shown on Broadway at that time, which rather strived for economic gains (15). In the following years,
O‘Neill celebrated many successes with his, for the time, unusual plays (Bigsby,
Edward Albee 4). After his death in 1953, however, American theater seemed to have found itself in a standstill (Bigsby, Edward Albee 4). Among those who were given the task of ―rescuing the American theatre‖, Edward Albee is to be found. He ―introduced a verbal facility and a dramatic power‖ (Bigsby, Edward Albee 5), which was not seen since O‘Neill. Many of Henrik Ibsen‘s characters, also in The Wild Duck, are stuck in a self-deceptive behavior (Whitaker 713) as are several of Edward Albee‘s. Although the approach to the life-lie differs, as will be explained below, Ibsen‘s concept of the life-lie can be said to have had considerable impact on Albee‘s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.
The next two chapters will discuss in what form life-lies occur in Eugene O‘Neill‘s
Strange Interlude and Edward Albee‘s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and how the characters are affected by them.
3. Eugene O’Neill’s Strange Interlude and the Life-Lie
This chapter aims at examining the role of the life-lie in Eugene O‘Neill‘s Strange
Interlude2 and will, furthermore, focus on the implications that the respective life-lies have for the characters‘ happiness. Before this, however, information on the playwright and his literary influences as well as an overview of the play‘s plot and characters will be provided as an introduction to this chapter.
2 O‘Neill, Eugene. Strange Interlude. 1928. London: Nick Hern Books, 1991. Print. Hereafter abbreviated as SI with page numbers in parentheses.
32
3.1. Eugene O’Neil: Life and Legacy of the First Great American Dramatist
Eugene O‘Neill, who was born in 1888 as the third child of the traveling actor James
O‘Neill and his wife Ella Quinlan, experienced a childhood without the possibility to strike roots and with a mother who suffered from morphine addiction (Dymkowski,
Biographical Sketch v, vi). As pointed out by Dymkowski in her biographical sketch of
Eugene O‘Neill, as a consequence of her addiction, his mother withdrew more and more from reality (Biographical Sketch vi). In his early twenties, the author himself suffered from severe depressions, which led to a suicide attempt in 1912 (Dymkowski,
Biographical Sketch vii). In the same year he contracted tuberculosis whereupon he was bound to spend half a year in a sanatorium and in consequence had time to read and eventually decided to become a playwright (Dymkowski, Biographical Sketch vii).
Writing is said to have had a soothing and curative effect on the rootless O‘Neill, who attempted to come to terms with his personal miseries by creating his prevalently autobiographical characters and is said to have explained that ―[w]riting is [his] vacation from living‖ (qtd. in Dymkowski, Biographical Sketch x). In spite of the fact that
Strange Interlude is not to be found among the author‘s most prototypical autobiographical plays, many of the characters are said to be compositions of several of
O‘Neill‘s acquaintances, who in the course of the play undergo experiences that are based on his own (Dymkowski, Introduction xiii). In addition to O‘Neill‘s personal experiences, the playwright is said to have studied works of psychoanalyst Sigmund
Freud during the creation of his play, which influenced his writing process considerably
(Dymkowski, Introduction xii). As pointed out by Clark, in Strange Interlude O‘Neill was capable of showing the audience and the critics that he understood how to portray some of the intricacies ―of the human mind and heart‖ (112).
Completed in 1927, Strange Interlude was first performed in New York City in
1928 confronting its audience with an unusual nine-act and five-hour performance that 33 included a dinner break and works with unconventional artistic features, such as the thought asides (Dymkowski, Introduction xii, xiv-xv). By means of this technique,
O‘Neill managed to put the characters‘ thoughts onto the stage by freezing the other actors while the ones at the center of attention were enabled to speak out loud what they had on their minds (Dymkowski, Introduction xiv). The playwright commented on this technique by stating that he decided to make ―the thinking aloud … more important than the actual talking‖ (qtd. in Dymkowski, Introduction xii). Regarding O‘Neill‘s asides, he is said to have annotated in a conversation with Clark, author of Eugene
O’Neill: The Man and his Plays, the following: ―My people speak aloud what they think and what the others aren‘t supposed to hear. They talk in prose, realistic or otherwise – blank verse or hexameter or rhymed couplets‖ (111). In the opinions of some critics including Clark, O‘Neill has, however, overloaded his play with thought asides and protracted it unnecessarily, and, therefore, Clark argues that half of the words expressed in the asides would have been dispensable (115). In spite of this and other negative critiques, Strange Interlude was Eugene O‘Neill‘s most successful play during his lifetime (Dymkowski, Introduction xii) bestowing on the playwright a ―Broadway hit‖ and his third Pulitzer Prize (Dymkowski, Introduction xv).
In the nine acts of Strange Interlude, O‘Neill portrays the life of Nina Leeds, later Evans, with all its complications and intricacies in a time frame that spans twenty- seven or -eight years, as noticed in Clark (112). After having lost her first love and fiancé Gordon Shaw in the First World War and with him the chance of consuming their love, her pursuit of happiness for herself and other people in her social environment determines her later life. In the first act and in a sense of regret that she and Gordon acted according to her conservative father‘s will and did not consume their love, Nina decides to ―find a way to give [her]self to Gordon still‖ (SI 16) and has, as a nurse, various sexual encounters with men that were wounded in World War I. Nina attempts 34 to explain her actions to her father, Professor Leeds, and the family friend Charles
Marsden and argues, ―[…] they are sick and I must give my health to help them to live on, and to live on myself. […] I must pay for my cowardly treachery to Gordon!‖ (SI
13). In act two, Nina loses her father and the audience is introduced to Nina‘s future husband, Sam Evans, who is depicted as a boyish, weak character with little self- confidence, as well as to Edmund Darrell, frequently referred to as Ned, who represents the cool and observant doctor with dark, analytical eyes, who considers himself immune to love (cf. SI 22, 26). In a conversation with Marsden, whom Nina started to call
―father‖ after Professor Leed‘s death, the audience gets to know why she wants to marry
Evans.
NINA. Sam is a nice boy. Yes, it would be a career for me to bring a career to his surface. I would be busy – surface life – no more depths, please God! But I don‘t love him, Father. MARSDEN. But you like him, Nina. And he loves you devotedly. And it‘s time you were having children – and when children come, love comes, you know. NINA. I want children. I must become a mother so I can give myself. (SI 37)
From this marriage with Sam, Nina seems to be expecting a chance to stay occupied on the one hand and the possibility to bear a child and become a mother on the other hand.
A seemingly changed and, as the audience gets to know in the course of act three, pregnant Nina and her husband Sam visit his mother Mrs. Evans, who has portentous news for her daughter-in-law. Although Sam does not know about the pregnancy yet,
Mrs. Evans asks Nina whether she is expecting a child and, as she confirms, Mrs. Evans strongly advises her that ―[she] can‘t go on‖ (SI 47) and informs Nina about ―the curse of the Evanses‖ trying to explain that madness runs in the family (SI 48). She, furthermore, tells Nina that Sam does not know about the madness and suggests, in order to avoid that Sam passes on his genes, that she finds herself ―a man, a healthy male to breed‖ (SI 51) in order to ―[…] have a healthy baby – some time – so [they] can both be happy‖ (SI 52). Nina is persuaded by Sam‘s mother and aborts the baby in order
35 to conceive Edmund Darrell‘s child. In an aside, Darrell shares his thoughts with the audience and ponders, ―[…] in the interest of Science, I can be, for the purpose of this experiment, a healthy guinea-pig myself and still remain an observer‖ (SI 70). The doctor, furthermore, recommends to Nina the following: ―Sam‘s wife should find a healthy father for Sam‘s child at once. It is her sane duty to her husband‖ (SI 70). In act five, Nina is again pregnant and confesses her love for Darrell and suggests a marriage.
However, the doctor declines since his career is of more importance to him and he also reminds Nina of her duty toward Sam and his happiness. In act six, Nina‘s son, whom they named after Gordon Shaw, is about a year old when Sam is on the verge of becoming a successful businessman. Darrell returns after a year without having had any contact with Nina, their son Gordon, or Sam and the former lovers begin a sexual relationship again. Nina then asserts that this is probably ―the nearest [they] can come to making everyone happy‖ (SI 108). In act seven, Gordon‘s eleventh birthday is celebrated and the audience finds out about the difficult relationship between Darrell and his son on the one hand and about how well Gordon and Sam, who has in the meantime become a successful, self-confident businessman being in stark contrast to the person he used to be in act two, get along on the other hand. Act eight is set ten years later on Sam‘s motor-cruiser from where Gordon, who has become a remarkable athlete, is being watched during a rudder competition in which he participates. Also Gordon‘s girlfriend Madeline is watching, and Nina, due to her jealousy, finds herself on the verge of telling her future daughter-in-law about the madness that runs in Sam‘s family despite the fact that Gordon is not genetically related to Sam. Only Darrell is capable of preventing Nina from ―ruin[ing] [his] son‘s life‖ (SI 148). In the final, ninth act, Sam has just died and, hence, his family including Darrell and Marsden gather at his funeral.
Regarding Charles Marsden, it has to be noted that he has never left Nina‘s side due to his fatherly love and devotion for her. In the final scene, Nina decides to marry Marsden 36 despite the lack of romantic feelings for him, who states, ―So let you and me forget the whole distressing episode, regard it as an interlude, of trial and preparation, say, in which our souls have been scraped clean of impure flesh and made worthy to bleach in peace‖ (SI 167). Nina responds, bringing in the title of the drama, by stating the following: ―Strange interlude! Yes, our lives are merely strange dark interludes in the electrical display of God the Father!‖ (SI 167). Also Darrell accepts Nina‘s wedding plans and is not hesitating to encourage her by saying, ―I leave you to Charlie. You‘d better marry him, Nina – if you want peace. And after all, I think you owe it to him for his lifelong devotion‖ (SI 164).
Strange Interlude is, thus, about the story of Nina, who is, as suggested by
Glicksberg, revolting against her father and the Puritan values he represents (74). Nina, being a passionate as well as unconventional woman, and her relationships with the four men Charles Marsden, Ned Darrell, Sam Evans and her son Gordon, who can be considered a reincarnation of her first love Gordon Shaw for sharing the same name and athletic traits, are to be found at the center of the play (Winchester 67). As described by
Clark, Nina is a person for whom ―no one man is enough‖ (113), gaining, as depicted in
Winchester, a ―momentary sense of the complete fulfillment of feminine desires‖ (68) before she progressively loses one man after the other (68). When Nina is beat by time and her age (Clark 113), the only person who does not desert her is Charles Marsden, whom she asks, ―Will you let me rot away in peace?‖ (SI 165). Toward the end of the play, Nina‘s desire for a peaceful last chapter in her life is stronger than any other wish, as is confirmed when she states in the final scene, ―Peace! … yes … that is all I desire
… I can no longer imagine happiness‖ (SI 164). Nina then recognizes that for her the pursuit of a happy life is not an option anymore but only the striving for a peaceful one, which Marsden promises to give her. Throughout the play, happiness and how to preserve this state are to be found among the most discussed issues. It is not surprising, 37 therefore, that the term happiness is the most repeated word of the play, as pointed out by Grabher (360). During Nina‘s lifelong battle for ―making everyone happy‖ (SI 108), she extensively interferes in various people‘s lives by making use of various means, a procedure which in the end has decisive implications for her own happiness. Among these means Nina employs a life-lie which considerably affects herself as well as the lives of her family and friends. In the following chapter it will be examined, how
Eugene O‘Neill presents her life-lie in Strange Interlude and how other characters of the play are influenced by Nina‘s or their own life-lies. In addition to that, focus will be laid on the consequences that the life-lies entail and it will be observed which impact they have on the respective characters‘ happiness.
3.2. Life-Lies in Strange Interlude
This chapter will discuss the various life-lies and their implications that can be observed in Eugene O‘Neill‘s Strange Interlude and examine what role the characters play and how they are directly or indirectly connected to the respective life-lies. For this purpose, chapter 2.3. with the definition of the life-lie will serve as a reference and this section will, thus, follow the differentiation between the extrinsic and intrinsic life-lie.
3.2.1. Extrinsic Life-Lies in Strange Interlude
The first extrinsic life-lie that can be observed in O‘Neill‘s Strange Interlude involves
Mrs. Evans and her son Sam and ―the curse of the Evanses‖ (SI 48). In act three, the audience gets to know that Mrs. Evans has never told Sam about the madness that runs in his father‘s family‘s genes and, thus, also in his own genes, which leaves Sam in the position of the ignorant. When the newly-wed couple visits Sam‘s mother, Nina is, in contrast to her husband, informed about the insanity because Mrs. Evans is concerned about the mental health of the unborn child. Sam is, hence, not only unaware of the fact that a hereditary disease runs in his family but is also left uninformed about his wife‘s
38 pregnancy. His mother, who has detected in an instant that Nina is pregnant, recommends to her daughter-in-law not to bear the child. In a conversation between the two women, Nina and Mrs. Evans discuss the following:
NINA. I don‘t believe you! I don‘t believe Sam would ever have married me if he knew –!‖ MRS EVANS. Who said Sammy knew? He don‘t know a single thing about it! That‘s been the work of my life, keeping him from knowing. (SI 49)
Mrs. Evans has made it her lifelong task to keep away that specific information from
Sam and, therefore, ―told him his father was sick‖ (SI 49) and sent her son off to boarding school. Instead of communicating the truth, that is that his father ―couldn‘t keep up any more living in fear for Sammy‖ (SI 49) and was mentally ill, Mrs. Evans eventually told her son that his father had died although he was in hospital and did not pass away before Sam‘s second year at college (cf. SI 49). As is pointed out by Grabher,
Mrs. Evans, thus, decided for her son that he was not able to deal with the truth, and so she is to be found among the first characters that meddle considerably with Sam‘s life and modify and shape it severely (359). Mrs. Evans is convinced that the act of imposing this life-lie on her son is his only chance for living a happy life and, hence, sees, as suggested by Winchester, ―happiness as a guiding principle‖ (75) for Sam‘s life.
When trying to explain herself and her viewpoint on life and happiness, Mrs. Evans shares her thoughts with Nina , which represent a typical hedonistic point of view of the
1920s (Winchester 75):
MRS EVANS. Being happy, that‘s the nearest we can ever come to knowing what‘s good! Being happy, that‘s good! […] Whatever you can do to make him happy is good – is good, Nina! I don‘t care what! You‘ve got to have a healthy baby – some time – so you can both be happy! It‘s your rightful duty!‖ (SI 52)
Since in the decade of the 1920s, as pointed out by Winchester, society grew more prosperous, enjoyed greater mobility and more free time, people started to feel the necessity of expressing themselves and started to pursue ―experiences which brought a direct sense of pleasure‖ (75). Mrs. Evans and her hedonistic spirit, for whom happiness 39 is the greatest good, encourage Nina to strive for her own and for her husband‘s happiness by choosing to take the suitable means and actions. Sam‘s mother justifies her suggestions to Nina and the fact that she has imposed a life-lie on her son by emphasizing that her only wish is that he and Nina lead a happy life. Mrs. Evans conceals from her son, thus, the fact that a sickness runs in his father‘s family and also convinces Nina to keep this information from him. In addition to that, Mrs. Evans strongly advises her to secretly abort Sam‘s unborn child and instead conceive a baby from another man with the intent to make Sam believe that it is his child. In spite of the fact that God could argue, ―It‘d be a sin, adultery, the worst sin,‖ (SI 52) Mrs. Evans states that it will ―be easy for [Nina]‖ (SI 52) given that her daughter-in-law does not
―believe in God the Father‖ (SI 52). Mrs. Evans also states that she has lost her faith in
God although she ―used to be a great one for worrying about what‘s God and what‘s devil, but [she] got richly over it living [t]here with poor folks that was being punished for no sins of their own, and [her] being punished with them for no sin but loving much‖ (SI 52). Mrs. Evans has stopped believing in God due to the suffering she has witnessed in her personal and also public life (Glicksberg 76). God, hence, does not play a moral role anymore for her since she has substituted God for happiness ―as the ultimate value in life‖ (Grabher 356). Mrs. Evans attempts to convince Nina with another argument that shall justify an abortion and claims, ―[I]f I‘d never had Sammy
I‘d never have loved Sammy – or missed him, would I?‖ (SI 49). On the basis of the previously mentioned reasons and Mrs. Evans‘ moral guideline, where happiness is considered the ―nearest we can ever come to knowing what‘s good‖ (SI 52), she legitimates the suggestions she has made to Nina and justifies why the telling of a life- lie, which includes an abortion and adultery with the purpose to conceive a child from another man, is morally acceptable since the ultimate goal to preserve Sam‘s happiness remains. As a consequence, Nina‘s battle for being happy, a state which she considers 40
―[her] right … and [her] duty!‖ (SI 52), and her aim to make also Sam happy are dependent on whether she sticks to the lie about the child‘s father for the rest of her life or not. When reconsidering Ibsen‘s notion that if you ―[t]ake the [life-lie] from the average man […] you take his happiness away, too‖ (WD 244), one finds that Mrs.
Evans and later also Nina support this viewpoint since they feel that Sam‘s happiness as well as his mental sanity are dependent on the life-lie.
