A Feminine Focus on Beth Henley's Crimes of The

Home , Beth Henley, Crimes of the Heart

MASARYK UNIVERSITY BRNO

FACULTY OF EDUCATION

Department of English Language and Literature

A FEMININE FOCUS

BETH HENLEY’S CRIMES OF THE HEART

IN THE CONTEXT OF SOUTHERNESS

Final Work

Brno 2017

Final Work Consultant: Mgr. Lucie Podroužková, Ph.D. Author: Mgr. Lada Opravilová

ANNOTATION

This final work examines the searching of gender identity of the main female characters in the context of the American South through a textual analysis of Beth Henley’s play Crimes of the Heart.

The first chapter offers Henley’s biography, an overview of her career as well as certain key characteristics of her work.

The second chapter outlines what feminist theatre is, talks about its formation and development.

The third chapter analyzes Crimes of the Heart from a feminine perspective with its central themes of Southerness, patriarchal family, searching for identity and sisterhood.

KEY WORDS

Beth Henley, Crimes of the Heart, Feminist Theatre, the Plays by Beth Henley, patriarchal family, identity, sisterhood, Southerness

ANOTACE

Tato závěrečná práce studuje hledání genderové identity ženských postav v prostředí amerického Jihu prostřednictvím textové analýzy divadelní hry Crimes of the Heart americké dramatičky Beth Henleyové.

První kapitola představuje život a tvorbu autorky a také přináší celkovou charakteristiku její tvorby.

Druhá kapitola přináší základní informace o feministickém dramatu, jeho formování a vývoji.

Třetí kapitola obsahuje analýzu Crimes of the Heart z ženského pohledu na základní témata hry jako je jižanství, patriarchální rodina, hledání identity a sesterství.

KLÍČOVÁ SLOVA

Beth Henley, Zločiny srdce, feminismus v divadelní tvorbě, divadelní hry Beth Henleyové, patriarchální rodina, identita, sesterství, jižanství

DECLARATION

I declare that I have worked on my final work on my own using only cited literary sources, other information and sources in agreement with the Disciplinary regulations for Students of Faculty of Education at Masaryk University and with the Law 121/2000 Coll., on Copyright, Rights Related to Copyright and on the Amendment of Certain Laws (Copyright Law), Subsequently Amended.

I agree with storing this work in the library of the Faculty of Education at Masaryk University, and making it accessible for study purposes.

PROHLÁŠENÍ

Prohlašuji, že jsem závěrečnou práci vypracovala samostatně, s využitím pouze citovaných literárních pramenů, dalších informací a zdrojů v souladu s Disciplinárním řádem pro studenty Pedagogické fakulty Masarykovy university a se zákonem č. 121/2000 Sb., o právu autorském, o právech souvisejících s právem autorským a o změně některých zákonů (autorský zákon), ve znění pozdějších předpisů.

Brno, June 2017 Mgr. Lada Opravilová

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Mgr. Lucie Podroužková, Ph.D. for her valuable advice, comments and kind help that she provided as my consultant.

TABLE of CONTENTS

Introduction ...... 6

1 Beth Henley – Life and Work ...... 8

1.1 A New Voice in American Theatre ...... 8

1.2 An Imposition of Southern Identity in Plays ...... 11

2 Feminist Theatre ...... 13

2.1 The Concept of Feminist Theatre ...... 13

2.2 The Climate for Women Playwrights ...... 14

2.3 Beth Henley and Feminist Theatre ...... 15

2.4 Features of Feminism in Crimes of the Heart……………………………………………16

3 Crimes of the Heart – Analysis ...... 18

3.1 What Are the Crimes? ...... 18

3.2 Kitchen as the Heart of the Home ...... 18

3.3 Time of the Story ...... 20

3.4 Cyclic Form as a Feature of Feminist Aesthetics ...... 20

3.5 It Is a Crime Not to Follow Your Heart’s Desires ...... 21

3.6 Characters Rather than an Action ...... 22

3.7 Themes ...... 23

3.7.1 What Is Southerness?...... 24

3.7.2 Southerness as a Background for Crimes of the Heart ...... 25

3.7.3 Patriarchal Southern Family ...... 29

3.7.4 Searching for Identity ...... 31

3.7.5 Sisterhood ...... 35

Conclusion ...... 36

Appendix ...... 38 Bibliography ...... 39 INTRODUCTION

The American playwright Beth Henley (b. 1952) was the first woman awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in twenty-three years, and her play became the first ever to win before being presented on Broadway. Not only the triumph of the play, but also the status of the Pulitzer Award established the author as a leading voice in American theatre for the next years despite the fact that the most of “major” American plays (written and produced) have been mostly authored by men. Even though Crimes of the Heart (1979, p. 1982) was written over 30 years ago, the gender disbalance onstage and offstage is still an issue today.

While Henley is an author of more than 13 plays and several screenplays, critical academic or theoretical attention of her work is, until now, rather limited. Although there have been publicized numerous newspaper articles with reviews of her plays or their various productions, more significant overall studies of her work are missing.

Some of more complex studies published about Beth Henley are Julia Ann Fesmire’s analysis of Henley in her 2002 text “Beth Henley, A Casebook” in which she writes a series of essays about Henley “as a Southern voice, as a feminist and as someone with a particular fascination for dramatic ideals of the grotesque”, and a critical study of Beth Henley’s plays from 2005 written by Gene A. Plunka Plays by Beth Henley.

However, what has been written less examines the potential feminism of her work than her place within the Southern Gothic tradition and her literary influences such as Anton Chekhov and others. For instance, in Beth Henley: A Casebook she is considered by Donald R. Noble in his essay the Future of Southern Writing to be “the premier Southern Playwright of the 1980’s” and Crimes of the Heart was described by Karen Laughlin as “a tangy variation of the grits and Gothic South of Tennessee Williams, Eudora Welty and Flannery O’Connor.”

While Henley’s brand of feminism may not please those who prefer more progressive modes, majority of her work has provided large audiences an important view into the world of women.

The aim of this final work is to introduce this great American writer and discuss her role in feminist drama. I will also try to examine the forming of gender identity of the main female characters in the context of the American South through a textual analysis of Beth Henley’s 6

play Crimes of the Heart. Furthermore, I will try to reflect how Southerness influences their lives and how they struggle to find their own self-esteem and personal freedom. I hope that examining the characters and their relationship lead this work to reach the goal. And, I also believe that my work will bring a new point of view on this Beth Henley´s play.

1 BETH HENLEY (1952 - ) – Life and Work

1.1 A New Voice in American Theatre

This chapter outlines Beth Henley´s curriculum vitae with regards to the influences which brought her to the theatre.

Elizabeth Becker Henley was born on the 8th May, 1952 in Jackson, Mississippi. She is a daughter of a lawyer Charles Boyce and an actress Lydia Becker Caldwell. She is the second oldest of four sisters. Being one of four daughters gave Beth a deep insight into the love-hate relationship of sisters, which she exploited later in Crimes of the Heart. She describes herself as a “shy and lonely fat kid” (Betsko and Koening qtd. in Craig, 142) who suffered from the chronic asthma attacks. Being often ill, she entertained herself by reading play scripts that were in a production at the New Stage Theatre in Jackson, where her mother performed in a variety of stage parts. She was an important force in arousing Beth´s love for the theatre. Beth used to read her mother’s scripts and watch her to rehearse. She says: “I just loved going to the theatre and … watching. I thought it was glamorous. She’d come out in that green dress and stand on stage and get kissed by a man. I thought it was the most wonderful thing for a mother to do” (ibid. 142).

Her parents’ divorce in those years just deepened Beth’s shyness and introversion. However, when the writer’s father ran for the Mississippi senate, she helped him with his campaign. He had died in 1978 before she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. “He thought the work was completely abysmal,” Beth reminisced. “He didn’t see me as a writer” (ibid. 143).

She studied at a public high school in Jackson. She recalls those high school years as chaotic: “It was a zoo ... The students took ungodly advantage of the situation. The teachers were crying all the time. I’d just go over to the Totes 'Em and eat Twinkies. I’d just not come back after lunch. I didn’t take my books out of the locker for a whole semester” (Rosenfeld, 10).

After graduating from high school, she went to Southern Methodist University where she majored in theatre, hoping to become an actress. She wrote one-act plays only as class assignments. One of these, Am I Blue, was staged at the university but the playwright was still too shy to allow her name to be written on the program. Modestly, she used the pseudonym Amy Peach. In 1974, she graduated with a bachelor of fine art’s degree in theatre. She spent a year studying to achieve her master’s degree at the University of Illinois and then 8

moved to Los Angeles to search for a job as an actress in 1976. Frustrated with the lack of acting opportunities, she began working on her fist full-length play – Crimes of the Heart.

Henley’s experiences with acting proved to be very valuable and have made her sensitive to the collisions that happen between a performer and a playwright as a play is being staged. “Beth approaches a play from the point of view of theater, not literature,” observes Melvin Bernhardt, who was a Broadway theatre director. “And as an actress, she then knows how to make it stageworthy” (Haller, 44).

It took her three months to write the first draft of Crimes of the Heart. She says about that time:

“I was out in Los Angeles, I was trying to acting. It was so hard trying to get a job out there. I had an acting agent, but she’d never call you up and I’d sit at home all day long. She was reduced to working at the Broadway Department Store and making calls on her lunch hour. I was working with a group of actors out there (…) and I thought I’d just write a play with parts for people around our age and we can do it as a showcase out there. I thought I may as well do something while I was sitting out there. I’d written a screenplay when I first got out there, so I was of in the habit of writing” (Jones, 173).

After having completed the script in 1978, she sent it to several regional theatres but it was rejected until she showed the completed manuscript to a friend, playwright Frederick Bailey. Without her knowledge, he submitted Crimes of the Heart to the annual playwrighting competition supported by Louisville’s Actors Theater. “I had so much confidence in the play, I didn’t even include a self-addressed stamped envelope,” recalls Bailey. His enthusiasm was shared with artistic director Jon Jory, who selected the play as a co-winner of the 1977-78 competition. “What impressed me was this immensely sensitive and complex view of relationships,” notes Jory. “And the comedy didn’t come from one character but from between characters. That’s very unusual for a young writer. I called Beth to tell her she’d won,” he remembers. “And I told her we were very interested in producing this play, but I had some suggestions to make. I asked her if that would be OK. And there was a long pause. In fact, there had been a lot of long pauses. I realized she didn’t have any idea who I was” (Rosenfeld, 10).

In January 1979, actors at Theater of Louisville staged the first production of Crimes of the Heart as part of its festival. “It was so frightening,” recalls Henley. “It was January and it was 9

freezing and it was snowing. I remember standing in the parking lot, and these people in fur coats were getting out of their cars. And I thought - oh, my God, they paid money, they hired babysitters, and they came out to see this - and I started crying. I was terrified that I was going to be arrested for fraud” (Dellasega, 253).

The play was an immediate success and it was presented at three other regional theatres before the Manhattan Theatre Club mounted it in New York and ran for 535 performances. Before moving to Broadway, the play had won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award and the 1981 Pulitzer Prize. According to her friends, winning this award hasn’t changed her common sense or unusual sensibility. Being asked what winning the Pulitzer meant to her, she said, with typically wry humour: “Winning the Pulitzer Prize means I’ll never have to work in a dog-food factory again” (Haller, 44).

When Crimes of the Heart was made into a film in 1986 with an all-star cast – Jessica Lange, Diane Keaton, Sissy Spacek, and playwright Sam Shepard - Henley received an Academy Award nomination for her screenplay adaptation.

Moreover, with worldwide productions of Crimes, for example in 1983 in London’s West End, Henley has begun to develop an international reputation. She did not remain unrevealed to the Czech theatre-going public, either. Crimes of the Heart has received four professional productions in the Czech Republic since it was published in 1982. It was premiered on the 2nd November 1984, on the stage of the New Scene of the National Theatre in Prague. The play was directed by Ladislav Vymětal and the three MaGrath sisters were played by Taťána Medvecká, Regina Rázlová and Zora Jandová. It was received well and it ran for 57 performances. Later, Crimes of the Heart was performed by three other companies – in April 1999 in The Municipal Theatre Mladá Boleslav, in April 2000 in The East Bohemian Theatre Pardubice and in 2004 in Na Rejdišti Theatre, which is a student theatre of the Prague Conservatory. All these Czech productions are an evidence of the fact that Beth Henley’s work is also interesting for the Czech audience.

1.2 An Imposition of Southern Identity in Plays

This chapter introduces Henley´s most noticeable plays reflecting those which are set in the American South.

Beth Henley is a productive playwright. Although she is best-known for Crimes of the Heart for which she received the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1981, she has written several other plays. However, none has achieved the popularity or critical success of Crimes of the Heart.

As the winner of the Pulitzer Prize and all the recognition afforded Crimes of the Heart - her first full-length play - Henley was launched into success in the contemporary American theatre. The attention paid to her, however, put an extreme pressure on her to succeed in that position. As Henley said about the Pulitzer Prize: “Later on they make you pay for it” (Betsko and Koenig 215 qtd. in Encyclopedia.com). In an interview with C. C. Craig, Beth Henley put it: “It’s never the same. They judge each play by your previous play; and it’s like they’ve got a litany of testimony for and against you, which wasn’t true your first time out” (Craig, 148). Many reviewers have been critical of Henley’s later plays, finding none of them equal to the quality of Crimes of the Heart. However, her second full-length play, The Miss Firecracker Contest, was mostly well-received. This dark comedy about a small Mississippi town was completed in 1980. Its first showings were in several regional productions in 1981-82 before its premiere at the Manhattan Theatre Club in 1984. It was even adapted into a film in 1988, starring Holly Hunter.

In October, 1982, The Wake of Jamey Foster, Henley’s third full-length play, closed on Broadway after only twelve performances. Henley felt that this commercial debacle was “part of the cost of winning” the Pulitzer Prize (Betsko and Koenig 215 in Encyclopedia). Her next play, The Debutante Ball, was better received, and throughout the 1980’s Henley has remained a productive and successful writer for Broadway, the regional theatres, and film. Her main projects included the plays The Lucky Spot, Abundance, and Control Freaks. She also wrote the screenplay for Nobody’s Fool (as well as screen adaptations of her own plays) and worked together with Budge Threlkeld on the Public Broadcasting System’s Survival Guides and with David Byrne and Stephen Tobolowsky on the screenplay for Byrne’s 1986 film True Stories (“Beth Henley – autobiography” from Encyclopedia.com).

Having been compared to great Southern authors like Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers, William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams, Henley seemed to be on track to becoming the next big contemporary playwright. That was until the 1990’s came.