As a result of Mrs. Evans‘ suggestion, Nina is convinced that she cannot bear the unborn baby and decides to abort the child without ever informing her husband about her first pregnancy. In spite of the fact that for Nina ―it was hard even to keep on living
… after that operation‖ (SI 58), she is more determined than ever to become a mother and, in the course of act four, she manages to make Ned Darrell agree to father her child without ever bringing the matter to Sam‘s knowledge. Darrell then persuades himself that he can remain in the role of the scientist and the observer and justifies his decision to help Nina by saying, ―[y]es – yes, Nina – yes – for your happiness – in that spirit!‖
(SI 73). Darrell‘s attempt to view his sexual encounters with Nina as rational, scientific acts fail since in the end he is ―carried away by his irrational craving for happiness‖
(Glicksberg 77) and holds on to his hope, as shown in an aside, that ―[he] shall be happy for a while! …‖ (SI 73). Darrell claims, thus, that he agrees to Nina‘s plan in order to make her happy but in this thought aside it is revealed that he himself strives for moments of happiness. In act four, this love-triangle, or, as suggested by Grabher, ―this triangle of life-lies‖ (356), which includes Mrs. Evans, Nina and now also Darrell, finds its beginning and leaves Sam in the role of the naïve and unsuspecting party. After they have come to their agreement, Darrell, who is a good friend of Sam‘s and the one who made Nina and Sam acquainted with one another, speaks to Nina in the following way:
―Certainly Sam‘s wife must conceal her action! To let Sam know would be insanely cruel of her – and stupid, for then no one could be the happier for her act!‖ (SI 70). 41
What can be observed here is that Darrell does not address Nina directly in the second person but deliberately in the third person. During the conversation about conceiving a child, Nina refers to herself in the third person as well and explains her plan ―[o]f picking out a healthy male about whom she cared nothing and having a child by him that Sam would believe was his child, whose life would give him confidence in his own living, who would be for him a living proof that his wife loved him‖ (SI 69) to her soon- to-be lover Darrell. This form of illeism, that is, as explained in Moreno et al., referring to oneself ―using a third-person narrative form‖ (627) is applied by Nina and Darrell to create a distance between themselves and their planned actions. They view themselves, thus, ―from a self-distanced perspective‖ (809) which is, though only temporarily, beneficial for them in the sense that ―less emotional and physiological reactivity‖ (809) is experienced, as suggested by Ayduk and Kross. Darrell agrees to father Nina‘s child and subsequently they make Sam believe that the unborn baby is his. In act five, Darrell and Nina‘s sexual relationship has not ceased yet and both have to admit that they are in love with each other (cf. SI 80). Nina tells Darrell that ―[her] child wants its father!‖ (SI
84) but receives an unpleasant answer from Ned, who states, ―But you‘re crazy! You‘re forgetting Sam! It may be stupid, but I‘ve got a guilty conscience! I‘m beginning to think we‘ve wronged the very one we were trying to help!‖ (SI 84). Darrell himself then informs Sam about Nina‘s pregnancy and says, ―You‘re going to be a father, old scout
[…]. And tell Nina I‘ll expect to find you both happy in your child – both of you, tell her! – happy in your child! Tell her that, Sam!‖ (SI 87-88). Darrell gets himself, thus, directly involved in the telling of the life-lie before leaving for Europe for over a year in order to shield himself from ―romantic imagination‖ (SI 83) and for protecting his career (Glicksberg 77). Over a year later, in act six, Nina and Sam have both changed considerably. Sam has ―matured [and] found his place in the world‖ and Nina appears in a state of ―present contentment and calm‖ (SI 91). Darrell, who has returned from 42
Europe, in contrast, is ―pale, thin, nervous, unhealthy looking‖ (SI 102). He finds out that Sam makes a wonderful father, who, as hypothesized by Marsden, ―would lose his reason‖ ―[i]f anything happened to that child‖ (SI 105) and also learns that his son was named Gordon, after Nina‘s first lover Gordon Shaw. In a private conversation with
Nina, Darrell shares his feelings and questions the purpose of their life-lie since he is unable to recognize what he gets out of it:
NINA. […] You gave [Gordon] to Sam to save Sam! DARRELL. To hell with Sam! I was to make you happy! NINA. So I could make Sam happy! That was in it, too! I was sincere in that, Ned! […] I have made Sam happy! and I‘m proud! I love Sam‘s happiness! I love the devoted husband and father in him! And I feel it‘s his baby – that we‘ve made it his baby! DARRELL. But I don‘t understand! Sam gets everything – and I have nothing! NINA. You have my love! […] It seems to me you‘re complaining unreasonably! DARRELL. You mean – I can be – your lover again? NINA. Isn‘t that the nearest we can come to making everyone happy? That‘s all that counts. DARRELL. And is that what you call playing fair to Sam? NINA. Sam will never know. The happiness I have given him has made him too sure of himself ever to suspect me now. (SI 107-108)
For Nina, Sam‘s happiness seems to have become the same ―guiding principle‖
(Winchester 75) for his life as it has been for Mrs. Evans. In act seven, set nearly eleven years later, the ―triangle of life-lies‖ (Grabher 356) can be argued to be extended to a quadrangle since also Gordon, the son, is directly affected by his mother‘s and biological father‘s extrinsic life-lie, which is now also imposed on him. Although
Gordon suspects Nina and Darrell to have some kind of relationship due to an incident in act seven on his eleventh birthday where he witnessed a kiss between the two (cf. SI
120), he has never doubted that Sam is his biological father. Nina herself directly names what sort of lie she has been building up in the last years and, furthermore, addresses
Darrell‘s and her pattern that they have been establishing over the years in the following way:
43
NINA. I‘ll send you away, and then after a time I‘ll call you back, because I‘ll have got so lonely again living this lonely lie of my life, with no one to speak to except Sam‘s business friends and their deadly wives. […] Or else you‘ll get lonely in your lie a little before I do and come back again of your own desire! And then we‘ll kiss and cry and love each other again! (SI 118)
However, not only in this scene does Nina reflect upon the role of lies in her life but also in act two, in a conversation with Marsden, she ponders about the connection between life and lies where she states the following:
NINA. […] It‘s because I‘ve suddenly seen the lies in the sounds called words. You know – grief, sorrow, love, father – those sounds our lips make and our hands write. You ought to know what I mean. You work with them. Have you written another novel lately? But, stop to think, you‘re just the one who couldn‘t know what I mean. With you the lies have become the only truthful things. And I suppose that‘s the logical conclusion to the whole evasive mess, isn‘t it! Do you understand me, Charlie? Say lie – (She says it, drawing it out.) L-i-i-e! Now say life, L-i- i-f-e! You see! Life is just a long drawn out lie with a sniffling sigh at the end! (SI 32)
For Nina, thus, life and lies are not separated but in close relation to one another and for her life is nothing else than a ―long drawn out lie‖ (SI 32). In act seven, she seems to have found herself living a life based on a lie, which raises strong feelings of loneliness in her. She detects the same emotions also in Darrell and names his assumed loneliness as a reason for the fact that he is regularly coming back to her. In act eight, Nina starts another attempt to uncover the facts about Gordon‘s biological father and tries to convince Darrell to reveal the truth. By destroying their ―lie of [their] life‖ (SI 118), they could acquire a state of happiness, which they have both sacrificed until then for
Sam. In an aside, Darrell laments that ―[…] if it hadn‘t been for Sam [he] would have been happy!‖ (SI 144). However, he is still determined to ―never meddle again with human lives!‖ (SI 145) and does not give in to Nina‘s appeal. In an act of frustration and jealousy, Nina is on the verge of telling Gordon‘s girlfriend Madeline about the madness running in Sam‘s family. In an aside, Nina shares her thoughts about her future daughter-in-law that are as follows: ―How I hate her! … […] Why not tell her? … as
Sam‘s mother told me … of the insanity? … she thinks Gordon is Sam‘s son … […].
44
That will be poetic justice!‖ (SI 146). Darrell, however, prevents her from doing so thinking that ―[Nina] wants to ruin [his] son‘s life as she ruined [his life]! …‖ (SI 148) and strongly recommends to Madeline not to listen to anything that Nina tells her.
Although Sam, Gordon and Madeline are not apprised of the matter, Charlie Marsden is informed about the life-lie by Nina and realizes that ―[…] [she‘s] lived all these years – with this horror‖ (SI 150). After Sam has suffered a heart attack already in act eight, act nine is set on a terrace of the Evans‘ estate where they gather after Sam‘s funeral. Until the very end of his life Sam has not been aware of the fact that Gordon is not his biological son. Nevertheless, he can be said to have led a happy life rewarding his mother‘s and later Nina‘s fight for his happiness. Nina finds herself in a situation where she feels the following regarding her lifelong dishonesty toward Sam: ―[B]ut I can‘t feel guilty … I helped him to live … I made him believe I loved him … his mind was perfectly sane to the end … […]. I am sad, but there‘s comfort in the thoughts that now
I am free at last to rot away in peace …‖ (SI 159). Nina‘s lifelong search for happiness ultimately results in a state of being ―sick of the fight for happiness‖ (SI 114) and, thus, she detects happiness to be ―largely an illusion‖, as pointed out by Winchester (75).
After she has given up happiness, rotting away in peace seems to be Nina‘s last wish for herself and, therefore, she returns to her father‘s old house with Marsden, who has waited ―[a]ll [his] life […] to bring [her] peace‖ (SI 165). Nina and Darrell, who could have had a chance for a happy marriage based on love, have sacrificed their own happiness for Sam and by holding on to their life-lie they enabled their husband and friend to live a fortunate life until his death.
When comparing Strange Interlude to The Wild Duck, various similarities regarding Mrs. Evans and Nina‘s as well as Gina‘s extrinsic life-lie can be detected.
Gordon, son of Nina and Darrell, as well as Hedvig, daughter of Werle and Gina, and their alleged fathers Sam and Hjalmar are not aware of the inexistence of a genetic 45 relation between them. Nina and Gina impose a life-lie on their husbands and make them believe that they are the biological fathers of their children, who love their purported offspring devotedly. However, in contrast to Sam, in the course of The Wild
Duck Hjalmar finds out about the fact that he is not Hedvig‘s biological father and it can be stated that his happiness was, as a consequence, taken away from him whereas Sam seemingly lived happily until the very end of his life without knowing that a life-lie had been imposed on him. When focusing on the women‘s motivations, one can observe great differences between them. Whereas Gina has never loved Werle, who used to be her employer and apparently ―never gave up till he had his way‖ (WD 219), Nina has specifically chosen Darrell for conceiving her child and has feelings for him as is shared with the audience in one of her thought asides where she says, ―I love Ned!‖ (SI 74). In spite of her love for Darrell, her constant pursuit of happiness and her incessant feeling of loneliness, she stays with Sam until his last days with the attempt to preserve her husband‘s happiness until the very end. Tired of her life-long fight for happiness, the only wish that Nina has for herself in the final act of the play is to simply ―rot away in peace‖ (SI 114).
3.2.2. Intrinsic Life-Lies in Strange Interlude
In Eugene O‘Neill‘s play Strange Interlude not only extrinsic life-lies are to be found but also intrinsic life-lies, which are characterized by originating within the respective persons themselves. There is, hence, no need for an external influence to impose the life-lie on a person since he or she imposes it on him- or herself. This chapter will focus on the play‘s intrinsic life-lies around the characters Ned Darrell and Charles Marsden.
When one concentrates on Edmund Darrell, it can be argued that he lives a life- lie regarding the importance that he ascribes to science and its correlation to romantic feelings. He attempts to conceal his love for Nina by looking at his own reactions and
46 emotions through the eyes of a scientist and, as described in the play, has begun to consider himself ―immune to love through his scientific understanding of its real sexual nature‖ (SI 26) and compares himself as well as Sam and Nina to guinea-pigs. As already mentioned above, Darrell agrees to Nina‘s suggestion to father her child by trying to persuade himself that for him Nina‘s plan will be nothing else but an experiment where he could adopt the role of the observer and scientist. It is, however, soon revealed that the doctor is not successful in stifling his feelings. In an aside,
Darrell‘s apparently confused thoughts are presented to the audience where he thinks about the following: ―She loves me! … […] I‘m happy! … do I love her? … no! … I won‘t! … I can‘t! … think of what it would mean to Sam! … to my career! … be objective about it! … you guinea-pig! … I‘m her doctor … and Sam‘s … I prescribed child for them … that‘s all there is to it!‖ (SI 79). In this context, Darrell acts as the
―prototype of the scientist‖ (Winchester 78), whose attempts to cure Nina‘s neurosis by making her acquainted with Sam and later prescribing a wedding and children for her failed, as suggested by Winchester (78). At the beginning, Darrell denies his feelings for her and puts his career and the scientific explanations for his feelings in the foreground.
He convinces himself that he acts in the interest of science since he would conduct an experiment in which he could be the observer. When Nina vehemently asks Darrell whether he loves her and orders him to ―[s]ay you do, Ned!‖ (SI 80), in a rush of carnal desire he obeys and answers, ―Yes! Yes!‖ (SI 80). Only a few moments later does he tell
Nina, after she has again confessed her love for him, the following: ―But I don‘t [love you]! And you don‘t [love me]! You‘re simply letting your romantic imagination run away with you‖ (SI 83). Darrell, furthermore, adds that ―[r]omantic imagination […] ruined more lives than all the diseases! Other diseases, I should say! It‘s a form of insanity!‖ (SI 84). As argued by Glicksberg, Darrell does not allow any romantic feelings since he is apprehensive regarding his career, which he feels may suffer when 47 he engages in a relationship with Nina (77) and, hence, holds on to his life-lie by attempting to stay rational and further denies his love for Nina. Winchester argues that for Darrell his career functions as a compensation for ―direct sexual expression and aggression‖ (71) and he, therefore, puts all his concentration into his work. However, he realizes and confesses to himself as well as to Nina that ―[s]ince [he] first met [her],
[he‘s] always desired [her] physically‖ (SI 84). In an aside he, moreover, admits the following: ―I see my happiness in her eyes … the touch of her soft skin! … those afternoons! … God, I was happy!‖ (SI 85). Darrell then ―flees for safety to Europe‖
(Glicksberg 77) with the intent to escape his feelings and create physical distance between him and Nina. When he returns a year later, he pretends that he came back due to his father‘s death, however, he then reveals in an aside the actual reason for his homecoming: ―Lie … Father‘s death just gave me an excuse to myself … wouldn‘t have come back for that … came back because I love her! …‖ (SI 102). Darrell‘s experiment, in which he himself has partaken, hence, has failed in terms of excluding
―the irrational element of love‖ (Glicksberg 78). After Darrell came back from Europe, his illusion, as pointed out by Winchester, that he as a scientist could be immune to love was destroyed and ―the vulnerability of scientific rationality‖ (78) was exposed (78).
Darrell, the ―biggest subscriber to the power of objective science‖ (Wolff 230-231) has never been capable of getting over Nina since she has ―given [him] the only happiness
[he‘s] ever known!‖ (SI 119). Nevertheless, Darrell has permanently sacrificed his chance for leading a happy life for Sam and believes in an Ibsenian kind of way that if one took away Sam‘s life-lie and, in consequence, his stimulating principle of life, also his happiness would be deprived of him (cf. 2.2). In an aside he reflects on that issue as follows: ―[T]o kill happiness is a worse murder than taking life! … I gave him that happiness! … Sam deserves my happiness!‖ (SI 110). Similarities between O‘Neill‘s
Darrell and Ibsen‘s Relling can be encountered not only when it comes to the men‘s 48 shared medical profession but also when one looks at the fact that they fear similar consequences for a person who is bereft of his or her life-lie. As already quoted above,
Relling is convinced that to ―[t]ake the saving lie from the average man‖ means to ―take his happiness away, too‖ (WD 244). Until the very end of the play, Darrell keeps up his sense of duty and instead of marrying Nina himself after Sam‘s death he tells her, ―I leave you to Charlie [Marsden]. You‘d better marry him, Nina – if you want peace. And after all, I think you owe it to him for his lifelong devotion‖ (SI 164). With Darrell as a character of considerable importance for the play, Eugene O‘Neill is said to have displayed his own notion on science that is showing acceptance for scientific contributions on the one hand and demonstrating its limits in terms of efficacy on the other hand, when it comes to ―dealing with the aspirations of the human soul and its pursuit of the will-o‘-the-wisp of happiness‖ (Glicksberg 79). Throughout the play,
Darrell holds on to his presumed duties toward other people and has apparently given up every form of his personal pursuit of happiness and explains to Nina, ―I‘ve heard that cry for happiness before, Nina! I remember hearing myself cry it – once – it must have been long ago! I‘ll get back to my cells – sensible unicellular life that floats in the sea and has never learned the cry for happiness! I‘m going, Nina‖ (SI 166). In the course of his life, Darrell has laid more significance on his professional than his private life and has successfully persuaded himself that happiness is not as important for him as a successful career. He has been willing to sacrifice his own happiness and the chance for a family by holding on to his intrinsic life-lie, which means that he sticks to his self- deceptive behavior and rejects his genuine feelings for Nina by not allowing any sort of
―romantic imagination‖ (SI 83).