Critics could discern the dramatic change in Henley’s work very soon, but not for the better. Henley has continued to explore new possibilities. The plays of the 1990’s are typified as experimental and moving beyond the traditional settings and themes of her earlier work. They “shift, both backwards in time and westward in direction” (Fesmire, 12). These plays examine the structure and the concepts of time with an action occurring in a fragmentary way, exploring amounts of time, and taking place in an episodic order. This is clearly visible, for instance, in Abundance (produced 1989 and 1990), the first play not set in the South. It moves even further back in time to the Wyoming Territory of the late 1860s, covering a twenty-five year period. Signature (produced 1990) portrays the year 2052 and it is been described by Alvin Klein in Beth Henley: A Casebook as “a futuristic Hollywood.” The next play, Control Freaks (1992), is located in contemporary Los Angeles. Revelers (produced 1994 and 1996) is set in a cottage on the coast of the Lake Michigan. L-Play (produced 1995) is among the most demanding of her plays resulting from its fragmentation organized around the letter L. And, “although Impossible Marriage moves back to the South, the setting seems largely irrelevant to the themes of the play.” (ibid. 302)

Gary Richards, in an essay entitled “Moving beyond Mississippi: Beth Henley and the Anxieties of Postsouthernness”, looks at the contrast between Henley’s early plays, all set in southern locations, and her later work, geographically placed elsewhere. Richards convincingly argues that in these later plays, Henley parodies traditional notions of the southern gender and narrative. Richards concludes that Henley’s own interest in escaping her label as a Southern writer to explore postmodern and “postsouthern” themes is in partly to blame for her misrepresentation by critics: they can no longer categorize her comfortably, and are therefore hesitant to praise her work (Richards qtd. in Fesmire, 306).

As Gary Richards states: “Beth Henley is a thrilling fresh young voice of a wunderkind has given way to stridency and confusion leaving high expectancy more or less unfulfilled after an initial flash of brilliance” (ibid. 308).

Only the future will reveal if any of her new plays manages to overcome the success of Crimes of the Heart. 12

2 FEMINIST THEATRE

The aim of this chapter is to explain what feminist theatre is, to talk about its formation and development. Furthermore, I would like to explain why is Beth Henley considered to be a feminist writer, and finally I will look at Crimes of the Heart from the point of feminist theatre.

2.1 The Concept of Feminist Theatre

Feminism is a range of political movements, ideologies, and social movements that share a common goal: to define, establish, and achieve political, economic, personal, and social rights for women. This includes seeking to establish educational and professional opportunities for women that are equal to such opportunities for men (Wikipedia).

To describe the concept of “feminist theatre” with one definition is very complicated as the term “feminism” covers a variety of perspectives that can be linked to theatre and performance in lots of different ways.

For some theorists and critics, the content of a play alone is eligible enough for labeling it as feminist. For some, like playwright Megan Terry, “the formation of powerful, autonomous women characters is enough” (Terry in Schroeder, 288); Karen Malpede in a similar way defines feminist theatre by its concern for “women surviving and creating new and human communities out of the wreckage of the past” (Natalle qtd. in Schroeder, 41). For scholar Janet Brown, “when woman´s struggle for autonomy is a play’s central rhetorical motive, that play can be considered a feminist drama” (Brown qtd. in Schroeder, 289).

Situating woman at the centre of attention of art or literature, as such content-based definitions of feminist drama do, is evidently one significant feature of feminist criticism. However, as many feminist drama critics have noticed, dealing only with a woman as the centre point of plays, simplifies the problem of defining feminist drama. Susan Bassnett- McGuire, for example, emphasizes that “plays about autonomous women sometimes reflect the paradox of the great man, which is by nature both sexist and elitist” (Bassnett-McGuire qtd. in Schroeder, 449 – 53). And as Michelene Wandor has observed, “a play can be written by a woman, focuses on women’s experiences, has an all-female cast, and still fails to challenge the anti-feminist notions of biological determinism, cultural inferiority, and gender- based oppression” (Wandor qtd. in Schroeder, 131). 13

Linda Walsh Jenkins, for example, highlights “the traditionally domestic and relationship- centered experiences of women;” according to her, “a feminist play depicts those shared experiences in an imagery and settings traditionally familiar to women, such as a kitchen” (Jenkins qtd. in Schroeder, 9-11). Rosemary Curb has also defined feminist theatre as “a woman-conscious theatre, which reveals women’s collective imagination in a multi- dimensional, psychic replay of a myth and history” (Curb qtd. in Schroeder, 302-303).

While the range of theoretical definitions available above may be seen as diverse, all of them usually wish to inspire some kind of a political, personal or cultural change to improve the status of women through the public platform of theatre.

2.2 The Climate for Women Playwrights

Feminist drama has defined itself as a specific theatrical genre during the late 1960’s, in Great Britain and America. During the 1960’s the female playwrights became aware of the absence of women on stage. The situation for women playwrights was paradoxical. Although they participated in theatre and worked to create theatre, their many contributions to acting, writing, designing, producing and directing were often overlooked and treated as insignificant or regarded as ‘amateur’. Dominating cultural values, which privileged men’s creativity and expression, existed and the basic structure of the theatre ‘industry’ favoured mainly work by men.

During the 1970s and 1980s, there was a remarkable increase of young women playwrights. Women became “fashionable” to the point that plays written by women of the 1960s were staged again. However, their texts were not necessarily about women or from a woman´s perspective, as women writers tried to fit into a male dominated mainstream. Despite the number of women writing plays, only a few authors were getting them produced on Broadway or in regional theatres.

In the 1970s, Beth Henley wrote her first plays, including Crimes of the Heart. In 1981, she won the Pulitzer Prize for best Drama. Furthermore, she was the first woman to achieve this award in 23 years. Although two more women playwrights won Pulitzers in the 1980’s

(Marsha Norman in 1983 and Wendy Wasserstein in 1989), by the end of the decade only seven percent of the plays on a stage nationwide were written by women (Schroeder, 104).

Due to this fact, it is sad that this male dominance continues till today.

2.3 Beth Henley and Feminist Theatre

Beth Henley was one of the first women since the 1970s to be not only highly acclaimed by critics but also audience for her plays. She succeeded to gain recognition among men in the exclusively male domain.

She appeared during a time when women’s studies were becoming a topic for a serious study in the academy and literature; scholars were beginning to critically reexamine the American dramatic canon’s exclusion of women’s and minority voices. Because Henley’s work sits at the juncture of these historical moments, they have been the scapegoats for many of these debates (Kayser, 104).

While some scholars do celebrate her work as feminist, there is not a universal agreement, and the debates continue. Jonnie Guerra is particularly critical of Henley, claiming, “at the core of Henley’s failure to advance positive images of women lies her consistent and unimaginative dependance on the forms and modes of the dominant male tradition of American drama” (Guerra, 87).

However, being asked about her Crimes of the Heart and feminism, in retrospect, Henley recalls:

“Looking back, to me, at the time I wrote it, people would say, ‘Are you a feminist? ’ and I was kind of perplexed by the question. But now I see it as very much a play of its time in such a specific way that it, perhaps, it is more universal. Because it is very much about women in a rage. It takes place in 1974, right at the cusp of the women’s liberation movement. But when you’re in the South, you don’t have that to hold on to, so you end up shooting your husband. They take their anger out in other ways. I mean, trying to sing and get a life that is creative. So looking back on it, I find that kind of surprising - ‘Wow, it really is a feminist play! ’ ” (Dellasega, 254)

Among women who inspired Henley for her writing belong “my mother, Carson McCullers, Eudora Welty, Lillian Hellmann; with Hellmann being a key inspiration,” she says. “I was

really fascinated by her. It is sad to say that most playwrights we study have been men” (Craig, 150). Henley realizes how lucky she has been as discrimination against women playwrights still remains:

“Yes, I think there is [discrimination] because there are still a lot more men than women in charge of our theatres, producing, directing … Men generally can’t help but be more moved by a man’s play because they relate to it in a personal way. Women are more used to identifying with men because they are raised on it, they’ve got to be” (ibid. 150).

Beth’s feminist impulses appeared early in life, from seeing her mother “trapped in with all the talent she had by kids and husband and the world.” Beth insured herself against a similar fate: “‘I didn’t learn how to look or sew… things that would make me something I didn’t want to be ’ ” (Betsko and Koenig qtd. in Craig, 150).

In post-interview correspondence between Henley and Craig, she wrote: “I am a radical feminist.” Still, she dislikes labels because she feels “categorizing artists can dwarf their gifts” (Craig, 150).

2.4 Features of Feminism in Crimes of the Heart

Many features of Beth Henley’s work are in an agreement with models of playwrighting developed by feminists in the 1970’s and 1980’s as has been already stated in the chapter Beth Henley and feminism. Perhaps most significantly, the focus in Henley’s plays is clearly on the experience of women. As a female playwright, reflecting a woman’s point of view, Henley examines a group of women and not only one female character. Men are important in her world, but some of them are also peripheral; it is the authenticity, identity, and destiny of the women in her plays that is the most significant. Her work focuses on the effort of women as they quest for love, understanding and accepting. The love they need most is very often self- love; the effort they make most fearlessly is for self-esteem. A Beth Henley credo is that: “Self-esteem is the only thing that can save a woman from the traps of other people’s definitions” (Jaehne qtd. in Craig, 152).

Although the main characters in Crimes of the Heart are women, Henley states: “(…) I don’t favour women over men characters… I try to understand each. (…) I just try to look at people more than at just the sexes and hope that it’ll be more a human point of view rather than having some sort of agenda to show that women are better, because I don’t actually think they are…” (Dellasega, 257).

She is not hostile to men. The men in the play uncover another side of these sisters and “provide a nice depth and change of pace to keep things interesting. The masculine influence in the play serves to hinder or help the girls’ lives. The male characters’ purpose is to support the women in their struggle to understand what life expects from them” (Schmitt, 2). The examples of such help are Doc Porter or Barnette Lloyd.

Despite of considering herself to be a feminist writer, Henley is criticized by more radical feminists because her plays are more humanistic than political and her work lacks a certain expected militancy. She states that “she wants to look at the world, not to change it” (Craig, 151).

To sum it up, Beth Henley represents a gentle mode of feminism, which is the reason, why she often fails to be interpreted as a feminist.

3 CRIMES OF THE HEART - Analysis

This chapter of my final work deals with a textual analysis of the play with concerns on women on the background of Southerness, especially, it describes how Southern values define and confine the main female characters.

3.1 What Are the Crimes?

The play’s title “Crimes of the Heart” is connected closely to the play in a number of ways that become obvious as the play proceeds. The three sisters have very individual distinctive characters but all carry out “crimes of the heart” and subsequently are forced to face the consequences of what they have done.

As Beth Henley explains in The Playwright’s Art: Conversations with Contemporary American Dramatists: “Babe’s crime is shooting her husband because he hurt someone who was innocent. Her mother’s crime was killing herself and leaving her children because she could no longer bear the pain of being left by her husband. Meg´s crime was being so afraid of Doc she left him with his broken leg saying she would marry him and went off to Hollywood. Lenny’s crime is more of a crime to herself in that she won’t tell the truth to the man she is in love with because she is afraid if he knows the truth he won’t love her so she just chucks the whole thing. A lot of it is them coming to terms with their crimes and trying to unshackle themselves from the past” (Bryer, 118).

Moreover, the real crime among the McGrath sisters is their lack of self-esteem, which they seem to have inherited from their mother, who felt so worthless after their father had left them that she decided to commit suicide.

3.2 “Kitchen as the Heart of the Home”1

Henley states the setting of the drama clearly at the beginning. Crimes of the Heart is located in Hazlehurst, Mississippi in 1974 where her grandparents lived. Being asked why she chose the town as the setting, she says: “I liked the idea of how really small it was, and so everyone knew everyone’s business so easily and there were social codes that were pretty engrained” (Dellasega, 255).

1 R.Toscan 18

Hazlehurst is a small town. This fact is emphasized by the conversation that the characters have and during which it is revealed that Babe is oppressed and abused by her husband.

Meg: But now, how are you going to prove all this about Babe being brutalized? We don´t want anyone perjured. I mean to commit perjury. Barnette: Perjury? According to my sources, there ´ll be no need for perjury. Meg: You mean it´s truth? Barnette: This is a small town, Miss MaGrath. The word gets out (p. 43).

As Hazlehurst is not a big town, the rumour can be spread and known by all people easily and quickly than in a city. Therefore, Barnette knows about the domestic violence that Babe’s husband did to her because he lives in Hazlehurst. Meg, who has just arrived home from Holywood, does not know about it at all.

However, there are three acts in the play, all the scenes are set in the MaGraths’ kitchen. The old-fashioned kitchen is unusually spacious, but there is a lived-in, cluttered look about it. There are four different entrances and exits to the kitchen: the back door, the door leading to the dining room and the front of the house, a door leading to the downstairs bedroom, and as staircase leading to the upstairs room. There is a table near the center of the room, and a cot has been set up in one of the corners. (p. 4)

The old-fashioned kitchen is an informal room to gather, thus, the characters may have conversations casually. The “kitchen” is significant setting in the feminist theatre. It implies that it is “a woman’s personal and intimate space” (Laughlin, 581).

However, Henley also points out the role of the kitchen as “a place of imprisonment, tying women to the domestic sphere and to their roles of caregivers.” (ibid. 582) The oldest MaGrath sister, Lenny, has actually taken to sleeping there in order to be able to meet her grandfather’s needs better during the night.

Finally, the kitchen is also labelled in people’s minds as “the heart of the home” evoking images of family meals, celebrations or mother and daughters chattings. However, how the plot progresses, it changes into the scene of insults and quarrels where an old grievance is revealed.

3.3 Time of the Story

The time when the story happens is also stated “in the fall; five years after Hurricane Camille.” (p. 4) Hurricane Camille appeared in 1969, in the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

The characters even state the exact time of the story that is October 23rd, 1974: Lenny: … I’m thirty years old today and my face is getting all pinched up and my hair is falling out in the comb. Meg: Why, Lenny! It’s your birthday, October 23rd. How could I forget. Happy birthday! (p. 18)

The whole story happens for two days. Act I and II take place the same day which is on October 23rd. The Act III happens on October 24th because there is a note at the beginning of Act II which tells the time of the day. “The lights go up on the empty kitchen. It is the following morning.” (p. 93)

3.4 Cyclic Form as a Feature of Feminist Aesthetics

One approach to interpreting feminist drama examines an intersection of a form and content recognized to be uniquely female. For critics and theatre artists applying this approach, “a feminist play resists the oppressions of traditional dramatic practice in theme and form as well as in characterization; it may also resist the hierarchical power structures of traditional theatre practice, emerging as a collectively-scripted, avant-garde, alternatively produced ensemble piece” (Schroeder, 34).

An underlying presumption of such an approach is that traditional dramatic form is by definition male; as Nancy S. Reinhardt has expressed it: “The structure of traditional Western drama, an “imitation of an action“, is linear, leading through conflict and tension to a major climax and resolution. One could even say that this aggressive build-up, sudden big climax, and cathartic resolution suggest specifically the male sexual response” (Reinhardt qtd. in Schroeder, 36 - 37).