Another character that can be argued to live an intrinsic life-lie is Charles
Marsden. Interestingly, a considerable amount of information about Marsden is revealed to the audience through Ned Darrell, who is considered the ―play‘s main diagnostician‖ 49
(Wolff 221). In an aside, where Darrell thinks about Nina‘s time as a nurse and how
Marsden may deal with the truth of her having led a promiscuous life, he asks himself,
―How much need I tell him? … can‘t tell him the raw truth about her promiscuity … he isn‘t built to face reality … no writer is outside of his books … have to tone it down for him … but not too much!‖ (SI 28). Marsden is, as described by Darrell, a character that frequently drifts into his world of books in order to escape reality. In an aside in act four, Darrell ponders on the following: ―Queer fellow, Marsden … mother‘s boy still … if she dies what will he do? […] Oh, well, he can always escape life in a new book …‖
(SI 64). This behavior may be explained when one looks at Marsden‘s confession where he admits to Nina, ―I‘m afraid of – of life, Nina‖ (SI 34). When Marsden meditates on happiness he states that ―[n]ot to be afraid of one‘s shadow! … that must be the highest happiness of heaven!‖ (SI 99). Happiness is, hence, also for Charles Marsden a state of considerable importance which he wishes to acquire as well as the possibility of leading a fearless life. Marsden is frequently depicted as a ―mother-ridden‖ (Clark 113) character ―who is strongly attached to [her]‖ (Glicksberg 78). With regard to Darrell‘s assumption that Marsden‘s mother may be suffering from cancer he is, according to the doctor, not ―built to face reality‖ (SI 28). He aggressively replies to Darrell‘s hypothesis about his mother‘s state of health the following: ―Damn it, you‘re condemning her without – ! You‘ve no damn right – !‖ (SI 63). Since the doctors are not able to cure her,
Marsden‘s mother eventually dies and he expresses his anger and frustration by addressing Darrell in the following way: ―I think you doctors are a pack of God-damned ignorant liars and hypocrites!‖ (SI 82). His initial inability to recognize that his mother may suffer from a severe illness and his later denial of the fact that she has died, show that Marsden is not able to cope with difficult situations and reveal his tendency to turn away from reality. His fear-driven personality that prefers to drift into the world of books rather than confront himself with reality is also reflected within the novels and 50 stories he produces. Darrell describes Marsden‘s literature in an aside as follows: ―[H]is novels just well-written surface … no depth, no digging underneath … why? … has the talent but doesn‘t dare … afraid he‘ll meet himself somewhere … one of those poor devils who spend their lives trying not to discover which sex they belong to!‖ (SI 27).
Marsden and his sexuality is another issue discussed in Strange Interlude, which is addressed already at the beginning of act one. As a young man, he had an unpleasant sexual encounter with a prostitute, which he describes in the following way:
Ugh … always that memory … why can‘t I ever forget […] that house of cheap vice … one dollar! … why did I go? I was only a kid! … sixteen … test of manhood … ashamed to face Jack again unless … fool! … I might have lied to him! … but I honestly thought that wench would feel humiliated if I … oh, stupid kid! (SI 2-3)
Eugene O‘Neill himself is said to have had a traumatizing encounter with a prostitute at the age of fifteen and supposedly used this negative experience as a basis for the introduction of Charles Marsden to the play, as explained by Dymkowski (Introduction xiv). From this experience with the prostitute onward, Marsden has rejected all sorts of sexuality and, therefore, as pointed out by Glicksberg, ―does not suffer from the debilitating fevers of the flesh‖ (78) being afraid of ―the contaminating power of sex‖
(78). Nina teasingly calls him in act three, ―‘Fraid-cat Charlie, you slacker bachelor!‖
(SI 42). In act six, it is revealed that Marsden strongly dislikes the idea that Nina and
Sam believe that he has never had any encounters with women and shares in an aside the following: ―I want them to think I‘ve been a Don Juan! … how pitiful and disgusting! … I wouldn‘t have a mistress if I could! … if I could? … of course I could!
… I‘ve simply never cared to degrade myself!‖ (SI 96). At the same time Nina thinks that she is sure ―he never even dared to kiss a woman except his mother!‖ (SI 96).
Marsden is frequently attributed with female characteristics and informs Nina and Sam, for instance, that ―[Gordon] thinks I‘m an old woman‖ (SI 145). However, he adopts a different role when it comes to his relationship with Nina. In a conversation with
51
Marsden, Nina is reminded of her dead father and tells him that ―[y]ou sound so like
Father, Charlie‖ (SI 37). When explaining her emotional situation regarding Sam in act two, Nina says, ―[b]ut I don‘t love him, Father‖ (SI 37) and also Marsden sees her as his girl and shares in an aside the following: ―There … this is all my desire … I am this kind of lover … this is my love … she is my girl … not woman … my little girl … and
I am brave because of her little girl‘s pure love‖ (SI 35). Marsden envies Sam in great parts of the play since ―[Sam] has Nina … a beautiful baby … a comfortable home … no sorrow, no tragic memories … and [he has] nothing … but utter loneliness!‖ (SI 93).
He is, moreover, also aware of the feelings that he has for Nina and explains in act six,
―You were my only true love, Nina. I made a vow of perpetual bachelorhood when you threw me over in Sam‘s favour!‖ (SI 93). In act nine, however, after Sam has died and
Darrell has declared it Nina‘s duty to marry Marsden, the very same seems to experience an awakening from his numbness. Whereas he felt jealous once and thought that ―‗[t]he Gordons have all the luck!‘‖ (SI 157) he now knows ―that dear old Charlie
… yes, poor dear old Charlie! – passed beyond desire, has all the luck at last!‖ (SI 157).
The only thing Nina seems to be wishing for her marriage with Marsden is to spend her last years in peace, and she states, ―I have always loved your love for me. […] Will you let me rot away in peace?‖ (SI 165) whereupon Marsden replies, ―All my life I‘ve waited to bring you peace‖ (SI 165). In general, it can be said that Marsden is a delicate character who is able to sense many things other characters overlook, such as the fact that he knows intuitively that Nina has had an abortion after the visit at Mrs. Evans‘ (cf.
SI 60) or that she has romantic feelings for Darrell (cf. SI 82) and that Gordon is not
Sam‘s son (cf. SI 106). Nevertheless, Charles Marsden is a character that attempts to live in his own, idyllic world, which he also portrays in his books, not daring to meddle with anybody‘s life, which is why he never talks about what he knows about Nin‘s actions. This world created by Marsden is, as Darrell would describe it, without depth 52 and, thus, a world designed by someone who is incapable of facing reality (cf. SI 27,
28). This self-deceiving behavior of Marsden and his fear of facing a life outside his familiar surroundings have a considerable impact on his happiness. Instead of getting to know someone else, Marsden waits until Nina settles for a marriage with him, who, in act seven, already thinks in an aside ―what a perfect lover [Marsden would make] when one was past passion!‖ (SI 123). When in act nine Nina has been deserted by every men of importance to her, which includes her husband Sam, her lover Darrell and her son
Gordon, Marsden is the only one who remains at Nina‘s side. He seems to be finally content with this situation and the very last aside of the play is dedicated to him, where
Marsden again thinks that he is the one who ―has all the luck at last‖ (SI 167). When one compares Marsden to a character in The Wild Duck, similarities and parallels between him and Old Ekdal can be detected. It can be argued that whereas Old Ekdal withdraws from reality by going hunting in the garret where he pretends to be the lieutenant he used to be, Marsden does so when drifting into his own world manifested in his books. Charles Marsden is able to hide from reality and the outside world in his office escaping into his novels and words whereas Old Ekdal can find his safe haven in the artificial woods he has built up in his attic. Due to their inability to face reality, both characters have created an intrinsic life-lie in order to be able to cope with their failures and disappointments in life. This intrinsic form of a life-lie, which is directed toward oneself without any external influence, serves to deceive oneself and is, as pointed out in Sissela Bok‘s Secrets, the only possible form of dealing with certain knowledge that would otherwise ―cripple‖ (60) the respective person.
3.2.3. Résumé: Life-Lies in Strange Interlude
By using the thought asides, which is the most noteworthy technique in Eugene
O‘Neill‘s Strange Interlude, the playwright is able to portray the characters according to
53 their complexities and intricacies (Grabher 358) and gives, thereby, deeper insight into their psyche and tries to investigate their ―darkest corners of the mind and heart‖ (Clark
115). The play can, therefore, be called, as suggested by Winchester, ―O‘Neill‘s version of psychoanalysis‖ (73).
In Eugene O‘Neill‘s Strange Interlude both extrinsic as well as intrinsic life-lies
(cf. chapter 2.3.) are to be found. The extrinsic life-lie at the center of Strange Interlude finds its origins in Mrs. Evans, who has never explained to her son Sam what occurred to his father and from which illness he suffered. After Nina and Sam‘s marriage, Mrs.
Evans transfers her life-lie to her daughter-in-law, advising her to find herself another man to conceive a child with and to pretend it is Sam‘s in order to prevent her son from passing on his genes. Nina, then, stretches out this life-lie to Ned Darrell, who becomes her lover and later the biological father of her child, as well as to her husband Sam by leading him to believe that he is the baby‘s father and, thus, creates this ―triangle of life- lies‖ (Grabher 356), which finally reaches also out to Gordon, her son, who remains ignorant of his relatedness to Darrell until the end of the play. When recalling Freud‘s notion that lying adults serve as role models for children who imitate the telling of lies
(Bruder 7-8), one may argue that in O‘Neill‘s Strange Interlude Nina has learnt how to lie from her mother-in-law Mrs. Evans. The latter has transferred her own life-lie to
Nina, who is in act eight tempted to repeat her mother-in-law‘s actions to pass on the life-lie to someone else where she almost shifts the life-lie to her prospective daughter- in-law Madeline for ―poetic justice‖ (SI 146). Darrell, however, intervenes just in time and prevents Nina from doing so. Mrs. Evans and Nina‘s aim to preserve Sam‘s happiness by all means seems to have, at least on the surface, worked out given the fact that he has become a successful businessman and content father and husband. However, throughout the play O‘Neill has not provided a definition for the term happiness and the fact that during his lifetime Sam was kept back from the chance ―to lead an authentic 54 life‖ (Grabher 359) by his mother, his wife as well as his friend, makes the idea of Sam having had a happy life questionable (Grabher 359-360). In addition to that, it could be argued that next to Sam also Gordon is bereft of his chance of leading a genuine life since also he is unaware of the fact that Darrell is his biological father. This extrinsic life-lie, which was constructed to preserve Sam‘s happiness, has not not only deprived
Sam and Gordon of the chance of living an authentic life but also Nina and Darrell can be argued to not live genuinely since they have never been able to openly stand up for their love and lead an honest relationship. They felt that they needed to stick to the life- lie because of the duty toward Sam and have maintained the life-lie.
In the plays Strange Interlude and The Wild Duck parallels can be observed regarding the extrinsic life-lie imposed on Sam by his mother, his wife, and his friend, and the life-lie imposed on Hjalmar by his wife. Both life-lies involve children, Gordon and Hedvig, and are based on a lie concerning a pretended paternity. While Hjalmar does find out about his falsely believed fatherhood, Sam, in contrast, does not and, therefore, also the consequences that the life-lies entail strongly differ. Hjalmar‘s reaction to the life-lie and his subsequent rejection of Hedvig result in the girl‘s suicide and in the suffering of the Ekdal family. The life-lie imposed on Sam, on the contrary, rather harms the people who created this construct of lies and are aware of the truth, such as Nina and Darrell, who sacrifice their happiness for their husband and friend and act on behalf of what they believe is their duty toward other people.
Next to extrinsic life-lies also intrinsic life-lies play a considerable role in
Strange Interlude when it comes to the lives of Ned Darrell and Charles Marsden. When one focuses on Darrell and his long-lasting denial of his love for Nina and his striving for rationality as well as his ambition to be successful in his career, it becomes clear that these factors make him incapable of realizing that also he is in need of happiness. If one compares Darrell to a character in The Wild Duck, one could draw parallels between 55 him and Doctor Relling since both believe that if you take away one‘s life-lie, you also take away that person‘s happiness, which is shown when Darrell states that the killing of happiness is ―a worse murder than taking life‖ (SI 110). Moreover, Darrell remains dutiful until the very end and does not tell Gordon that he is his biological father due to his commitment to Sam as well as him being willing to let Charles Marsden marry Nina instead of himself, ―for [Marsden‘s] lifelong devotion‖ (SI 164). Marsden is the second character that has been focused on in the discussion about intrinsic life-lies in Strange
Interlude who can be said to live a life in which he is unable to face reality and prefers to immerse himself in his world of books. Being a very sensitive as well as anxious character, who is frequently associated with female attributes, he neglects all sorts of carnal desire and is content with being a fatherly figure for Nina, who supports her towards the end of her life to ―let [her] rot away in peace‖ (SI 165). When one compares
Charles Marsden to one of Ibsen‘s characters in The Wild Duck, similarities can be detected between him and the former lieutenant Old Ekdal. Both withdraw from reality in their shelters, that is the physical asylum that Old Ekdal finds in his garret and a nonphysical asylum that Marsden finds in his books.
Henrik Ibsen‘s influence on O‘Neill‘s Strange Interlude is, in regard to his concept of the-life-lie, indisputable when one considers the above discussed. Parallels between the characters and their life-lies can be detected in The Wild Duck as well as in
Strange Interlude, which confirms the Scandinavian playwright‘s influence on O‘Neill.
Although according to Saint Augustine and Kant as well as to Bok, Mrs. Evans‘, Nina‘s and Darrell‘s behavior would have to be considered unacceptable and inexcusable or even sinful (cf. 2.1. and 2.3.), it is justified by O‘Neill and the hedonistic spirits of his characters. In order to guarantee a happy life for Sam and due to the fact that God and faith and, thus, also the Bible and its ninth commandment do not play a significant role for the respective characters, who impose the life-lie on him, they morally legitimize 56 their actions. Moreover, to tell Sam the truth would have to be considered a crime worse than murder and therefore, as is already demanded by Relling in The Wild Duck, the life-lie must be maintained and cannot be taken away from that person if one wants to preserve his or her happiness. Nina and Darrell‘s devotion to Sam has cost them, however, their own happiness since their ―[…] wonderful afternoons of happiness‖ (SI
74) remained rare occasions and, after a life-long battle for leading a happy life, both
Nina and Darrell seem to have surrendered, as is expressed when Nina, for instance, states that she feels ―sick of the fight for happiness‖ (SI 114). The next chapter will discuss the role of the life-lie in Edward Albee‘s play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and attempt to find similarities and discrepancies between the plays by the three dramatist Ibsen, O‘Neill and Albee.
4. Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and the Life-Lie
The following chapter will provide an overview of the life and legacy of the playwright
Edward Albee and will offer a short summary of the plot of his play Who’s Afraid of
Virginia Woolf3. After the introduction to the dramatist and the plot, the role of the life- lie in the play will be discussed as well as the consequences that the respective life-lies have for the characters.
4.1. Edward Albee: Life and Legacy of one of the Greatest American Dramatists of the Twentieth Century
When Edward Albee was born in March 1928 in Washington D.C., his biological mother, whom he never met during his lifetime, gave him up for adoption only two weeks after his birth (Roudané 4). Therefore, he came to live with a wealthy adoptive family, which was, however, a ―family bereft of love‖ (Roudané 5). Despite the fact that
3 Albee, Edward. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. 1962. New York: Signet, 2005. Print. Hereafter abbreviated as VW with page numbers in parentheses. 57 he never felt loved by his adoptive parents and suffered under rejection during his childhood (Adler 1), he was grateful that he received an exceptional high school education and was encouraged by teachers to follow a career in the creative arts
(Roudané 5). Due to the fact that Albee was asked to leave Trinity College,
Connecticut, after only one and a half years of studying for having been absent in certain classes and for having missed masses, during his twenties he lived in New York
City mainly on his grandmother‘s trust fund, a fact which gradually started to depress him (Roudané 5). Around his thirtieth birthday in 1958, however, being anxious about not succeeding in any sort of profession, Albee dedicated himself for the first time after his stay at Trinity College, where he was introduced to the writing of plays, to drama again (Roudané 5). That was when he came up with what became his first great success, namely his play The Zoo Story (Adler 1). Various plays followed until he wrote Who’s
Afraid of Virginia Woolf in 1962, which became a great Broadway success, and entailed a film version produced four years later in 1966 starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard
Burton, which ―catapulted Albee into the midst of popular culture‖ (Roudané 6). In terms of his private life, the playwright lived for many decades with his partner in New
York City, however, not without personal issues since he had to overcome a severe alcohol problem that persisted until the mid-1980s (Roudané 7). Throughout his career,
Edward Albee enriched the American world of theater with more than 30 plays (Adler
2) and he is counted among the most outstanding American playwrights. He won three
Pulitzer Prizes and, among others, the Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2005
(Roudané 7). Until his death at the age of 88 in 2016, Albee actively encouraged young playwrights and has not ceased to function as a role model for many creative heads since then (Roudané 6).
Edward Albee‘s most prominent play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (Adler 1) is, according to Selerie, a ―fusion of naturalism […] and stylization‖ (9). At the time of 58 its premiere, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf was, as a result of the critique of one of the
Pulitzer Prize Board members, denied the award due to supposedly being a ―filthy play‖
(Bigsby, Virginia Woolf 257), and was subject to further criticism for its seemingly
―unnecessary morbidity or grotesqueness‖ (Selerie 9). However, Who’s Afraid of
Virginia Woolf, as suggested by Bigsby, is ―in essence a modern secular morality play‖
(Virginia Woolf 264) and is considered Albee‘s most affirmative play (Roudané 56).