Beginning with this assumption, these definitions of feminist drama usually cite experiences central to women’s collective history - childbirth, nurturing, mother-daughter bonds, sexual

exploitation, etc. - and stress the alternative dramatic forms (usually cyclic) and the uniquely female language best-suited to dramatizing them (Schroeder, 37).

In Henley’s work, the search for the female identity links with feminist aesthetics. It means that her dramas go against the classical tradition in the sense that her plays do not follow the strict conflict - climax - resolution model which is regarded as a “masculine” plot by some scholars. In this regard, Henley’s Crimes of the Heart can be considered feminist: it is cyclic, kaleidoscopic, lacking the typical dramatic plot structure. It starts and finishes at the same place – in the kitchen.

3.5 “It's a Crime Not to Follow Your Heart's Desires” R. Toscan

In this chapter, I would like to introduce the most crucial plot points of the play briefly.

As Henley recalls, the plot was inspired by a specific Mississippi memory:

“When I was in college, my grandfather got lost in the woods on his tree farm for two nights. He fell off his horse, and it came back without him. So the whole family came together to search through the woods. Helicopters were sent out. People were comming back with 30-foot snakes found in the hunt for Henley.”

Her grandfather was finally discovered, unharmed, she says: “but that event, the family getting back together in the face of tragedy, started me thinking” (Haller, 42).

The play tells the story of the three MaGrath sisters, who reunite, when their grandfather is dying slowly in the local hospital. He had been in the hospital for three months with strokes; he slips into a coma. Both parents are long gone. Father left the family and mother committed a suicide in the basement, along with the family cat. The mother’s death left the sisters in their grandfather´s care.

As the story opens, Lenny, the oldest MaGrath sister is celebrating her thirtieth birthday all alone. Chick, the sisters’ cousin, comes over before going to bail Babe, the youngest sister, out of jail after having shot her husband Zackery in the stomach (“I aimed for his heart,” p. 49) because she “did not like his looks” (p. 49). After shooting him in the stomach, she went to the kitchen and prepared herself “a pitcher of lemonade” (p. 49). Unfortunately, her husband survived and it was revealed that he has pictures of her and Willie Jay, a fifteen-year- old African American boy with whom she was having an affair. When Zackery threatens to

confine her in a mental institution, she attempts to commit suicide. She puts her head in the oven but she is rescued.

Lenny also called back home her sister Meg, who tries to succeed in Hollywood as a singer and has had a wild life full of many men. She still loves her sisters and returns home to help. Besides, she comes to revive an old romance with a now-married ex-boyfriend.

Things do not get much better when sisters get together. Their reunion causes much joy, but also many tensions. During the next several days, they confront the demons that have been troubling them. Lennie has “shrunken ovaries” (p. 37), therefore, she cannot have children. She believes that this is stopping her from getting a man. Meg is tortured by her own selfishness. She convinced Doc Porter (her former love) not to evacuate and stay with her during Hurricane Camille because she thought it would be fun. The town accused her of his small limp caused by an injury during the hurricane. She admits that her singing career in California was not successful and that she has been working in a dog food factory. She is so afraid of disappointing Granddaddy that she decides to tell lies to him. Babe finds help at Barnette Lloyd, who is a young lawyer, taking her court case because “she sold me a pound cake at a bazar once” (p. 59) and because he has a “personal vendetta” (p. 41) (for reasons never revealed in the play) against her husband, a powerful and wealthy local lawyer and politician. In the end, Barnette Lloyd achieves damaging the evidence of Babe’s sexual adventures in exchange for the proof of Zackery’s political and financial corruption.

However, the secret to cope with the “real bad days” lies in an understanding the reason for their mother’s suicide. As they look back on their childhood, they discover that their sisterhood connects them together so that they are not alone.

3.6 Characters Rather than an Action

Examining the characters and their relationships is the goal of this chapter.

While Crimes of the Heart has a very organized plot, Henley’s real emphasis, as Nancy Hargrove suggested in Southern Quarterly, is “on character rather than on action” (Hargrove qtd. in Fesmire, 251).

“Crimes” is unusual in having three major female roles. As Henley said, she wanted to compensate the lack of acting opportunities for women actresses. “I had women friends who 22

were actresses and wanted parts and there seems to be a lack of them. I don’t know why women always have to be supporting characters…or just one woman in a play with five or ten men. So I’m proud of that. I’m happy that I’ve given women an opportunity to have leads” (Craig, 144).

However, Beth’s characters may not be aware of feminism. In Modern Drama article on Henley’s women, “Aborted Rage,” Alan Shepard stated:

“Henley’s heroines seem not to recognize as such the feminist awakenings that bubble to the surfaces of their consciousness, as they seek to repair and preserve their lives within the system they have inherited… Osmotically, the heroines have absorbed some of the energies of the feminist movement, and in their own ways, they groped toward liberty” (Shepard qtd. in Craig, 150).

They struggle toward self-determination and self-esteem in ways that are both deadly serious and wildly funny, which makes them perfect examples of how Beth Henley has viewed life and translated it for the stage (Craig, 139).

Critics appreciate Henley’s gift for combining the sympathetic and absurdity to create unique and unconventional characters as well. The seriousness of Babe’s shooting of her husband turns out to be eccentric when she offers the injured man lemonade. Meg’s devoted efforts to begin a singing career are not successful due to her persistent promiscuity and her effortless lies. And Lenny’s worries about her failure to start a satisfying relationship with a man become a parody when she obsesses over her shrunken ovary. Even their mother’s suicide becomes morbidly funny when we learn that the woman hanged the family cat with her.

Treating the unconventionalities of her characters with deep understanding, she manages to make strange turns of events not only believable but touching the emotions. “Most American playwrights want to expose human beings,” says Jon Jury, who staged the first production of Crimes of the Heart in Louisville in 1979. “Beth Henley embraces them” (Haller, 42).

3.7 Themes

In this chapter, I address the most significant themes to present the background which has influenced Beth Henley for writing Crimes of the Heart and which brings the explanation for

the ways characters live and behave – Southerness, patriarchal family, searching for identity, and sisterhood.

3.7.1 What Is Southerness?

To define the “South” is quite a difficult task. Many scholars and experts of all kinds have been trying to define this term for number of years before me. Their conclusions present many interpretations, which have even been contradictory or irreconcilable. According to Wikipedia, “the American South is an area in the southeastern and south-central United States. The region is known for its distinct culture and history, having developed its own customs, musical styles and varied cuisines that have helped distinguish it from the rest of the United States.”

Although the characteristics of this region could be true, it is not sufficient. The real definition of South reaches out far beyond any geographical borders. In the past, Southern identity was often connected to slavery, racism and the Civil War and it was stigmatized negatively as violent, narrow-minded and intolerant.

A noted American scholar Rubin observes what it means to be a modern Southerner and states that “to be a Southerner today is still to be heir to a complex set of attitudes and affinities, assumptions and instincts, which are the product of history acting upon geography” (Rubin, 17). He finds out that history and geography both have an impact on Southerners and their values such are patriotism, emphasis on family bonds and community, and influence a certain way of their behaviour and thinking.

Moreover, this region is often considered to be distinct compared to the other parts of the United States, since it has been widely known for its conservative ethics and principles.

To find the truth, sociologists T. W. Rice, W. P. Mc Lean and A. J. Larsen have carried out a research on the cultural differences between the southern United States and the rest of the nation. In the study they compared and evaluated the responses of Southerness and non- Southerness to over 75 questions from the 1972 – 2000 cumulative General Social Surveys with these conclusions:

First, the attitudes and behaviours of southerness are more conservative than those of non- southerners in many areas, including race, gender, religion, sex, social capital, and tolerance. Second, the magnitude of these regional differences remains about the same regardless of whether we compare all southerners and non-southerners or just white southerness and non- southerners. This suggests that Southern culture is not just a “white” southern culture as many scholars have argued in the past. Third, the differences between southerness and non- southerners persist, although often to a lesser degree, after controlling for structural variables such as education, income, and urbanity. (…) Fourth, there is very little evidence that regional differences have declined over the past quarter century, challenging those who contend that southern culture is in retreat (Rice, McLean, Larsen, 193).

To sum it up, it was confirmed that “Southern distinctiveness is firmly intact at the beginning of the 21st century despite growing exposure to non-Southern influences” (Rice, McLean, Larsen, 193).

The cultural history and geography of the South are important to keep in mind as a backdrop for this work. Issues of family, sexuality, and race are linked to the history and region of the South. Southern identity is formed from these various components, all of which influence MaGrath sisters´ identities.

3.7.2 Southerness as a Background for Crimes of the Heart

South in the drama influences the ways characters live and behave. Therefore, analyzing the social setting is essential.

Being born and raised in the South, Henley is inspired by this region and its community values as well. Henley’s first six plays are all set in the South, two in Louisiana (Am I Blue, 1982 and The Lucky Spot, 1987), and four in small Mississippi towns to which Henley has personal connections. Crimes of the Heart takes place in Hazlehurst, home to her father’s family. Brookhaven, the town where her mother was born, is the setting for her second professionally produced play, The Miss Firecracker Contest (1985). Henley went to camp in Canton, the setting for The Wake of Jamey Foster (1983), and Hattiesburg, the setting for The Debutante Ball (1991), is the place, where her aunt and uncle live. These locations are linked to Henley’s Southern background and childhood in Mississippi. 25

When asked personally if she considered herself a Southern writer, Henley said: “It’s like we’ve got that settled, we don’t really have to feel what she’s feeling or think about what she’s thinking about because it´s in that tradition” (Jones, 189).

The McCarter Theatre, which is one of the leading regional theatres in the United States, provides some very valuable facts on the racial and ethnic background for Crimes in the backdrop for their March 2011 performance of the play:

Even though the Civil Rights movement had peaked in the late 60s, for many Mississipians, the 1970s was a period of profoundly uncomfortable adjustment. Segregation, poll taxes, and race-based hiring discrimination were no longer enshrined in law as acceptable practices, but personal and institutional racism were still the norm as many white Mississippians looked for ways to act out and capitalize on the disaffection and fear they felt in the new world order (Palmer, 1).

The play Crimes of the Heart reflects the reality of racisms in the South that is portrayed in Babe’s affair with Willie Jay, a black teenage boy:

Babe: Well, things start up. Like sex. Like that.

Meg: Babe, wait a minute – Willie Jay’s a boy, about this tall. He’s about this tall!

Babe: No! Oh, no! He’s taller now! He’s fifteen now. When you knew him he was only about seven or eight.

Meg: But even so – fifteen. And he’s a black boy: a colored boy; a Negro.

Babe (flustered): Well, I realize that, Meg. Why do you think I’m so worried about his getting public exposure? I don’t want to ruin his reputation!

Meg: I’m amazed, Babe. I’m really, completely amazed… (p. 48)

When Babe tells Meg that she has an affair with a black boy, Meg is really shocked because Babe is a white American who is married to a senator from Copiah County. It is difficult for Meg to cope with the fact that Babe has a love relationship with an African-American boy. This situation also worries Babe because she is afraid that the boy will get a bad publicity and unfair judgment if the affair is revealed.

Furthermore, it points to “the threads of violence, the images of the murdered Emmett Till, the lynchings, riots, dogs and water cannons were all powerfully close to the people of Mississippi, even after a dozen years, and this incredibly strong social pressure exists throughout the play; the pressure to conform, to follow the rules, to be a good girl, to be a good southern girl, to be ‘safe’, to marry, to marry right man, to have children” (Palmer, 1).

Like the MaGrath sisters’ cousin Chick who forces the others into playing out Southern manners and conventions, attempting to retain control over them. Mostly, she tries to control Lenny because Lenny is the one who lives next to her house and always listens to her advice.

The beginning of the play illustrates the situation well. While she is in jail, Babe asks Lenny to tell Meg to come home because she needs more psychological support from her two sisters. Lenny understands Babe’s need. However, Chick does not understand it because Meg has a negative image in town, and her appearance may affect people’s opinion negatively. Since Meg and Babe are sisters, people will think the whole family is untrustworthy. Chick gets upset, and in a demanding way, she investigates what Lenny has written in the telegram although it is not her business. She believes her opinion is an absolute truth:

Lenny: Yes, I sent her a telegram: about Babe, and -

Chick: A telegram?! Couldn't you just phone her up?

Lenny: Well, no, ’cause her phone’s … out of order.

Chick: Out of order?

Lenny: Disconnected. I don’t know what.

Chick: Well, that sounds like Meg.

(…)

Now, just what all did you say to her in this “telegram” to Meg?

Lenny: I don’t recall exactly. I, well, I just told her to come on home.

Chick: To come on home! Why, Lenora Josephine, have you lost your only brain, or what?

Lenny (Nervously, as she begins to pick up the mess of dirty stockings and plastic wrappings):

But Babe wants Meg home. She asked me to call her. (p. 5)

It is clear that sisters do not fit into the standard of white Southern womanhood; they are not the gentle and submissive young ladies devoted to their husbands and families. Lenny has never got married and has a shrunken ovary, Meg is “known all over Copiah County as cheap Christmas trash” (p. 6) and

Babe didn’t just seduce a hot black kid for a romp in the hay, Babe violated a deep and profound sense of racial and geographic identity and she will suffer for that, she will be punished. These are deeply rooted belief systems in the South, especially at the time this play was written, and the line that Babe has crossed is a very serious one; and, plus, she shot her husband, even though it is likely he deserved it (Schuyler, 78).

The pressures of Southern norms and values on female behaviour come especially presented in the sisters’ bossy cousin Chick. Claiming to be sick “of you trashy MaGraths and your trashy ways: hanging yourselves in cellars; carrying on with married men; shooting your own husbands” (p. 112), Chick complains about the fact that such behaviour endangered her own membership in the Hazlehurst Ladies Social League.

While critical of Chick’s self-serving social ambitions, Henley does not condone the actions the Chick mentions but rather makes it clear that such acts of rebellion against the community values carry a high personal cost for those who perform them (Laughlin, 589).

Babe (who has tried to murder her husband) attempts suicide twice; the middle sister, Meg, seems to cut herself off from her emotions when she compels herself to face up to pictures of rotting bodies and “crippled” (p. 66) children; and the oldest Lenny has evidently sacrified her chances for love because of a problematic ovary and she is on her way to become a spinster as “Old Granddaddy´s nursemaid”. In probing some of the causes of these rebellious acts – the father’s desertion - Meg’s deep-seated desire “to please Old Granddaddy”, Babe’s history of domestic abuse at the hands of her lawyer husband – Henley also “politicizes the sisters´ domestic space” (ibid. 590). As Karen Laughlin further suggests:

“Henley blends the personal and the political in order to begin demolishing “the father’s house whose foundation has been, and still is, their division.” Both the sisters’ strangely appropriate laughter at the news of their grandfather’s impending death and Lenny’s banishment of Chick from what she now claims as her own home (using that most domestic of

weapons, a broom) signal at least temporary dismantling of the patriarchal power both Chick and Old Granddaddy represent” (ibid. 590).