This evaluation may be questionable at first sight due to the aggressive language and malicious actions in the play (Roudané 57). Toward the end of Who’s Afraid of Virginia
Woolf, however, the characters are able to recognize the necessity of confronting themselves with their illusions which enables them to look more positively into their future (Roudané 57). Moreover, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf can be considered an affirmative play due to its reconstruction of ―the possibility of choice and the reality of freedom‖ (Bigsby, Virginia Woolf 268) as well as the acknowledgment of ―the possibility of dignity‖ (Bigsby, Virginia Woolf 268).
Set on the campus of a small college in the fictional town of New Carthage in
New England, the play is located in the living room of Martha and George. In three acts, which last from two o‘clock in the night until the break of dawn, the audience is not only introduced to the couple Martha and George but also to their guests Nick and
Honey, who are new to New Carthage. The names Albee chose for the hosts are not arbitrary but a link to Martha and George Washington, America‘s first president and his wife (Roudané 59). Nick was named after the politician Nikita Khrushchev, who as head of the Communist Party led the Soviet Union through parts of the Cold War
(Roudané 59). As pointed out by Selerie, the name of Nick‘s wife, Honey, speaks for itself since she represents a sweet, rather dull woman whose habit it is to pay compliments and throughout the play she speaks highly of various characters, such as of her husband (42). According to Roudané, by making use of the political references with 59 respect to the Washingtons and to Khrushchev, Albee criticized a culture which found itself amid a ―moral decline‖ (59) and was unwilling to make the effort of looking for what lies underneath the surface (59). Also Honey could be argued to correlate with this superficiality since in public she always intends to stick to her ―well practiced manners‖
(Selerie 42) and strives for material goods and social advancement, as suggested by
Selerie (42). However, the main focus of attention in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf lies on Martha and George‘s illusion and its destruction, as pointed out by Osterwalder
(112). George, working as an associated professor in the history department, and
Martha, daughter of the college‘s President, receive Nick and his wife Honey, who have just moved to New Carthage due to Nick‘s position as a lecturer in the Biology
Department, at two o‘clock in the night. In the course of the play‘s three acts with the titles ―Fun and Games‖, ―Walpurgisnacht‖ and ―The Exorcism‖ (cf. VW), games play a central role, which become more brutal the more the alcohol level rises and the night proceeds (Bigsby, Virginia Woolf 258). Selerie describes the play as ―a series of stage games which echo the psychological and social games that we play in real life‖ (10).
Among these games are ―Humiliate the Host‖ (VW 154), ―Hump the Hostess‖ (VW 154) as well as ―Get the Guests‖ (VW 156) and ―bringing up baby‖ (VW 217). The title of the play itself originated in a children‘s game and was explained by Edward Albee himself in an interview as follows: ―And, of course, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf means who‘s afraid of the big bad wolf … who‘s afraid of living life without false illusions‖
(qtd. in Flanagan 52). Regarding the reference to modernist author Virginia Woolf,
Albee, in fact, did not come up with the idea of placing her name into the children‘s rhyme himself but spotted it written on a mirror in a bar in New York, as the playwright stated in the same interview (Flanagan 52). He, thus, minimizes the importance of the author Woolf for the play and puts more emphasis on the relevance of the children‘s rhyme and the fear of facing one‘s illusions (Roudané 67). At the beginning of act one, 60
Martha and George are still alone in their house and a crude conversational tone is already noticeable. Martha calls her husband ―[d]umbbel‖ (VW 4), accusing him of not having ―done anything all day‖ (VW 7) and commands him to ―[m]ake [her] a drink‖
(VW 8). Also George provokes his wife when, for instance, emphasizing that he is and always will be ―six years younger‖ (VW 16) than her. When Nick and Honey, to whom the couple frequently refers to as their ―little guests‖ (VW 20), arrive, the conversation quickly moves toward Martha‘s father, who is the President of the college. George comments that ―if you happen to be teaching at a university, there are easier things than being married to the daughter of the president of that university‖ (VW 29). Martha and
Honey then leave the living room and when they get back Honey divulges the following: ―I didn‘t know until just a minute ago that you had a son‖ (VW 47). George is shocked and, toward the end of act one, Martha says that ―[she‘s] sorry [she] brought it up‖ (VW 76), still unaware of the consequences that her indiscretion will entail in the course of the play. Martha, feeling attracted to the young, athletic Nick, makes her first advances toward him already in act one asking, ―[w]hy don‘t you come over here and sit by me?‖ (VW 86). By the end of act one, ―Fun and Games‖, the four have had various drinks and, due to the liquor, Honey, who is a delicate person, has to leave for the bathroom to throw up. Act two, called ―Walpurgisnacht‖, starts with a conversation between the two men during which the reason for Nick‘s marriage with Honey is revealed. ―I married her because she was pregnant,‖ (VW 104) he says adding that she only believed, though, that she was expecting a child and that a marriage between the two was ―always taken for granted‖ (VW 117) by their parents. When the women return from the bathroom, Martha persuades Nick to have a dance with her and George and
Honey are left to watch them. Later when George and Honey are not present, Martha asks Nick to give her a ―friendly kiss‖ (VW 179) and, as he obeys, the kiss increases with passion. George, who has left the living room to get some more ice from the 61 kitchen, sees his wife and Nick when he is about to reenter but decides not to interfere.
After their kiss in the living room, toward the end of act two, Martha and Nick continue in the kitchen being aware that Honey is sleeping in the bathroom but with no intention to conceal their sexual encounter from George. In act three, called ―The Exorcism‖, the truth about Martha and George‘s son is uncovered and George is eager to play the evening‘s last game ―bringing up baby‖ (VW 227). After having vehemently refused to play along, Martha joins the game and they tell their guests stories about their alleged son until George alters the rules and leads the game toward an unexpected direction.
4.2. Life-Lies in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
This chapter will attempt to discuss the various life-lies in Edward Albee‘s Who’s
Afraid of Virginia Woolf with a special focus on Martha and George‘s life-lie regarding their son. Moreover, a focus will also be laid on Nick and Honey and how they live a shared life-lie. Following the same pattern as chapter 3.2., the definition of the life-lie developed in 2.3. will be taken into consideration for the discussion as well as the differentiation between intrinsic and extrinsic life-lies. However, in Who’s Afraid of
Virginia Woolf a clear distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic life-lie is not always possible, especially when one examines Nick and Honey‘s life-lie, and, thus, the following analysis will also allow a hybrid form, which is a life-lie that shows characteristics of both the extrinsic and the intrinsic life-lie. To begin with, however, a
Martha and George‘s intrinsic life-lie will be discussed in more detail as it is the most significant one for the play.
4.2.1. Intrinsic Life-Lies in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
The most preeminent lie that is to be found in Edward Albee‘s play Who’s Afraid of
Virginia Woolf is, as already mentioned above, undoubtedly Martha and George‘s shared life-lie, which is complicated by ―vicious marital game-playing‖ (Whitaker 714).
62
As Nick correctly realizes at the end of act three, Martha and George were not able to have children (cf. VW 252) and have built up an ―illusion accepted by them both as a defence against an impotent reality‖ (Bigsby , Virginia Woolf 258), an illusion which is about the creation of an alleged son who only exists in Martha and George‘s fantasy. In act one, when Honey returns from the bathroom while Martha is still changing in her bedroom, she informs Nick and George that she has not been aware that their hosts had a son who seemingly celebrates his birthday the following day (cf. VW 47). George is shocked and asks repeatedly whether Martha ―told [her] about him‖ (VW 48). After
Martha has returned to the living room, Honey brings up the topic again and asks when their son will be coming home for his birthday. George then addresses Martha and they enter their first conversation about their son in front of their guests Nick and Honey:
GEORGE. Ohhhh. (Too formal) Martha? When is our son coming home? MARTHA. Never mind. GEORGE. No, no … I want to know … you brought it out into the open. When is he coming home, Martha? MARTHA. I said never mind. I‘m sorry I brought it up. GEORGE. Him up … not it. You brought him up. Well, more or less. When‘s the little bugger going to appear, hunh? I mean isn‘t tomorrow meant to be his birthday, or something? MARTHA. I don‘t want to talk about it! GEORGE. But, Martha … MARTHA. I DON‘T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT! (VW 76-77)
Curiously and naively, Honey again asks, ―When‘s the little bugger coming home? (VW
77). Martha decides to turn the attention from herself toward George and states,
―George‘s biggest problem about […] our son, about our great big son, is that deep down in the private-most pit of his gut, he‘s not completely sure it‘s his own kid‖ (VW
78). George responds that ―Martha‘s lying‖ (VW 79) and that ―the one thing in this whole sinking world that [he is] sure of is [his] partnership, [his] chromosomological partnership in the … creation of [their] … blond-eyed, blue-haired … son‖ (VW 79).
George‘s slip of the tongue at the end of the sentence leads to a discussion whether the
63 son is blue or green-eyed. George, who has blue eyes himself, insists that their son ―has blue eyes‖ (VW 82) as well as blond hair and, thus, as suggested by Bigsby, creates the ideal Arian version of a son who stands for ―the incarnation of the American dream‖
(Virginia Woolf 113). Martha, however, is convinced of the following: ―GREEN! […]
He has the loveliest green eyes … they aren‘t all flaked with brown and gray, you know
… hazel … they‘re real green … deep, pure green eyes … like mine‖ (VW 82). Both show in this scene the first traces of their habit of creating an ideal version of their son.
When Nick interferes and notices that ―[Martha‘s] eyes are … brown […]‖ (VW 82) she insists on the following: ―GREEN! […] Well, in some lights they look brown, but they‘re green. Not green like his … more hazel‖ (VW 82). In this scene Krumbein‘s notions on the self-ideal (cf. 2.2.) can be observed in George‘s as well as Martha‘s behavior. Whereas George, if one follows Bigsby‘s notion, imagines his son to be the prototypical blond, blue-eyed Western young man who embodies the American dream and, thus, creates an ideal version of his offspring (Virginia Woolf 113), Martha on the one hand constructs an ideal self with regard to her own person by claiming that she has green eyes and on the other hand insists that she has passed them on to their alleged son.
The self-ideal, as explained by Krumbein, does not necessarily have to correlate with reality and can be modified and shaped (27) and gives, in this case, Martha the possibility of creating an ideal version of herself. In Henrik Ibsen‘s The Wild Duck,
Doctor Relling insists on referring to this process of creating a deformed reality by its name and strongly suggests to call the outcome ―lies‖ rather than using ―that exotic word ‗ideals‘‖ (WD 244). In response to Nick‘s question, Martha admits that her eyes are not quite like her son‘s but more hazel, which is a contradiction and leads to the conclusion that she has created an ideal-self as well as an ideal version of her son. At the end of act one, Honey has to leave for the bathroom because of feeling sick and
Martha accompanies her. At the beginning of act two, George and Nick remain then 64 alone in the living room and Nick asks his host, ―Do you have any … I mean, do you have only one … kid … uh … your son?‖ (VW 109). Initially, George supports
Martha‘s lie by saying, ―Oh, no … just one … one boy … our son‖ (VW 109). However, a few moments later George tells Nick the following: ―I‘d like to set you straight about what Martha said‖ (VW 111). Before being able to do so, however, the two women return from the bathroom and George is prevented from revealing the truth about their son. When Martha asks whether George is not going to apologize for having made
Honey feel sick, she adds that ―George makes everybody sick‖ (VW 134). She explains to Nick and Honey that ―[w]hen [their] son was just a little boy, […] he used to throw up all the time, because of George ….‖ (VW 134). When George realizes that Martha has come up with a new story that intends to humiliate him, he is not capable of letting the matter rest and attacks her with the following accusation: ―… the real reason […] our son … used to throw up all the time […] was nothing more complicated than that he couldn‘t stand you fiddling at him all the time, breaking into his bedroom with your kimono flying, fiddling at him all the time, with your liquor breath on him, and your hands all over his …‖ (VW 134). George additionally points out that ―[their] son ran away from home all the time because Martha […] used to corner him‖ (VW 134).
Angrily, Martha replies, ―I NEVER CORNERED THE SON OF A BITCH IN MY
LIFE!‖ (VW 135). Since it is unusual for a mother to refer to her child as a ―son of a bitch‖ because by doing so she calls herself a ―bitch‖, it could be argued that it is easier for Martha to phrase such a sentence due to the fact that their son is not real. It is, therefore, of less difficulty for her to step into the position of the metaphoric ―fly on the wall‖ (Ayduk and Kross 809) and evaluate this unpleasant accusation ―from a self- distanced perspective‖ (Ayduk and Kross 809). As the conversation proceeds, George states that he ―would have been perfectly happy not to discuss the whole subject‖ (VW
136) that evening and that he only likes to discuss it ―when [they]‘re alone, maybe‖ 65
(VW 136). In act three, George leaves the house and, in order to reenter, he rings the bell and when he sees Nick, whom Martha has ordered to open the door, the subsequent conversation follows:
GEORGE. Sonny! You‘ve come home for your birthday! At last! NICK. Stay away from me. MARTHA. Ha, ha, ha, HA! That‘s the houseboy, for God‘s sake. GEORGE. Really? That‘s not our own little sonny – Jim? Our own little all-American something-or-other? (VW 207)
For the first time a name is linked to their invented son, although George clearly takes on a mocking tone in this scene since he pretends to mistake Nick for their boy. After having reentered the stage, the play‘s central action is introduced by George, who states,
―Now; we got one more game to play. And it‘s called bringing up baby‖ (VW 217).
Honey returns to the living room after having taken a nap on the bathroom rug and
George explains to her the following: ―When you get down to bone, you haven‘t got all the way, yet. There‘s something inside the bone … the marrow … and that‘s what you gotta get at‖ (VW 225). He adds, however, that ―bones are pretty resilient, especially in the young‖ (VW 226). In this scene, as is explained in Roudané, for George a turning point is initiated, who realizes that if he wants salvation for Martha and himself and their existence, he needs to face ―the son-myth‖ (59) that has been so long ―deforming their world‖ (59) and cleanse their mind of it (59). George‘s determination to defeat the son-myth explains the title of the third act, ―The Exorcism‖, since the ill-spirited demon, which has been especially occupying Martha for so many years, is about to be annihilated (Roudané 69). A few scenes earlier, Martha still underestimates her husband, accusing him of the following: ―Truth and illusion, George; you don‘t know the difference‖ (VW 214). In reality, however, it is Martha who is neither able nor willing to realize the difference between truth and illusion until the very last moments of the play. For George, now that they have lived so many years with their myth of the
66 son and due to the fact that they have reached a certain age, their bones are not that resilient anymore and George is ready to ―get at‖ (VW 225) the marrow and destroy the illusion, their life-lie, which has been dominating their lives (Roudané 59). A difference between Albee‘s and Ibsen‘s viewpoint on the matter of the life-lie and the consequences of its revelation can be observed here. Whereas in The Wild Duck, Ibsen‘s characters believe that if someone is bereft of his or her life-lie, this person is also bereft of his or her happiness, Albee‘s approach differs. For the American playwright, resolution does not lie in the concealment of the truth but in its revelation and the ability
―to learn to live with truth‖ (Bigsby, Virginia Woolf 257). Despite Martha‘s initial refusal to participate, at a certain point it seems as if both immerse more and more in
George‘s game adding details to their imaginary son‘s life, and create the impression of having played this game before. It seems as if they do not know the content of their made-up story but very well the procedure of adding, in turns, information, which comes into their minds. For their guests and listeners Nick and Honey, they draw a detailed portrait of their son‘s life, initially in a harmonic tone before turning the conversation into accusations and allegations (cf. VW 229-243). George finally announces, ―I‘ve got a little surprise for you, baby. It‘s about sunny Jim‖ (VW 243) and claims that he received a telegram and starts to communicate its content to Martha as follows: ―Martha … (Long pause) … our son is … dead. (Silence) He was … killed … late in the afternoon … (Silence) (A tiny chuckle) on a country road, with his learner‘s permit in his pocket, he swerved, to avoid a porcupine, and drove straight into a …‖
(VW 245). Startled and furious Martha answers, ―YOU … CAN‘T … DO … THAT!‖
(VW 245) and adds, ―NO! NO! YOU CANNOT DO THAT! YOU CAN‘T DECIDE
THAT FOR YOURSELF! I WILL NOT LET YOU DO THAT!‖ (VW 246). As much as
Martha is fighting against the destruction of her demon, George is determined not to give up his fight for ―a genuine life‖ (Bigsby, Virginia Woolf 263). When Martha 67 demands evidence and asks to see the telegram, George claims that he ate it, which incites her to spit in his face (cf. VW 248). Angrily, George responds, ―YOU KNOW
THE RULES, MARTHA! FOR CHRIST‘S SAKE, YOU KNOW THE RULES!!‖ (VW
249). The subsequent conversation between Martha and George shows how determined the latter is and that his decision to destroy their life-lie is irreversible:
MARTHA. You have no right … you have no right at all…. GEORGE. I have the right, Martha. We never spoke of it; that‘s all. I could kill him anytime I wanted to. MARTHA. But why? Why? GEORGE. You broke our rule, baby. You mentioned him … you mentioned him to someone else. […] MARTHA. I FORGET! Sometimes … sometimes when it‘s night, when it‘s late, and … and everybody else is … talking … I forget and I … want to mention him … but I … HOLD ON … I hold on … but I‘ve wanted to … so often … oh, George, you‘ve pushed it … there was no need … there was no need for this. I mentioned him … all right … but you didn‘t have to push it over the EDGE. You didn‘t have to … kill him. (VW 250-251)
In response to Nick‘s question whether they were not able to have any children, George confirms, ―We couldn‘t‖ (VW 252). Martha then too states, ―We couldn‘t‖ (VW 252) and seemingly starts to confront herself with reality and, by repeating these words, she creates a sense of unity between herself and George. Nick and Honey decide to finally leave and when George and Martha are left alone in their home, George explains that it was time to kill their son and that it will be better for them (cf. VW 255). One last time he sings the children‘s rhyme to his wife, which asks, ―Who‘s afraid of Virginia Woolf,
Virginia Woolf, Virginia Woolf‖ (VW 256) leading Martha to responding, ―I … am …
George….‖ (VW 256). Martha discloses her fear of having to confront herself with the truth and living without their life-lie. In contrast to Ibsen‘s notion that if you take away someone‘s life-lie, you also take away that person‘s happiness, at the end of Who’s
Afraid of Virginia Woolf what remains is a hopeful outlook after the destruction of the life-lie (cf. Bigsby, Virginia Woolf 257). For Albee‘s main characters Martha and
68
George, the process of ―subordinating illusion to truth‖ (Roudané 62) is of great necessity in order to learn how to live with reality (Bigsby, Virginia Woolf 257). With good reason, thus, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf can be called an affirmative play
(Roudané 56) and gives, in contrast to Ibsen‘s The Wild Duck, where an actual, physical death of a child is to be encountered as a consequence of the revelation of the life-lie, an optimistic outlook.
The couple‘s intrinsic life-lie around the son-myth is able to exist for such a long time due to the fact that both are sticking to it and elaborate on it together. Martha‘s inability to find with George a proper son-in-law for her father, who planned to ―groom someone to take over … some time, when he quit‖ (VW 87), and her failure to conceive a child that might instead of her husband be an heir for the college‘s presidency could be named as reasons for the creation of the son-myth (Osterwalder 111). In an attempt to compare Albee‘s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf to O‘Neill‘s Strange Interlude and
Ibsen‘s The Wild Duck, it is noticeable that in each of the plays a child, which is of considerable importance for the storyline, is involved. In contrast to Hedvig and
Gordon, who have been lied to about their fathers by their mothers and biological fathers, the life-lie regarding Martha and George‘s son cannot be compared since their alleged son does not physically exist. Albee‘s protagonists are more comparable with
Ibsen‘s Old Ekdal or O‘Neill‘s Charles Marsden since they share a self-deceiving behavior. All four are not able to face reality and, therefore, create a more pleasant version of the world by means of their life-lies. However, in contrast to Old Ekdal,
Marsden and Martha, George is the only one who is in the end capable of destroying the life-lie and he confronts himself and his wife with reality to save their marriage and to enable them to live a genuine life.
When the attention is moved from the hosts Martha and George to the guests
Nick and Honey, one finds that the younger couple‘s marriage, which is not based on 69 real emotions and love but was a decision made ―out of the necessity […] and […] her considerable fortune‖ (Bigsby, Virginia Woolf 259), can be considered an intrinsic life- lie. On the surface Nick and Honey are a happy couple, both good-looking and young, who attempt to make their environment believe in their love for each other. This can be observed in Honey‘s habit to compliment her husband when she states, for instance, that she is ―proud of [him]‖ (VW 52) since he got his Master‘s degree at an early age, or when she describes him coyly as a ―pretty nice fella‖ (VW 53) with a ―firm body‖ (VW
56). Outwardly, the two seem to lead a well-functioning relationship, however, in act two, Nick reveals to George that a marriage between him and Honey was ―always taken for granted‖ (VW 117) by their parents and he admits that from the beginning of their relationship onward there has never been a ―particular passion‖ (VW 117) between them. The private conversation with George continues and Nick informs his host that he
―married [Honey] because she was pregnant‖ (VW 104) and explains that it was, however, only a ―hysterical pregnancy‖ (VW 104) meaning that she never was pregnant at all. In act two, after both women have returned, George reveals what Nick told him about his relationship with Honey in his game ―Get the Guests‖, which leads Honey to feel sick again and she rushes to the bathroom (cf. VW 163-164). Nick then distracts himself with drinking and his sexual encounter with Martha, which gives the second act its title, ―Walpurgisnacht‖, as pointed out by Bigsby (Virginia Woolf 260). Honey and
Nick are, thus, forced to face the truth about their marriage, which is based on a loveless but economically profitable relationship, and they seem to have been confronted with their mutual, intrinsic life-lie about their marriage for the first time. Honey‘s physical reaction of feeling sick, after George has openly described the state of her relationship with her husband, can be interpreted as a ―defense mechanism‖ (Selerie 43), which suggests her unwillingness to face reality. The fact that the young couple‘s ―existence amounts to a continual evasion of reality‖ (Selerie 40) is not yet overcome and while 70
Honey rests on the bathroom rug, Nick allows Martha to seduce him. However, he is not able to please her and their encounter ends in being one of Martha‘s ―totally pointless infidelities‖ (VW 199). When George returns and wants to play the evening‘s last game, ―bringing up baby‖, he orders Nick to get Honey back from the bathroom since he likes everyone to be part of the game. What follows is not only Martha and
George‘s destruction of their illusions by announcing the death of their son, but also
Nick and Honey are offered a more positive outlook for their future as a couple because the truth about their marriage is pronounced. As suggested by Roudané, Honey finally recognizes that she is afraid of childbirth (71-72), which is implied to be the reason for her pretended pregnancy since she knew that she was not eager to bear a child immediately but nevertheless wanted to expedite the wedding. George even suspects that she takes medicine in order to avoid a pregnancy, as pointed out by Selerie (43).
Among the last scenes of the play, when Martha and George are still in the middle of playing ―bringing up baby‖ and are yet in the phase of expressing their enthusiasm before George ―kills‖ the son, Honey says, ―I want a child. I want a baby‖ (VW 236). As suggested by Roudané, not only George and Martha experience a confrontation with reality and begin to differentiate between truth and illusion but perhaps also Nick and
Honey (72). Selerie proposes, moreover, that Honey has begun to see that ―‗experience‘ involves an equal measure of pain and joy‖ (44). In addition to that, she is able to mature and become a less dependent woman who starts to appreciate to live an authentic life (Roudané 71-72). Nick and Honey‘s visit at Martha and George‘s house offers the couple ―a clearer and more honest basis for relating to one another‖ (Selerie 42).
Through the confrontation with their mutual intrinsic life-lie, whose existence the young couple has not admitted to one another but kept it in silence until this evening, their marriage may now have a chance for improvement. As a result of this evening, Nick seems likely to be able to get more involved in his marriage in the future and 71 accompany and lead Honey through a real pregnancy (Selerie 42). Honey gives the impression that she has realized that happiness and joy also involve a certain degree of pain and risk as well as the fact that the ―key to […] change must be emotional honesty‖
(Selerie 44).
4.2.2. Mutually Constructed Extrinsic Life-Lies in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Despite the fact that the most salient life-lie in Albee‘s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf is an intrinsically motivated construct created by George and Martha (cf. chapter 4.2.1.), this chapter will examine whether their life-lie also shows characteristics typical for the extrinsic life-lie.
Martha and George‘s life-lie around the invention of their son, which is essentially intrinsically motivated, could be argued to be, partly, also extrinsic since the couple deceives each other whenever they speak about their imaginary son. Through repeated external confirmation of one‘s life-lie by an affiliated person, it could be stated that the intrinsic life-lie is extrinsically reinforced and kept alive. Martha and George, thus, can be said to mutually deceive themselves and make themselves believe that a lie is true, which is the typical form of self-deception (von Hippel and Trivers 10). Despite the fact that a life-lie, especially an intrinsic life-lie (cf. 2.3.), is usually not dependent on someone else but is constructed and maintained by the person who deceives him- or herself, Martha and George mutually develop and shape their life-lie around their invented son. Through their repeated and bilateral elaboration on the son-myth, also extrinsic characteristics regarding Martha and George‘s life-lie can be observed, such as the influence that another person from outside one‘s own illusions has on one‘s life-lie.
In this discussion, however, as argued above, Martha and George‘s life-lie is considered in its core to be an intrinsic life-lie.
72
4.2.3. Résumé: Life-Lies in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Edward Albee and his way of bringing the couples‘ lives on stage by making use of brutal language and actions as well as humiliating and cynical games (Selerie 8) enabled the playwright to create a socially critical play which eventually leads its protagonists to accept the truth after having had to face reality and fight against illusion (Roudané 72).
In regard to Henrik Ibsen‘s concept of the life-lie, the dominant form in Albee‘s
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf that can be observed is the intrinsic life-lie, which stems from the respective persons themselves and is in no need for an external imposition but is rather connected to self-deception. Whereas an intrinsic life-lie usually applies to a single person, in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf the characters mutually create their intrinsic life-lies especially when one examines Martha and George‘s illusion around their nonexistent son. Repeatedly they experience an external confirmation of their life- lie by their spouse and, therefore, the illusion is maintained and able to survive. The couple is only capable of facing reality when George realizes that it is necessary to destroy the son-myth by killing the illusion if he wants salvation for himself and Martha
(cf. Roudané 59). Their self-deceiving behavior can be compared to the behaviors of
Ibsen‘s Old Ekdal in The Wild Duck and to O‘Neill‘s Charles Marsden in Strange
Interlude, who are both unable to cope with reality and, therefore, create their own, more acceptable version of the world. Albee‘s George is the only one, however, who can procure a resolution for himself and his wife Martha by confronting themselves with their illusion as well as by eliminating their life-lie. A difference regarding the implications of the life-lies for the characters‘ happiness can be observed in The Wild
Duck, Strange Interlude, and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and, thus, the approaches of the playwrights Ibsen, O‘Neill and Albee to the effects that a life-lie can have differ considerably. Whereas Ibsen and O‘Neill transport the notion that a life-lie needs to be perpetuated to guarantee a person‘s happiness, Albee emphasizes the importance of the 73 revelation of truth in order to have the chance of living a genuine life. In regard to Nina and Darrell‘s life-lie around their son Gordon, it could be argued that they are the ones who have been deprived of their happiness due to the life-lie and its higher aim of guaranteeing Sam‘s well-being. In order not to take away ―the saving lie‖ (WD 243) from their husband and friend and, hence, not his happiness, they sacrificed their own chance of leading a happy life and have never revealed the truth about the genetic relationship between Gordon and Darrell until the very end of the play. Whereas in The
Wild Duck the unraveling of truth and the following destruction of the life-lie result in the tragic suicide of Hedvig, George and Martha experience an awakening when they liberate themselves from their life-lie and their illusion, which rewards them with ―the promise of a more meaningful existence‖ (Selerie 50).
Besides Martha and George, the guests Nick and Honey have also experienced a confrontation with their life-lie this evening. Their relationship, which is not based on romantic feelings but rather on parental expectations and on the wealth of Honey‘s family, results in a marriage due to a pretended pregnancy. Although this evening at
Martha and George‘s is partially hard on them, they are in the end provided with a more honest basis with regard to their relationship to each other and are able to diminish their detachment (Selerie 42). In the end, Honey is, moreover, capable of realizing that joy and happiness also involve to some extent pain and risk (Selerie 44). In the course of the three acts, Albee‘s characters share similar experiences after which both Martha and
George as well as Honey and Nick are able to look more optimistically into their future as couples. When comparing Nick and Honey to Ibsen‘s or O‘Neill‘s characters, it can be argued that they show similarities with Old Ekdal and Charles Marsden due to the fact that all four are characters who deceive themselves. Like Martha, Honey is forced by George to confront herself with reality during this night and is, in contrast to Old
Ekdal or Charles Marsden, able to develop and transcend her fears as well as the life-lie. 74
In opposition to Ibsen‘s notion regarding the deprivation of happiness, Nick and
Honey‘s awakening through their confrontation with reality shows again Albee‘s assumption that a revelation of truth bears great chances for living a more genuine and happy life.
5. Conclusion
The analyses of Eugene O‘Neill‘s Strange Interlude and Edward Albee‘s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf have shown that many parallels can be detected between the
American playwrights‘ plays and Henrik Ibsen‘s The Wild Duck. With the life-lie and the implications it has for the characters‘ happiness, the Norwegian playwright created a topic that became of interest for American dramatists. Ibsen‘s The Wild Duck can, thus, be regarded as a source for O‘Neill‘s and Albee‘s plays, and, therefore, various similarities and parallels can be discovered between the three plays. In spite of theses commonalities, both Eugene O‘Neill and Edward Albee transformed Henrik Ibsen‘s topic of the life-lie in their plays and approached the implications of the life-lies in their own unique ways.
The fundamental similarity between Henrik Ibsen‘s The Wild Duck, Eugene
O‘Neill‘s Strange Interlude and Edward Albee‘s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf is that, in the course of the plays, the characters are forced to face their life-lies and confront themselves with reality. In all three plays, extrinsic as well as intrinsic life-lies are to be found which affect the characters‘ lives and, in consequence, their happiness considerably. Ibsen‘s Gina and O‘Neill‘s Nina impose a life-lie on their husbands and children and also Albee‘s Martha and George can be argued to live a life-lie that is partially extrinsically imposed. The characters Old Ekdal in The Wild Duck and Charles
Marsden in Strange Interlude live intrinsic life-lies and disavow reality by losing themselves in their own worlds of ideals. Martha and George‘s life-lie in Who’s Afraid 75 of Virginia Woolf, which is in its core intrinsically motivated, is about the creation of their imaginary son, which is based on their unwillingness to face reality, namely that they could not have any children. Another commonality between Ibsen‘s, O‘Neill‘s and
Albee‘s approaches to the topic of the life-lie is that in each play a child is involved.
Hedvig has been raised by Hjalmar believing that he is her father and also Hjalmar has not been aware of the fact that he is not her biological father until his wife Gina admits that he is most likely genetically unrelated to the girl and, by doing so, Gina takes away his life-lie. Nina‘s son Gordon has not grown up with his biological father either but with Sam, who remains ignorant of the fact that he is not related to the boy until his death. When one examines Martha and George‘s life-lie, it is important to note that it is not about a physical child but about the creation of their imaginary son, which compensates for their inability to have an actual child.
The main differences between Ibsen‘s, O‘Neill‘s and Albee‘s plays are related to the consequences that the life-lies entail and the implications that the life-lies have for the characters‘ happiness. The aftermaths of the revelation of the life-lie in Ibsen‘s The
Wild Duck are appalling and the play ends tragically. The world collapses on Hjalmar when he finds out that he is not the biological father of Hedvig. Due to his pain and sorrow, he rejects his daughter, which leads Hedvig to commit suicide. Ibsen‘s consequences of the revelation of the life-lie are shattering and at the end of the play little space is left for a positive outlook. The Ekdal family‘s doctor called Relling provides the audience with an explanation for Hjalmar‘s reaction and explains that if you ―[t]ake the saving lie from the average man […] you take his happiness away, too‖
(WD 244). Ibsen, thus, conveys that one must not take away a person‘s life-lie since his or her happiness or even the ability to endure life itself depends on the life-lie
(Sternberg 256). It is implied that if the life-lie had not been revealed to Hjalmar, he would not have been deprived of his happiness and he would not have rejected Hedvig 76 as his daughter. Her suicide, which followed Hjalmar‘s rejection, might never have taken place. In comparison to Henrik Ibsen‘s approach to the topic of the life-lie, one finds that Eugene O‘Neill‘s approach differs regarding the implications of the life-lie. In contrast to the life-lie that has been imposed on Hjalmar and later revealed to him, in
Strange Interlude Nina‘s life-lie, which she extrinsically imposes on her husband Sam
Evans, is kept alive until the end of the play. In act nine, Sam dies without having ever been informed about the fact that he is not the biological father of Gordon. In contrast to
Hjalmar, his whole life he remains ignorant of the fact that Gordon is not his son.
Through the maintenance of the life-lie and the fact that until his death he was surrounded by people who tried all their lives to ―make Sam happy‖ (SI 107), he has supposedly lived a happy and content life. However, it can also be argued that Sam‘s happiness has to be questioned since he has been withheld the chance ―[of leading] an authentic life‖ (Grabher 359). In comparison to Ibsen‘s tragic ending, O‘Neill created a more positive outlook and decided not to destroy the life-lie and, therefore, he lets Sam die ignorant and seemingly happy. A reason for concealing the fact that Sam is not
Gordon‘s biological father is named by Darrell, which resembles Doctor Relling‘s notion in The Wild Duck that one must not take away the life-lie since it means to also take away that person‘s happiness. Edmund Darrell, Gordon‘s father, says that if he and
Nina told Sam the truth and destroyed the life-lie, it would have to be considered ―a crime worse than murder‖ (SI 47-48). Darrell and Nina, therefore, decide not to reveal the truth to Sam in order to maintain his happiness. Although the life-lie had a considerable impact on Sam, whose life would most likely have been different if he had known that he was not Gordon‘s father, he was never confronted with the truth and did not have to face reality. The life-lie can be said to have had bigger implications for Nina and Darrell, whose lives have been affected in a negative way by their mutual concealment of the truth. Regarding her own happiness, toward the end of the play 77
Nina‘s tone has turned pessimistic and she states that she has become ―sick of the fight for happiness‖ (SI 114). Due to their efforts to make Sam happy, Nina and Darrell have never considered a serious relationship between the two of them and have, thus, sacrificed their chance of living a happy life together with their son Gordon. In Who’s
Afraid of Virginia Woolf Edward Albee transformed the approach to the topic of the life-lie and the implications for happiness by providing the audience toward the end of the play, in contrast to Ibsen or O‘Neill, with a more positive and affirmative tone. In
Albee‘s play, the couple Martha and George and their mutually constructed intrinsic life-lie, which they have been imposing on themselves, is to be found at the center of the play. Since they are not capable of accepting their inability to have children, they have invented a son and, hence, formed and shaped reality according to their ideals.