3.7.3 Patriarchal Southern Family

This chapter is particularly focused on the question of patriarchy which clearly influences the position of women within the family and in the society.

Southern families with their complicated internal relationships take centre stage in Henley’s writing. In her depiction of women and the family Henley diverts from the mainstream American family-play tradition, which Carol Billman shows “has privileged male characters and their familial and societal responsibilities and banished female characters to live in the shadow of their fathers, husbands and sons” (Billman qtd. in Guerra, 178).

At the heart of the family are Meg, Babe, and Lenny MaGrath, three sisters, who live completely different lives. They are called to come home to be close to their family’s dying patriarch, and together, they must struggle with recent events that conspire to destroy the already dysfunctional lives they lead. The role of their grandfather in their lives is of great importance. They would like to change their destiny but they find themselves tied up due to him, for whose sake they passively bear all kinds of difficult situations. Throughout the play, it seems that the sisters have tried to live out his dreams for them. The biggest obstacle in their struggle for happiness is their lack of self-esteem which they seem to have inherited from their mother and which was developed by their grandfather.

The same bossy patriarch who brought up their mother has also brought up the sisters: “Old Granddaddy is an off-stage villain in their battles for self-esteem.” (A relevant note is that he is sisters’ maternal grandfather; as Henley has confirmed it - Craig, 153).

He labelled Babe as “the prettiest and the most perfect of the three” and she was his “Dancing Sugar Plum” (p. 21). His sense of pride is increased by contrieving her marriage to Zackery Botrelle, “the richest and most powerful man in Hazlehurst” (p. 22) and – as Meg recalls - it was Granddaddy’s “finest hour” (p. 22). It was Granddaddy’s dream, not Babe’s dream that she would “skyrocket right to the heights of Hazlehurst society” (p. 22). However, Babe is 18 years old and she is not ready to be a part of the “high” social setting. Moreover, Old Granddaddy’s ideal husband has turned out to be an abusive man. “He started hating me cause 29

I couldn’t laugh at his jokes,” she confides to Meg. “Then the sound of his voice got to where it tired me out… I’d asleep just listening to him at the dinner table.” (p. 45) Thus, Babe looks for love and understanding in the relationship with a fifteen-year-old black boy and shoots her husband when he attacks the boy:

Babe: “(…) we were just standing around on the back porch playing with Dog. Well, suddenly Zackery comes from around the side of the house. (…) he says to Willie Jay, “Hey, boy, what are you doing back here?” And I say, “He’s not doing anything. You just go on home, Willie Jay! You just run right on home.” Well, before he can move, Zackery comes up and knocks him once right across the face and then shoves him down the the porch steps, causing him to skin up his elbow real bad on that hard concrete. Then he says, “Don’t you ever come around here again, or I’ll have them cut out your gizzard!” (p. 49)

Zackery’s violence against him is the reason for bringing her to violence:

Babe: “(…) After that, I don’t remember much too clearly; (…) I went on into the living room, and I went right up to the davenport and opened the drawer where we keep the burglar gun… I took it out. (…) I put it right inside my ear. (…) I was gonna shoot off my own head! (…) I thought about Mama … how she’d hung herself. (…) Then I realized how I didn’t want to kill myself! And she – she probably didn’t want to kill herself. She wanted to kill him, and I wanted to kill him, too. I wanted to kill Zackery, not myself” (p. 49).

Her life - led to please Old Granddaddy - have brought her to the point of carrying out two homicidal attempts.

Futhermore, granddaddy has his own dream for Meg. He is the one who motivated her to believe that she would become a Hollywood celebrity. He told her that, with the gift of singing, all she needed was an exposure, and she could make her own “breaks” (p. 23). However, Meg is caught in the dream she and her Old Granddaddy share. She has also been driven to the edge of insanity to live the role that Old Granddaddy had dreamed up for her. Being unable to attain success, she has started working in a dog-food company. She has overcome a nervous breakdown which has prevented her from returning home at Christmas time. As Meg recounts for Doc, one day she “ran screaming from the apartment” and tried to stuff all her valuables into a March of Dimes box. “That was when they nabbed me. Sad story. Meg goes mad” (p. 85). She psychologically loses her ability to sing to get even with granddaddy for whom she has been singing. In the hospital, Meg finds herself telling him lies

about her preparing a record album, only to please him. Then she regrets it, “I hate myself when I lie for that old man. I do. I feel so weak” (p. 69).

Lenny is carrying out Old Granddaddy’s conception of what she should become. He has made Lenny realize the fact about her “shrunken ovary” (p. 34). That is why she begins to dedicate her life to the care of their Old Granddaddy and gives up her own dream of a husband and family. Lenny has already moved her cot into the kitchen to “be close and near him at night if he needed something” (p. 34). Futhermore, she stopped seeing the only boyfriend she has had a relationship with because of Old Granddaddy. He had told her that no man is interested in a marriage to an infertile woman. In spite of this, Lenny presumes that Old Granddaddy has always had their happiness in his mind, “he went out of his way to make a home for us” (p. 69 – 70). So, “the sisters are trapped in an ambivalent relationship with their Old Granddaddy who has determined what is the best for them, and they feel guilty not following his wishes” (Craig, 155).

As one of the sisters says: “All he wanted was the best for us (…) but sometimes I wonder what we wanted” (p. 70).

3.7.4 Searching for Identity

The aim of this chapter is to discuss how Beth Henley presents life, status and roles of Southern women and reveals the process of searching for identities.

For each of the McGrath sisters, Henley has involved a breaking point that includes awakening, coupled with a catharsis. For every sister, this “awake and sing” (Craig, 157) moment means a movement toward self-awareness and self-esteem.

For Lenny, that point comes with laughing which she shares with Babe, with their comic- relief response to their Old Granddaddy´s coma:

MEG: What is it? What's so funny? BABE: (still laughing) It’s not--it's not funny. … MEG: Well, what is it then? What? BABE: (trying to calm down) Well, it’s just--it’s just-- MEG: What? 31

BABE: Well, Old Granddaddy--he--he’s in a coma. (Babe and Lenny break up laughing.) MEG: He’s what? BABE: (shrieking) In a coma! MEG: My God! That’s not funny! BABE: (calming down) I know. I know. For some reason it just struck us as funny. LENNY: I’m sorry. It’s--it’s not funny. It’s sad. It’s very sad. We’ve been up all night long. BABE: We’re really tired. MEG: Well, my God. How is he? Is he gonna live? (Babe and Lenny look at each other.) BABE: They don’t think so! (They both break up again.) LENNY: Oh, I don’t know why we’re laughing like this. We’re just sick. We’re just awful. (p. 52)

There is a flash of lightning of Lenny’s outlook after this, and a quick move to her “broom- wielding” (Craig, 157) clash with Chick. No more will Lenny tolerate her cousin’s shaming, degrading attacks. The situation culminates when Chick insults Meg to Lenny. Lenny chases her out of the house with a broom shouting at Chick to get out of the house. The broom- beating chasing of Chick out the door and up a tree is an appealing catharsis for Lenny. She shows Chick her power and control over her own life:

Chick: You need not have one more blessed thing to do with her [Meg] and her disgusting

behaviour.

Lenny: I said, don’t you ever talk that way about my sister Meg again.

Chick: Well, my goodness gracious, Lenora, don’t be such a noodle---it’s the truth!