Albee‘s characters in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf are, however, in contrast to
Ibsen‘s The Wild Duck and O‘Neill‘s Strange Interlude, given the chance of living an authentic life by the revelation of the life-lie. Through George‘s destruction of their life- lie and the following confrontation with reality around their invented son, he is able to give himself and his wife Martha the opportunity to save their marriage as well as their very existence (Roudané 59). For Albee, hence, the couple‘s only chance for a happy and genuine life is the destruction of their life-lie and the ―killing‖ of their son. In the course of the play, not only Martha and George are confronted with their life-lie but also their guests Nick and Honey, who are forced to face reality with regard to their loveless marriage. However, also Nick and Honey, after the evening at Martha and George‘s house, are able to look more positively into their future since they had to face a confrontation with their own marital problems. Edward Albee implies with his play that if one wants to lead a happy and authentic life, one needs to liberate him- or herself of one‘s false illusions.
Despite many commonalities between Ibsen‘s, O‘Neill‘s and Albee‘s plays, the 78
American playwrights transformed Ibsen‘s concept of the life-lie and, therefore, the implications that the respective life-lies have for the characters differ. Whereas in
Ibsen‘s The Wild Duck, the life-lie negatively influences the characters‘ lives, the destruction of the life-lie in Albee‘s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf is a necessity in order for the characters to regain the possibility of living a genuine life. O‘Neill‘s approach to the life-lie in Strange Interlude can be arranged between Ibsen‘s The Wild
Duck and Albee‘s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf since for some characters the concealment of the life-lie enables them to lead a happy life whereas for others it means to sacrifice their happiness. In whatever way a life-lie may affect one‘s life or one‘s happiness, it always entails the fact that the persons involved are deprived of the chance of leading a genuine life. In contrast to other more trivial forms of lies which one tells or is told day by day, a life-lie has a severe influence on the lives of the respective persons and its revelation can lead to incalculable consequences, as is shown by the playwrights Ibsen, O‘Neill and Albee.
6. A Didactic Approach to the Topic of Lying and Life-Lies in American Drama
The following chapter will discuss how the topic of lying and life-lies with regard to
Eugene O‘Neill‘s Strange Interlude and Edward Albee‘s Who’s Afraid of Virginia
Woolf can be brought into an Austrian classroom where English is taught as a foreign language. For this purpose, a teaching unit which consists of six lessons that are designed for an eighth grade of an Austrian AHS (Allgemeinbildende Höhere Schule) will be presented. The students are between 17 and 18 years of age and have studied
English for at least seven years. According to the Austrian curriculum, the students‘
English levels are by then on a B2 level in the four skills listening, reading, speaking
79 and writing (Bundesministerium für Bildung, Wissenschaft und Forschung4 128). These levels, which range from A1 to C2, were established by the Council of Europe and summarized in the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages) where the overall listening, reading, speaking and writing skills at a B2 level are described as follows:
Overall Listening Comprehension B2 Can understand standard spoken language, live or broadcast on both familiar and unfamiliar topics normally encountered in personal, social, academic or vocational life. Only extreme background noise, inadequate discourse structure and/or idiomatic usage influence the ability to understand. Can understand the main ideas of propositionally and linguistically complex speech on both concrete and abstract topics delivered in standard speech, including technical discussions in his/her field of specialisation. Can follow extended speech and complex lines of argument provided the topic is reasonably familiar, and the direction of the talk is sign-posted by explicit markers. Overall Reading Comprehension B2 Can read with a large degree of independence, adapting style and speed of reading to different texts and purposes, and using appropriate reference sources selectively. Has a broad active reading vocabulary, but may experience some difficulty with low- frequency idioms. Overall Spoken Production B2 Can give clear, systematically developed descriptions and presentations, with appropriate highlighting of significant points, and relevant supporting detail. Can give clear, detailed descriptions and presentations on a wide range of subjects related to his/her field of interest, expanding and supporting ideas with subsidiary points and relevant examples. Overall Written Production B2 Can write clear, detailed texts on a variety of subjects related to his/her field of interest, synthesising and evaluating information and arguments from a number of sources. (Council of Europe 55, 60, 69, 75)
The teaching unit and its respective lesson plans and exercises presented below seek to comply with the descriptors above and were designed to act in accordance with the
Austrian curriculum and its didactic principles, which will be discussed in the following chapter.
4 Bundesministerium für Bildung, Wissenschaft und Forschung (BMBWF). ―Gesamte Rechtsvorschrift für Lehrpläne – allgemeinbildende höhere Schulen, Fassung vom 01.09.2017.‖ N.p., 2017. Web. 02 Apr. 2018. Hereafter abbreviated as BMBWF with page numbers in parentheses. 80
6.1. The Teaching Unit on Lying and Life-Lies and the Austrian Curriculum
To work with American drama and with plays by Eugene O‘Neill and Edward Albee in the English classroom is according to the Austrian curriculum and its various didactic principles that have been established by the Austrian ministry of education. It is, for instance, required that teachers enrich their lessons by working with diverse topics and it is, in this context, specifically emphasized that the significance of literature needs to be acknowledged in the foreign language classroom (BMBWF 127). To dedicate various lessons to American drama is, thus, justified and meets the ministry‘s demands.
Another didactic principle focuses on countries and cultures where it is pointed out that foreign language classes shall include the teaching of culture and art of the respective countries in order for students to develop an inter- and transcultural understanding for the target country or culture (BMWF 125-126). The unit is, furthermore, designed to comply with the didactic principle that asks teachers to make sure that a balance of the four skills listening, speaking, reading and writing prevails in the English classroom as well as with the principle that emphasizes that the target language should function as the priority language (BMBWF 125). Moreover, the teaching unit was designed with the aim to provide the students with a great variety of teaching methods, modes of working and learning strategies, as is demanded in another principle (BMBWF 125). Besides the didactic principles, the Austrian curriculum also points out to what extent foreign language classes should contribute to the students‘ general education (BMBWF 124).
One of the points listed is concerned with language and communication and aims at encouraging teachers to improve students‘ general linguistic competences given the fact that they are the basis of the ability to think, to express oneself, to communicate and to act (BMBWF 124). Another contribution that teachers should make to students‘ general education is concerned with the human being and his or her relation to society and aims at making teachers aware of the fact that it is important to promote pupils‘ cultural 81 openness (BMBWF 124). The teaching unit about the topic of lying and life-lies in
American drama attempts to not only improve the students‘ linguistic skills but also to generally broaden their horizons in terms of literature.
When focusing on the self-assessment grid of the CEFR, one finds that a student on a B2 level should be able to ―[…] understand contemporary literary prose‖ (167).
Eugene O‘Neill‘s Strange Interlude as well as Edward Albee‘s Who’s Afraid of Virginia
Woolf were both written in prose in the twentieth century and can be considered contemporary plays, which means that both texts are appropriate for students on a B2 level. Due to the fact that Henrik Ibsen is a Scandinavian writer and, thus, not of the target countries, and the fact that his play The Wild Duck is in its original version in
Norwegian and was written more than a hundred years ago in the nineteenth century,
Ibsen‘s text is not directly of importance for this teaching unit. In order to meet the demands of the didactic principle that requires a balance between all four skills and in order to save time, text passages of Strange Interlude and Who’s Afraid of Virginia
Woolf have been selected and, thus, students will not be asked to read both plays entirely. To teach the topic of lying and life-lies and the plays by O‘Neill and Albee is not only reasonable because it conforms to the Austrian curriculum and the CEFR but because a human dilemma, that is the question of how to morally evaluate acts of lying, can be addressed in class by means of the literary genre of drama. Since in our society lying is ubiquitous and, therefore, also a relevant issue for students, it may be of interest for them to discuss the topic openly in class. Throughout the teaching unit, the students are repeatedly asked to share their own opinions and are required to make up their minds and relate their notions on the topic to the actions in the plays. The aim of the teaching unit is to teach next to linguistic competences, also social, cultural and communicative competences by means of applying various methods and social forms.
When examining Austrian English schoolbooks for an eighth grade written on a 82
B2 level regarding the topics of lying and life-lies, one finds that Prime Time 8, which is widely used in Austrian schools, deals to a certain extent with the topic of lying. Unit
9 (Hellmayr et al. 102-113) intends to raise awareness for the fact that ideals do not necessarily have to correlate with reality. The teaching unit on O‘Neill‘s Strange
Interlude and Albee‘s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf could be introduced in the course of Unit 9 since thematically it would fit and be appropriate at this point. The overall aim of the teaching unit is to familiarize the students with the plays by the American authors
O‘Neill and Albee and their ways of approaching the concept of the life-lie as well as to critically discuss the role of lying and life-lies in general. By using different methods and diverse forms of exercises and media, also linguistic competences are trained and improved in various ways. In the subsequent chapter, the teaching unit on lying and life- lies will be presented in form of six fifty-minute tabular lesson plans. Each of the lesson plans will be followed by a corresponding reflection that will explain in more detail why it has been designed in the respective way.
6.2. Lesson Plans
6.2.1. Lesson 1: A Philosophical Introduction to the Topic of Lying
Content Purpose Methods/Material Skills
5‘ Students are asked to Initiate a thinking Freewriting: Writing write down what process on the Students write they think when they topic without down their hear the term lying giving input. thoughts on a (freewriting-method, Their texts will be topic; they are exercise 1); their again used in the supposed to not texts are then handed last lesson and stop the writing to the teacher, who serve as a reference flow but keep on keeps them until the document for them; writing; in case end of the unit freewriting will be they cannot think without looking at repeated at the end of anything them; this exercise of the unit, which relevant for the will be repeated at will allow students topic, this method the very end of the to examine if they allows them to unit. have changed their write down mind and rethought anything else certain notions on with the aim to
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the topic or not. keep the writing flow going. Piece of paper. 20‘ Worksheet 1 is Introduce the topic. Individually, then Reading handed out; Give first input. in pairs. Speaking individually, students Familiarize the Worksheet 1. read through the students with quotes on the philosophical handout (exercise 2); opinions on the possible vocabulary topic. difficulties are On the basis of the clarified; in pairs, input in form of students discuss the quotes, students are questions on the encouraged to worksheet (exercise rethink their 3). opinion on the topic. 25‘ In pairs, students are Summarize the In pairs. Speaking asked to come up students‘ ideas and In class. Writing with their own discuss them in Worksheet 1. quotes (exercise 4); class. all quotes are then written down on the blackboard and discussed openly in class; the teacher takes a picture of the blackboard, which he or she saves for later purposes.
The aim of the first lesson is to introduce the topic of the teaching unit which is concerned with the role of lying in American drama. Due to the fact that it is the first lesson, a more general focus will be put on the role of lying and lies before O‘Neill‘s or
Albee‘s play will be discussed in class. As a first introduction to the topic, the students are asked to write down their associations that they have with the term lying. Within three minutes, they are requested to put down everything that comes into their minds when they hear this term and are asked to not stop their writing flow. If students cannot think of anything relevant for the topic anymore, this method, which is called freewriting, allows them in the meantime to write down anything else, for example, their names before they have another idea and return to the topic again. This exercise can be said to meet the Austrian curriculum‘s demand that is concerned with the 84 promotion of the students‘ creativity (―Kreativität und Gestaltung‖ BMBWF 125) since writing is considered a creative form of expression (BMBWF 125). Deliberately, learners are not provided with any input before this freewriting-exercise in order not to bias their thoughts. After this exercise, the students will be asked to hand their sheets in and the teacher will store them away until the end of the teaching unit where they will be asked to repeat this freewriting task. This will offer them then the opportunity to observe whether their opinion on lying and lies has changed after the teaching unit or not. In exercise two, the students are then provided with input in the form of quotes by
Kant, Saint Augustine, Luther, Bok, Sommer as well as from the Bible on which they are asked to reflect with a partner. The aim is to give them diverse ideas and notions on the topic of lying by various philosophical and religious streams. After they will have read the quotes individually, the students are asked to orally discuss various questions in exercise three with a partner. The purpose of this exercise is to promote the students to dedicate themselves to the quotes in more detail. In exercise four, they are then asked in pairs to come up with their own individual quotes, which should sum up their ideas on lying. In order to come up with a quote, they need to organize their thoughts and discuss the topic thoroughly with their partners. The students‘ quotes will be then put on the blackboard and serve as a basis for the discussion that follows in class. At the end of lesson one, the teacher will take a picture of the blackboard in order to be able to have them available in another lesson and uploads it on a respective learning platform.
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6.2.2. Lesson 2: Getting to Know American Drama
Content Purpose Methods/Material Skills 40‘ Students read and Familiarize the Jigsaw; in groups Reading - talk about the students with of three and later Speaking 45‘ development of the American drama six. American theater as and the two Worksheet 2. well as the playwrights. playwrights Eugene Focus on action- O‘Neill and Edward oriented learning. Albee; they work for Train students‘ 40-45 minutes on social competence; their three-step they step into the worksheet and read shoes of the teacher and discuss the and as experts tell provided texts; the their fellow group teacher is in the members what they background and only have read in their helps the students texts. when necessary. 5‘- Characters of Ensure that Teacher-centered Listening 10‘ O‘Neill‘s Strange students have basic teaching. Interlude and first information on Worksheet 2. two acts are shortly Strange Interlude presented by the before reading act teacher. three at home. Students are asked to Save time and be Individual Reading read act three of able to start with reading at home. Writing O‘Neill‘s SI at home the content of Double entry: On and are requested to Strange Interlude a piece of paper take notes in form of straight away the with two columns double entries. next lesson. the students write Encourage students down a quote to read the text from the text in more carefully the left column when asking them and add a to write a double comment in the entry. right column.
The purpose of the second lesson is to familiarize the students with American drama and the playwrights Eugene O‘Neill and Edward Albee. Therefore, the jigsaw-method is used in order to teach, next to content, also social competences and promote the students‘ ability to work independently. The Austrian curriculum demands the teachers to work with student-centered teaching methods (BMBWF 125), which justifies the implementation of the jigsaw-method. In the first step, students are given one of the three texts provided by the teacher, which they then read individually, and they are
86 asked to highlight the passages which seem of importance to them. After having read their texts silently, they get together in groups of three and make sure that each of them has read the same text. They are then asked to follow the instructions of step two. They are requested to make sure that they have understood their texts regarding its content by discussing it in the groups before they answer the questions for their respective text on the worksheet. The questions should encourage the students to read carefully and should put emphasis on the most relevant passages of the text. After step two, the students are asked to form groups of six, of which each consists of three pairs who have read the same text. Now each student steps into the shoes of the teacher and as the expert of his or her texts explains the content to the rest of the group. The experts are, moreover, requested to help their fellow group members to respond to the remaining questions on the worksheet and the teacher makes sure that they are answered correctly. After this lesson, each student should be aware of the main points of each text and have, thus, a basic knowledge of the development of the American theater as well as of the authors
O‘Neill and Albee. In the last five to ten minutes the characters of O‘Neill‘s Strange
Interlude will be briefly introduced since the learners will be asked to read act three of the play at home. Act three of Strange Interlude consists of a little over 14 pages which should be feasible for students to read at home. While the read, the students are supposed to take notes and comment on the text in form of a double entry. This means that they are required to pick out striking sentences and add their thoughts in form of commentaries in order to ensure that the text is read and thought about in more depth. A double entry is usually in the form of a table with two columns. The quotes of the texts are usually placed on the left hand side and one‘s own comments are added on the right hand side. Since the students are in their final year and between 17 and 18 years old, it is assumed that they are familiar with drama as a literary genre and have, therefore, no difficulties with the reading of act three. This is underlined by the descriptor in the 87
CEFR which defines a B2 learner‘s overall reading comprehension which says that a student on this level should be able to ―[…] read with a large degree of independence‖
(Council of Europe 60).
6.2.3. Lesson 3: Strange Interlude’s Third Act and the Life-Lie
Content Purpose Methods/Material Skills 10‘ The photo of the Reactivate previous Computer. Speaking students‘ quotes knowledge. Photo of lesson 1. taken in the first Connect the two lesson is shown to previous lessons the class. They are about the topic of asked what the lying and connection between American drama their quotes and act with Strange three of Strange Interlude. Interlude might be. The discussion is led by the teacher. 40‘ In pairs, the students To ensure that the Worksheet 3. Speaking are asked to answer content of act three Exercise 1: in Writing the questions on is understood. pairs. worksheet 3; after To introduce the Exercise 2: that, the term life-lie concept of the life- individual is mentioned and lie and explain brainstorming. students are asked to what a life-lie is. brainstorm and put down their thoughts on this term; after that, a discussion follows and a definition for the term will be found together in class. The role of the life-lie in act three of Strange Interlude will be discussed orally. At home, the Encourage them to Worksheet 3 with Writing students are asked to write creatively. instructions. write either a short Make students deal Individual work. fourth act and take again with act three on the role of a and O‘Neill‘s text. playwright or write a Train writing skills. letter to Nina and give her advice.
The aim of lesson three is to create a connection between the first lesson on lying with the second lesson on American drama. As an introduction and to reactivate their
88 previous knowledge, the photograph which shows the students‘ quotes on the topic of lying, which they came up with and wrote on the blackboard at the end of the first lesson, will be projected onto the screen and the students are asked which role lying may play in Strange Interlude. If they read act three, they should be able to understand that lying plays a central role in this act. In case some students have not realized this connection, they will be aware of it after this short discussion in class. A deeper understanding for the importance of the role of lies in act three of O‘Neill‘s Strange
Interlude should be promoted by the next exercise. In pairs, the students are asked to answer the questions on their worksheets which aims at making the role of secrets and lies in act three fully visible. In the following exercise they are familiarized for the first time with the term life-lie and are asked to brainstorm and put down the associations they have with the term. Before the students are given any input, they are asked to think about the term life-lie by themselves and collect their thoughts in the respective graphic which is provided on the worksheet. After the brainstorming, a short discussion follows and the most important points of this discussion are collected by the teacher on the blackboard before the term will be defined by the class. The role of the life-lie in
Strange Interlude will be discussed in class as well and it should have become clear by then that Mrs. Evans and Nina have imposed a life-lie on Sam. After lesson three, the students are supposed to understand the content of act three and should have been given the chance of clarifying doubts or concerns about the text. They are now familiar with the concept of the life-lie and why a life-lie differs from other forms of lies and know which role it plays in Strange Interlude. At home, the students are asked to write creatively and either come up with a fourth act or write a letter to Nina and give her advice. The instructions are to be found on worksheet 3. In the CEFR it is pointed out that learners on a B2 level ―[c]an write clear, detailed descriptions of real or imaginary events and experiences marking the relationship between ideas in clear connected text, 89 and following established conventions of the genre concerned‖ (Council of Europe 76).
Due to this descriptor and due to the demand of the Austrian curriculum to encourage creative writing (BMBWF 125), this task will be feasible for the students.
6.2.4. Lesson 4: Moral Evaluation of Nina’s Life-Lie in Strange Interlude and an Introduction to Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Content Purpose Methods/Material Skills 20‘ YouTube video is Discuss the ending YouTube: Listening watched in class of Strange https://www.yout which reveals Nina‘s Interlude. ube.com/watch?v decision and how she Train listening =2HfFNJr7_cE is on the verge of skills. The video is transmitting her and Talk quickly in watched from Mrs. Evans‘ life-lie class about the minute 4:43 until to Madeline; the texts which the the end (length: characters that are to students wrote at around four be seen in the video home. minutes). will be briefly Worksheet 4. introduced by the Texts written at teacher beforehand; home. while watching, the students try to answer the questions on worksheet 4; the video is shown twice before the questions will be compared in class; a brief discussion follows on whether the students‘ predictions or recommendations they made in their texts which they wrote at home are similar to Nina‘s actions or not. The teacher collects these texts. 15‘ Discussion whether Collecting Group discussion Speaking Nina‘s decision is arguments on the with morally justifiable or question whether it predetermined not; in groups of four is morally opinions. each student draws a justifiable that Cards with plus card that shows Nina has never told and minuses on either a plus or a her husband or son them. minus; the two about his biological students who have a father. plus on their cards Discuss the support Nina‘s consequences of 90
decision and think of her life-lie. arguments why her Train speaking life-lie can be skills and the morally justifiable ability to argue in and the other two favor of something students with a which might not minus on their cards support one‘s own think about opinion. arguments why one cannot approve of Nina‘s decision; one group is asked to perform their discussion in front of the class. 5‘- Edward Albee‘s Introduce Albee‘s In pairs. Speaking 10‘ Who’s Afraid of Who’s Afraid of Worksheet 4 Virginia Woolf is Virginia Woolf. introduced by means Train speaking of a speaking task; skills. the students talk about two pictures from the movie version of the play. 5‘- In class, the pictures Make the students Discussion in Speaking 10‘ are described and familiar with the class; at parts interpreted; the context and teacher-centered teacher explains the characters of the teaching. actual situations on play. Blackboard. the pictures and Give short input on explains the context Who’s Afraid of of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Virginia Woolf; gives Save time and be a description of the able to directly characters; writes begin with the important reading in the next information down on lesson. the blackboard for students to copy.
The first half of lesson four intends to observe how the story of Strange Interlude continues with the help of a YouTube video, which shows parts of a movie version of act eight. Four minutes of this video are used in class, which show how Nina is on the verge of transmitting Mrs. Evans and her life-lie to her son‘s fiancée Madeline and how she is stopped by Edmund Darrell. What follows is a conversation between Nina and
Charles Marsden. The students are asked to watch the sequence and work at the same time on the listening task provided on worksheet four. This should encourage the 91 students to listen more carefully and support them in filtering out the most relevant information by answering the respective questions. After this, a brief reference is made to the students‘ homework and it is discussed to what extent their predictions or suggestions regarding Nina‘s decision conform to the actual plot. The teacher then collects the texts and prepares for the next activity, for which the listening comprehension serves as a basis. In this activity the students are asked to morally evaluate Nina‘s actions around her life-lie. In groups of four, two students either support or disapprove of her decision of imposing the life-lie on Sam. One group is then asked to perform their discussion in front of the class. The second half of the lesson aims at introducing Edward Albee‘s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. In the course of the speaking task, the students are provided with two pictures of two different situations of the movie version of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, which they should try to interpret in pairs. They are asked to keep in mind that the overall topic of this teaching unit is lying and the life-lie. After they have discussed the pictures in pairs, the two scenes are talked about in class and the teacher adds information to provide the students with a general knowledge about the plot of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and also briefly explains the characters. This general input on Albee‘s play serves as a basis for the following lesson, in which parts of the play will be read in class.
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6.2.5. Lesson 5: Martha and George’s Life-Lie in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Content Purpose Methods/Material Skills 40‘ After the students By answering the Pages 224-253 of Reading were provided with a questions on Who’s Afraid of basic knowledge worksheet 5, the Virginia Woolf. about Who’s Afraid students are Worksheet 5. of Virginia Woolf in directed toward the Individual the last lesson, pages most important reading (organize 224-253, which are information. the library for the about George‘s last Train silent reading reading, if game of the evening and reading for possible). called ―Bringing up specific Baby‖, are read information. individually; after the reading, the students are asked to answer the questions on worksheet 5. 10‘ Answers are Compare the In class. Speaking discussed in class; answers and clarify students should now doubts. be aware of Martha Make them aware and George‘s life-lie of Martha and and of the fact that George‘s life-lie. their son does not exist.
In lesson five, the students will be provided with enough time for reading silently parts of Albee‘s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf during the lesson. If possible, the teacher may organize an external reading place, for example the library, to create a comfortable reading atmosphere. Since the students, as is pointed out in the CEFR, are able to ―[…] read with a large degree of independence‖ (Council of Europe 60), it is assumed that this reading task is feasible for the group. While the students deal with the respective sequence of act three, they are asked to respond to the questions on worksheet five in order to direct them toward the most relevant information of this scene. These answers will serve as a basis for the following discussion, which should make the students aware of the fact that Martha and George‘s son does not exist but is a construct made up by the couple, in case they have not yet drawn the conclusion themselves. Their life-lie based on their invented son is discussed in class and remaining doubts are clarified.
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6.2.6. Lesson 6: Nina’s Extrinsic versus Martha and George’s Intrinsic Life-Lie
Content Purpose Methods/Material Skills 20‘ The students are The discussion and In pairs. Speaking asked to discuss and the summary as Worksheet 6. summarize the life- well as the lies of Nina as well questions should as of Martha and lead the students to George and answer the conclusion that the questions on the two life-lies worksheet 6; the differ. questions are then Students discussed in class understand what and the difference the difference is. between the life-lies is made fully clear (Nina imposes the life-lie on Sam ≠ Martha and George impose it on themselves). 20‘ For a further Summarize the last Fishbowl: Two Speaking discussion on the lessons in a final circular seating Listening topic of lying and discussion in class arrangements are life-lies, the fishbowl about the topic of formed; the method is made use lying and life-lies. smaller inner of; the teacher asks Train discussion circle is the area an introductory skills. where people talk question; when the and discuss; with discussion stops the a tap on teacher interferes and someone‘s adds another shoulder one can question. enter the inner Possible questions: circle and Is lying morally actively discuss; justifiable also the students the way Nina and sitting in the Martha and outer circle listen George did? to the students Can the aims of a who sit and life-lie justify the discuss in the means? inner circle and take notes. Chairs, enough space. 10‘ The students are Create personal Freewriting (cf. Writing again asked to write connection lesson 1). all their thoughts between the Piece of paper. about the topic of students and the lying on a piece of topic. paper; after this Students can now freewriting exercise see whether their the students are opinion on lying handed back their has changed. notes from the first Terminate the 94
lesson and are teaching unit. supposed to compare Terminate it in the the two texts and same way that it detect possible has begun (red differences; if the thread). students notice a difference and want to share it with the class, they can talk about it.
The last lesson of the teaching unit on the topic of lying and life-lies in the plays
Strange Interlude and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Eugene O‘Neill and Edward
Albee, respectively, intends to summarize the content of the previous lessons. The first twenty minutes aim at showing the difference between the life-lie of Nina and the life- lie of Martha and George. The students are provided with exercises on worksheet six, which try to make them realize by themselves that there is a difference between the two life-lies. They do not necessarily need to be familiarized with the terms extrinsic or intrinsic but should be made aware of the fact that Nina imposes a life-lie on another person whereas Martha and George lie to themselves. The questions will be later discussed in class in order to clarify possible doubts and misunderstandings. In the next twenty minutes, a further discussion follows and the fishbowl-method will be applied with the aim of giving the students the chance to express their own opinions on the topic. The fishbowl-method bears many advantages, that is, it changes the setting and creates a more discussion-friendly atmosphere, where every student is invited to be part of the discussion. In order to round the teaching unit off, the freewriting-exercise will be repeated before the teacher hands back the students‘ texts from the first lesson. The purpose of this last exercise is to give the students the chance to see whether their opinions on the topic of lying have changed throughout the teaching unit or not.
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7. Bibliography Primary Sources
Albee, Edward. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? 1962. New York: Signet, 2005. Print.
Ibsen, Henrik. The Wild Duck. Three Plays: The Pillars of the Community, The Wild Duck, Hedda Gabler. Trans. Una Ellis-Fermor. London: The Penguin Classics, 1950. 139-260. Print.
O‘Neill, Eugene. Strange Interlude. 1928. London: Nick Hern Books, 1991. Print.
Secondary Sources
Adler, Thomas P. ―Edward Albee.‖ The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary American Playwrights. Ed. Martin Middeke et al. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. 1- 19. Print.
Alkofer, Andreas-P. ―‗Erklär‗ mir Lüge, verklär‗ sie nicht …‘. Die ‗Quelle der Moralität‘ und die Lüge. Ein ethisch-theologischer Zwischenruf.‖ Kulturen der Lüge. Ed. Mathias Mayer. Köln: Böhlau Verlag GmbH & Cie, 2003. 35-68. Print.
Ayduk, Özlem, and Ethan Kross. ―From a Distance: Implications of Spontaneous Self Distancing for Adaptive Self-Reflection.‖ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 98.5 (2010): 809-829. Print.
Baruzzi, Arno. Philosophie der Lüge. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1996. Print.
Bigsby, Christopher W. Introduction. Edward Albee: A Collection of Critical Essays. By Bigsby. Ed. Bigsby. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1975. 1-9. Print.
---. ―Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Edward Albee's Morality Play.‖ Journal of American Studies 1.2 (1967): 257-268. Print.
Bok, Sissela. Lying: Moral Choices in Public and Private Life. New York: Vintage Books, 1978. Print.
---. Secrets: On the Ethics of Concealment and Revelation. New York: Vintage Books, 1983. Print.
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Bruder, Klaus-Jürgen. ―Die Lüge: Das Kennwort im Diskurs der Macht.‖ Lüge und Selbsttäuschung. Ed. Christoph Hubig and Gerd Jüttemann. Vol. 7. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, 2009. 7-65. Print.
Bundesministerium für Bildung, Wissenschaft und Forschung (BMBWF). ―Gesamte Rechtsvorschrift für Lehrpläne – allgemeinbildende höhere Schulen, Fassung vom 01.09.2017.‖ N.p., 2017. Web. 02 Apr. 2018.
Cantarero, Katarzyna, et al. ―When is a Lie Acceptable? Work and Private Life Lying Acceptance Depends on its Beneficiary.‖ The Journal of Social Psychology 158.2 (2018): 220-235. Print. Clark, Barrett H. Eugene O’Neill: The Man and His Plays. New York: Dover Publications, 1947. Print.
Coogan, Michael D., ed. The New Oxford Annotated Bible. New York: Oxford University Press Print, 2007. Print.
Council of Europe. Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment: Companion Volume with New Descriptors. 2018. Web. 02 Apr. 2018.
D‘Agata, Madeleine T. ―White Lies.‖ Encyclopedia of Deception. Ed. Timothy R. Levine. London: SAGE Publications, 2014. 936-937. Print.
Davis, Derek Russell. ―Gregers as Hjalmar‘s Other Self, Eilert as Hedda‘s.‖ Contemporary Approaches to Ibsen. Ed. Bjørn Hemmer and Vigdis Ystad. Vol. 2. Oslo: Norwegian University Press, 1991. 161-170. Print.
Dukore, Bernard F. American Dramatists: 1918-1945. New York: Grove Press, 1984. Print.
Dymkowski, Christine. Biographical Sketch of Eugene O‘Neill. Strange Interlude. By Eugene O‘Neill. London: Nick Hern Books, 1991. v-xi. Print.
---. Introduction to the Play. Strange Interlude. By Eugene O‘Neill. London: Nick Hern Books, 1991. xii-xvii. Print.
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The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, eds. Edward Albee. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 05 March 2018. Web. 03 Apr. 2018.
Flanagan, William. ―The Art of the Theater IV: Edward Albee: An Interview‖ Conversations with Edward Albee. Ed. Philip C. Kolin. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1988. 45-66. Print.
Gelb, Arthur and Barbara Gelb. Eugene O’Neill. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 08 March 2018. Web. 03 Apr. 2018.
Glicksberg, Charles I. The Sexual Revolution in Modern American Literature. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1971. Print.
Grabher, Gudrun M. ―Sinful Silence? Ethical Implications of Concealment in Eugene O‘Neill‘s Strange Interlude.‖ Semantics of Silences in Linguistics and Literature. Ed. Gudrun M. Grabher and Ulrike Jessner. Heidelberg: Winter, 1996. 353-363. Print.
Han, Boon Young. ―Ibsen‘s THE WILD DUCK, Life-Lies, and Photography.‖ The Explicator 73.3 (2005): 173-176. Print.
Hellmayr, Georg, Stephan Waba, and Heike Mlakar. Prime Time 8. Wien: Österreichischer Schulbuchverlag, 2009. Print.
Hippel, William von, and Robert Trivers. ―The Evolution and Psychology of Self Deception.‖ Behavioral and Brain Sciences 34.1 (2011): 1-56. Print.
Indvik, Julie, and Pamela R. Johnson. ―Liar! Liar! Your Pants Are on Fire: Deceptive Communication in the Workplace.‖ Journal of Organizational Culture, Communication and Conflict 13.1 (2009): 322-326. Print. Kant, Immanuel. Schriften zur Ethik und Religionsphilosophie. 1785. Ed. Wilhelm Weischedel. Vol. 4. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Darmstadt, 1956. Print. Krasner, David. A History of Modern Drama. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. Print.
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Krumbein, Sebastian. Selbstbild und Männlichkeit: Rekonstruktionen männlicher Selbst- und Idealbilder und deren Veränderung im Laufe der individuellen Entwicklung. München: Profil Verlag, 1995. Print.
Levine, Emma, et al. ―The Surprising Costs of Silence: Asymmetric Preferences for Prosocial Lies of Commission and Omission.‖ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 114.1 (2018): 29-51. Print.
Matthews, Gareth B. Augustine. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2005. Print.
Moreno, Oscar, Arul Mishra, and Himanshu Mishra. ―Illeism and Decision Making.‖ Advances in Consumer Research 41 (2013): 627-628. Print.
Nissing, Hanns-Gregor. ―Die Lüge – Ein Alltagsphänomen aus wissenschaftlicher Sicht: Zur Einleitung.‖ Die Lüge: Ein Alltagsphänomen aus wissenschaftlicher Sicht. Ed. Jörn Müller and Hanns-Gregor Nissing. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2007. 7-25. Print.
Osterwalder, Hans. ―Patriarchy vs. Matriarchy: Edward Albee‘s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Arthur Miller‘s After the Fall.‖ Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 9 (1996): 109-116. Print.
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Roudané, Matthew C. Edward Albee: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Print.
Selerie, Gavin. Brodie’s Notes on Edward Albee’s Who‘s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992. Print.
Sommer, Volker. Lob der Lüge: Täuschung und Selbstbetrug bei Tier und Mensch. 2nd ed. München: C.H. Beck, 1993. Print.
Sternberg, Kurt. ―Die ‚Lebenslüge‘ in Ibsens Dichtungen.‖ Annalen der Philosophie 2.2 (1921): 253-270. Print.
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Talwar, Victoria, Susan M. Murphy, and Kang Lee. ―White Lie-Telling in Children for Politeness Purposes.‖ International Journal of Behavioral Development 31.1 (2007): 1-11. Print.
Turri, Angelo, and John Turri. ―The Truth about Lying.‖ Cognition 138 (2015): 161- 168. Print. Whitaker, Thomas R. ―Holding Up the Mirror: Deception as Revelation in the Theater.‖ Social Research 63.3 (1996): 701-730. Print.
Winchester, Otis W. ―Eugene O‘Neill‘s Strange Interlude as a Transcript of America in the 1920‘s.‖ Eugene O'Neill: A Collection of Criticism. Ed. Ernest G. Griffin. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976. 67-80. Print.
Wolff, Tamsen. ―‗Eugenic O‘Neill‘ and the Secrets of Strange Interlude.‖ Theatre Journal 55.2 (2003): 215-234. Print.
Ystad, Vigdis. ―The Young Ibsen – Critic and Theatre-writer.‖ Contemporary Approaches to Ibsen. Ed. Bjørn Hemmer and Vigdis Ystad. Vol. 2. Oslo: Norwegian University Press, 1991. 141-160. Print.
Zwart, H.A.E. ―The Birth of a Research Animal: Ibsen‘s The Wild Duck and the Origin of a New Animal Science.‖ Environmental Values 9.1 (2000): 91–108. Print.
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8. Appendix
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(102
Hellmayr et al.
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Worksheet 1 (Lesson 1)
Lying
Exercise 1 (Freewriting): Get a piece of paper and write down all your thoughts that come into your mind when you hear the terms lying or lies. You have three minutes and are asked to make sure that you do not stop your writing flow. (Note that your text will not be looked at by anybody else but you.)
Exercise 2: Read through the quotes below.
―By a lie a man throws away and, as it were, annihilates his dignity as a man. – Immanuel Kant, Doctrine of Virtue‖ (qtd. in Bok, Lying 35) ―[A] white lie […] is a falsehood not meant to injure anyone, and of little moral import.‖ (Bok, Lying 61) Lying and deception are ubiquitous and to be found at the center of any intellectual activity of man. (cf. Sommer) ―You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.‖ (Coogan, Exod. 20.16) ―What harm would it do, if a man told a good strong lie for the sake of the good and for the Christian church […] a lie out of necessity, a useful lie, a helpful lie, such lies would not be against God, he would accept them. – Martin Luther […]‖ (qtd. in Bok, Lying 51) ―But every liar says the opposite of what he thinks in his heart, with purpose to deceive. Now it is evident that speech was given to man, not that men might therewith deceive one another, but that one man might make known his thoughts to another. To use speech, then, for the purpose of deception, and not for its appointed end, is a sin. […]. – St. Augustine, The Enchiridion‖ (qtd. in Bok, Lying 34).
Exercise 3: In pairs, discuss the following questions:
Which quotes approve of telling lies and which do not? Which quote is most in accordance with your own opinion? Do you think that lying is acceptable? Why or why not? Give reasons.
Exercise 4: In pairs, summarize your ideas and come up with a quote that represents best your opinions on the topic of lying:
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Worksheet 2 (Lesson 2)
American Drama
Step 1
1. Read through your text and highlight the most important points. 2. When you have finished reading, find two partners who have read the same text.
Step 2
1. In groups of three, discuss now your text and your highlighted passages and clarify possible difficulties regarding content or vocabulary. 2. With your partners, answer the questions that belong to your text.
Questions Text 1: The American Theater in the 20th Century
Where did the plays and playwrights come from which influenced American theatre in particular at the beginning of the 20th century?
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Who was the first American playwright of international importance?
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Which event influenced the American theater negatively for the following thirty years?
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Which kind of training became important from the beginning of the 1930s onward?
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Questions Text 2: Eugene O’Neill
What experiences did Eugene O‘Neill make as a child?
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Why was Eugene O‘Neill‘s play Strange Interlude innovative?
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What are thought asides?
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Why was Eugene O‘Neill so important for American drama? ______
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Questions Text 3: Edward Albee
What experiences did Edward Albee make as a child?
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What is the name of Edward Albee‘s most important play and what is it roughly about? ______
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What is the name of the prize that Albee won various times for his work?
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What did Albee do next to writing plays?
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Step 3
1. Get together in groups of six. Each group should consist of two experts per text. 2. Together in pairs, explain the content of your text to the other group members and focus on the passages that you highlighted during step 1. Then, help your group members to answer the questions of step 2. In the end, you should have answered all questions and know the most important points of all three texts.
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Text 1: Theatre of the 20th Century and Beyond: United States
American theatre at the beginning of the 20th century was so heavily dominated by commercialism that some kind of revolt was to be expected. An attempt to establish a European-style art theatre in New York City was made in 1909 with the opening of the New Theatre, but the building was so cavernous and unsuited for experimental work that the venture collapsed after two seasons. Visits by the Abbey Theatre group in 1911, Reinhardt‘s Sumurūm in 1912, Granville-Barker‘s company in 1915, and Copeau‘s Vieux-Colombier in 1917 provided exciting glimpses of the work of Europe‘s art theatres and stimulated a large number of ―little theatres‖ in provincial cities. Dedicated to producing the best of European and classical drama and to fostering new American plays, these groups were staunchly amateur, with their memberships organized by subscription, so that true experiment could be conducted without commercial pressure. One of the first such companies in New York City was the Washington Square Players. From a similar group, the Provincetown Players, emerged the first American dramatist of international stature: Eugene O‘Neill. His first full-length play, Beyond the Horizon, was successfully produced in 1920. Most of O‘Neill‘s subsequent work represented a restless search for theatrical style: he tried Expressionism in The Emperor Jones (1920) and The Hairy Ape (1922), masks in The Great God Brown (1926), […], Mourning Becomes Electra (1931), before he found a suitable idiom for modern tragedy in his autobiographical play Long Day’s Journey into Night (1941; produced 1956).
Art theatre was established on a commercially successful basis by New York City‘s Theatre Guild in 1918. During the next two decades it became the most important platform for American drama, encouraging such playwrights as Robert E. Sherwood, Maxwell Anderson, and Elmer Rice, in addition to O‘Neill and European writers. The Theatre Guild‘s success quickly spurred independent Broadway producers to follow its example. […]
Broadway is strongly associated with the development of the American musical. In the 1920s and ‗30s such shows tended to be either plotless variety revues or chorus-line extravaganzas and were noted mostly for producing some of the finest examples of American popular songwriting. Show Boat (1927) introduced the trend of integrating songs and plot to form a cohesive whole, which became widely influential during the second half of the century.
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The stock market crash of 1929 heralded the end of the unparalleled prosperity of both the theatre and the nation. The nation recovered from the ensuing economic depression, but the theatre, under increasing competition from motion pictures, radio, and television, did not. During the next 30 years, traveling companies all but disappeared, and productions on Broadway shrank to 60 in 1949–50, thereafter averaging between 50 and 60 a year. No new theatres were constructed. Nevertheless, live theatre continued to attract talented writers. From the social protest movement of the 1930s came Clifford Odets, Sidney Kingsley, Lillian Hellman, Thornton Wilder, and William Saroyan. So far, little attention had been paid to actor training, but in 1931 Harold Clurman, Cheryl Crawford, and Lee Strasberg formed the Group Theatre (an offshoot of the Theatre Guild) to develop new writers and evolve a style of acting […]. From 1935 to 1939 the WPA Federal Theatre Project, established and funded by the Works Project Administration of the U.S. government to provide employment for out-of-work actors, presented hundreds of productions of all sorts throughout the country and showed that a large untapped audience existed for live theatre at low prices.
Rea, Kenneth Grahame. Western Theatre. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 05 May 2017. Web. 17 Apr. 2018.
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Text 2: Eugene O’Neill
Eugene O‘Neill, in full Eugene Gladstone O‘Neill (born Oct. 16, 1888 in New York, N.Y., U.S. – died Nov. 27, 1953, Boston, Mass.) foremost American dramatist and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1936. […]
Early life
O‘Neill was born into the theatre. His father, James O‘Neill, was a successful touring actor in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. […]
Eugene, who was born in a hotel, spent his early childhood in hotel rooms, on trains, and backstage. Although he later deplored the nightmare insecurity of his early years and blamed his father for the difficult, rough-and-tumble life the family led—a life that resulted in his mother‘s drug addiction—Eugene had the theatre in his blood. […]
Entry into theatre
O‘Neill‘s first appearance as a playwright came in the summer of 1916, in the quiet fishing village of Provincetown, Mass., where a group of young writers and painters had launched an experimental theatre. In their tiny, ramshackle playhouse on a wharf, they produced his one-act sea play Bound East for Cardiff. The talent inherent in the play was immediately evident to the group, which that fall formed the Playwrights‘ Theater in Greenwich Village. Their first bill, on Nov. 3, 1916, included Bound East for Cardiff—O‘Neill‘s New York debut. […]
Period of the major works
O‘Neill‘s capacity for and commitment to work were staggering. Between 1920 and 1943 he completed 20 long plays—several of them double and triple length—and a number of shorter ones. […] O‘Neill‘s plays were written from an intensely personal point of view, deriving directly from the scarring effects of his family‘s tragic relationships—his mother and father, who loved and tormented each other; his older brother, who loved and corrupted him and died of alcoholism in middle age; and O‘Neill himself, caught and torn between love for and rage at all three. […]
O‘Neill‘s innovative writing continued with Strange Interlude. This play was revolutionary in style and length: when first produced, it opened in late afternoon, broke for a dinner intermission, and ended at the conventional hour. Techniques new to the 108 modern theatre included spoken asides or soliloquies to express the characters‘ hidden thoughts. […]
Until some years after his death in 1953, O‘Neill, although respected in the United States, was more highly regarded abroad. Sweden, in particular, always held him in high esteem, partly because of his publicly acknowledged debt to the influence of the Swedish playwright August Strindberg, whose tragic themes often echo in O‘Neill‘s plays. In 1936 the Swedish Academy gave O‘Neill the Nobel Prize for Literature, the first time the award had been conferred on an American playwright. […]
Legacy
O‘Neill was the first American dramatist to regard the stage as a literary medium and the only American playwright ever to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. Through his efforts, the American theatre grew up during the 1920s, developing into a cultural medium that could take its place with the best in American fiction, painting, and music. […] O‘Neill saw the theatre as a valid forum for the presentation of serious ideas. […] For more than 20 years […] O‘Neill set the pace for the blossoming of the Broadway theatre.
Gelb, Arthur and Barbara Gelb. Eugene O’Neill. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 08 March 2018. Web. 03 Apr. 2018.
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Text 3: Edward Albee
Edward Albee, in full Edward Franklin Albee (born March 12, 1928 in Washington, D.C., U.S.—died September 16, 2016, Montauk, New York), American dramatist and theatrical producer best known for his play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), which displays slashing insight and witty dialogue in its gruesome portrayal of married life.
Albee was the adopted child of a father who had for a time been the assistant general manager of a chain of vaudeville theatres then partially owned by the Albee family. At the time of Albee‘s adoption, though, both his parents were involved with owning and showing saddle horses. He had a difficult relationship with his parents, particularly with his mother, whom he saw as distant and unloving. Albee grew up in New York City and nearby Westchester county. He was educated at Choate School (graduated 1946) and at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut (1946–47). He wrote poetry and an unpublished novel but turned to plays in the late 1950s.
Among Albee‘s early one-act plays, The Zoo Story (1959), The Sandbox (1959), and The American Dream (1961) were the most successful and established him as an astute critic of American values. But it is his first full-length play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (film 1966), that remains his most important work. In this play a middle-aged professor, his wife, and a younger couple engage one night in an unrestrained drinking bout that is filled with malicious games, insults, humiliations, betrayals, savage witticisms, and painful, self-revealing confrontations. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf won immediate acclaim and established Albee as a major American playwright.
It was followed by a number of full-length works – including A Delicate Balance (1966; winner of the Pulitzer Prize), which was based in part on his mother‘s witty alcoholic sister, and Three Tall Women (1994; Pulitzer Prize). […] Among his other plays are Tiny Alice (1965), which begins as a philosophical discussion between a lawyer and a cardinal; Seascape (1975; also winner of the Pulitzer Prize), a poetic exploration of evolution; and The Play About the Baby (1998), on the mysteries of birth and parenthood.
Albee continued to dissect American morality in plays such as The Goat; or, Who Is Sylvia? (2002), which depicts the disintegration of a marriage in the wake of the
110 revelation that the husband has engaged in bestiality. In Occupant (2001), Albee imagines the sculptor Louise Nevelson being interviewed after her death. Albee also expanded The Zoo Story into a two-act play, called Peter and Jerry (2004). […] The absurdist Me, Myself, & I (2007) trenchantly analyzes the relationship between a mother and her twin sons.
In addition to writing, Albee produced a number of plays and lectured at schools throughout the country. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1996. A compilation of his essays and personal anecdotes, Stretching My Mind, was published in 2005. That year Albee also received a Tony Award for lifetime achievement.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, eds. Edward Albee. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 05 March 2018. Web. 03 Apr. 2018.
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Eugene O’Neill’s Strange Interlude (1928)
Characters Nina Leeds married to Sam Evans wants to become a mother Charles Marsden friend of Nina‘s sensitive Sam Evans married to Nina Leeds insecure Mrs. Evans mother of Sam wants her son to be happy Ned Darrell friend of Sam and Nina‘s doctor does not appear in act three but is talked about
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Worksheet 3 (Lesson 3)
Exercise 1: In pairs, think about what you have read in Eugene O’Neill’s third act of his play Strange Interlude and answer the questions below:
1. What secret is Nina hiding from her husband Sam?
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2. What is the most important thing in life for Mrs. Evans and why?
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3. What secret is Mrs. Evans hiding from her son Sam?
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4. What happened to Mrs. Evans‘ husband (Sam‘s father)?
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5. What does Mrs. Evans tell Nina to do?
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Exercise 2: Remember what happened in act three of O’Neill’s play Strange Interlude and keep in mind Mrs. Evans’ secret. Write down your thoughts on the term life-lie before we will come up with a definition for this term in class.
A life-lie is …
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In act three of Strange Interlude the life-lie plays the following role:
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Homework: Choose one of the two tasks below.
1. You step into the shoes of Eugene O‘Neill and write act four of Strange Interlude. Predict what Nina may have decided after the visit at Mrs. Evans‘ house and guess how the storyline around Nina and the other characters may develop. Write around 300 words.
2. Imagine that you are Nina‘s friend, who contacted you and asked you for advice after the visit at Mrs. Evans‘ house. Write a letter to your friend and try to support her by making suggestions and recommendations. Justify your arguments. Write around 300 words.
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Worksheet 4 (Lesson 4) Listening: Act eight of O’Neill’s Strange Interlude
https://www.gettyimages.at/license/171140921
While watching the video, which shows parts of act eight of Eugene O’Neill’s Strange Interlude, try to answer the questions below in a maximum of four words.
1. What does Madeline have to swear to Nina?
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2. What must Madeline not do according to Nina?
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3. Which reason does Ned Darrell name for Nina‘s behavior?
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4. What did Ned Darrell warn Nina about?
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5. Which secret does Nina reveal to Charlie Marsden?
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6. What was Nina‘s right according to Sam‘s mother?
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Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HfFNJr7_cE
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Speaking: Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
https://www.gettyimages.at/license/3354882 https://www.gettyimages.at/license/502883717
Keep in mind the previous lessons on lying and life-lies, and in pairs:
Describe the persons and their actions on the pictures. Compare and contrast the two pictures. Give possible reasons why the situation and the atmosphere may have changed in the second picture.
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Worksheet 5 (Lesson 5)
Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
https://www.gettyimages.at/license/526900848
After you have finished reading pages 224-253 of the third act of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, answer the questions below:
1. Why is Martha and George‘s son supposed to come home this night? 2. What is the name of the last game that George wants to play this evening? 3. How does Martha describe her son? 4. Why do you think George says, ―All truth being relative‖ (VW 236) in this context? 5. How does George describe the relationship between Martha and her father? 6. What are the sad news which George wants to share with his wife and their guests Nick and Honey? 7. What are Martha‘s reactions to the news which George has shared with them? 8. What did Martha do to make George want to play this game? 9. What does Nick imply when he says, ―You couldn‘t have … any‖ (VW 252)?
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Worksheet 6 (Lesson 6)
Eugene O’Neill’s vs. Edward Albee’s Life-Lie
In pairs, discuss Nina’s as well as Martha and George’s life-lie and summarize the most important points of your discussion in the respective box. Then answer the questions below.
Nina’s life-lie
Martha and George’s life-lie
1. To whom does Nina lie and who is affected by her life-lie?
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2. To whom do Martha and George lie and who is affected by their life-lie?
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3. Why did Nina create her life-lie? What was her aim?
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4. Why did Martha and George create their life-lie? What was their aim?
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5. What is the biggest difference between the two life-lies?
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Eidesstattliche Erklärung
Ich erkläre hiermit an Eides Statt durch meine eigenhändige Unterschrift, dass ich die vorliegende Arbeit selbstständig verfasst und keine anderen als die angegebenen Quellen und Hilfsmittel verwendet habe. Alle Stellen, die wörtlich oder inhaltlich den angegebenen Quellen entnommen wurden, sind als solche kenntlich gemacht.
Die vorliegende Arbeit wurde bisher in gleicher oder ähnlicher Form noch nicht als Magister-/Master-/Diplomarbeit/Dissertation eingereicht.
30. April 2018 ______
Datum Unterschrift
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