Lenny: Get out of here---

Chick: Don’t you tell me to get out! Why, I’ve had just about my fill of you trashy MaGraths

and your trashy ways: hanging yourselves in cellars: carrying on with married men;

shooting your own husbands! (p. 112 – 113)

After beating Chick in the fight, she feels that she has her own choice and freedom to do things that she wants. Thus, she stops thinking about the rules how a woman should behave 32

and she decides to call Charlie of Memphis and tells him all about herself. “My courage is up … the time is right!” she yelps (p. 115). Charlie does not mind that Lenny cannot bear a child for him and agrees to meet her.

“Lenny’s modest victory is not a wildly feminist stroke. Nonetheless, she makes a clear move toward embracing self-worth over the scorn of others” (Craig, 157).

Meg’s breaking point focuses on her reunion with her ex-boyfriend Doc, and their moonlight ride. Even though Doc did not ask her to run away with him, Meg returns happy, glad to know that she could care for someone, and that she could sing, “right up into the trees! But not for Old Granddaddy. None of it was to please Old Granddaddy” (p. 98). Having no pressure, she has found her lost joy of singing. With her enthusiasm for life and self-esteem repaired, Meg is able to help Babe to decide that life is worthwhile, despite those “real bad days” (p. 31).

Babe’s “awake and sing” breaking point is the most complex. It comes out from her realization that she is not as much like her Mama as she feared. Similarly to her Mama, she has had a destructive marriage, and even considers committing suicide, being too terrified after her husband’s call. She thinks she can never get away from him; therefore, she chooses to end her life though her attempt is not successful:

Babe (to the phone): Will you shut up! (She is jerking the rope from around her neck. She grabs a knife to cut it off.) Cheap! Miserable! I hate you! I hate you! (She throws the rope violently around the room. The phone stops ringing.) Thank God. (She looks at the stove, goes over to it, and turns the gas on. The sound of gas escaping is heard. Babe sniffs at it.) Come on. Come on…Hurry up… I beg of you – hurry up! (Finally, Babe feels the oven is ready, she takes a deep breath and opens the oven door to stick her head into it. She spots the rack and furiously jerks it out. Taking another breath, she sticks her head into the oven. She stands for several moments tapping furiously on top of the stove. She speaks from inside of the oven…) Oh, please. Please. (After a few moments, she reaches for the box of matches with her head still in the oven. She tries to strike a match. It doesn’t catch.) Oh, Mama, please! (She throws the match away and is getting a second one.) (p. 117)

But unlike her Mama, Babe chooses killing her husband, not herself. And as Babe realizes this, she shares it with Meg: “I’m not like Mama. I am not so all alone” (p. 119). 33

Mama. I know why she hung that cat along with her (…) It’s ’cause she was afraid of dying all alone (…) She felt so unsure, you know, as to what was coming. It seems the best thing coming up would be a lot of angels and all of them singing. But I imagine they have high, scary voices and little gold pointed fingers that are as sharp as blues and you don’t want to meet ’em all alone. So it wasn’t like people were saying about her hating that cat. Fact is, she loved that cat. She needed him with her ’cause she felt so all alone (p. 118 – 119).

When she felt alone, Babe searched for family in relationship with Willie Jay; for Lenny a kind of family was found in her pet horse for 20 years. Henley herself confirms it: “Yes, I think that Babe and Lenny felt love with Willie Jay and Billy Boy” (Craig, 159).

The drama finishes when Lenny, Meg and Babe gather to celebrate Lenny’s birthday. Lenny says that she has a vision in which she prays for her birthday wish. Her imagination shows their happiness together that they share for a short moment of time:

Lenny: I don’t know exactly. It was something about the three of us smiling and laughing together. Babe: Well, when was it? Was it far away or near? Lenny: I’m not sure, but it wasn’t forever; it wasn’t for every minute. Just this one moment and we were all laughing. Babe: Then, what were we laughing about? Lenny: I don’t know. Just nothing, I guess (p. 124).

The last scene becomes “a group awakening and catharsis. The sparing of hunks of a birthday cake (like a communion ritual, but happier) works well as a symbolic giving-in to self, of feeling worthy to joy” (ibid. 158).

On one hand, Henley’s picture of marriage and family presents the most severe critique so far: “The consequences of MaGrath marriages have been suicide and near-homicide.” On the other hand, “Henley sends up a renewed cheer for family potential with her portrait of the sisters. Their affirmation of self and each other becomes a family triumph” (ibid. 159).

3.7.5 Sisterhood

Crimes of the Heart by Beth Henley is dominated by the MaGrath sisters: Babe, Meg, and Lenny. The relationship among sisters carries the greatest force. Their crises and awakening provide the central action to the play.

The final scene of happiness signals a shift in emphasis and values in their lives despite the fact that the future of the sisters is not resolved. Rejecting the patriarchal structure that has oppressed and ignored them, they form a new model of female unity. The liberation and self- realization leading to female´s unity and solidarity are the centre points of this Henley´s play.

Henley structures her play, thus, with this goal in mind. Henley’s first act, for example, depicts the various troubled relationships between female characters (as well as between female and male characters), and explores the reasons for their disunity. An example of such behaviour may be the situation when Lenny explains Meg after her arrival that their grandfather got worse and had to be taken to a hospital. Meg is surprised about the news as she has been in Hollywood for a long time trying to succeed as a singer. She says that she did not read Lenny’s letters because they always make her upset (p. 21).

In the second act, the mutual conflicts escalate. Major sources of the quarrels among sisters are their differences, past secrets and misunderstanding. Lenny, for instance, complains about Meg, who discovered their mother hanged in the basement and her being always pampered and treated the best of the sisters although she did not behave well (p. 65).

In the final act, there is unification full of family love happening despite obstacles. Meg and Babe surprise Lenny with a gift of a birthday cake. Lenny’s wish, while blowing out the candles, is to see herself and her sisters together and laughing. When she tells her sisters what she has wished for, her wish comes true (p. 124).

However, it might not be Henley’s intention to proclaim an overall victory for women at the end of the play. With the awareness of patriarchal authority still present in the contemporary society, Henley´s conclusion may be interpreted with a hope for a hidden challenge for women to persist in their effort. In the context of Crimes of the Heart, women’s hope for a true change and liberation lies in perhaps the strongest symbols of patriarchy - the family. This, Henley suggests, must be achieved especially through women’s alliances with other women.

CONCLUSION

Twentieth century is a critical period that witnesses the growth of female dramatists and the flourishing of their literary work. Among the main female dramatists, Beth Henley is one of those outstanding representatives. Beth Henley won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1981, earned her own unique place on Broadway and changed the mainstream trend led by male dramatists.

The analysis of the play Crimes of the Heart has revealed that the Mississippi area where Beth Henley was born has a big impact on her writing and is an inspiration for her style in the play. She pays a great attention to the image of women and examines their change from the traditional Southern ladies into the modern women who begin to gain the awareness to challenge the social inequality and prejudice. The main characters of the play the MaGrath sisters must learn to assert in a world ruled by men in the South and they have to overcome the feeling that they do something wrong when they follow the desires of their hearts.

In the female characters Beth Henley depicts representatives of ordinary Southern women for whom the life is hard enough in the male-dominated world. They are human and make mistakes like everyone else but it is important for them to be brave and strong for the other people in their lives. Thanks to tragedies they discover their own identities and acknowledge their emotional desires. There begins their process of “awakening” and self-discovery which constitutes the main theme of the book.

The final work has also shown the playwright’s similar concern about the trend of women relationship from separation to unity and their increasing focus on female autonomy and dignity. Even though the main characters still face the different forms of oppression of the patriarchal society, the play finishes with a happy ending in which the MaGrath sisters reunite and believe that they can overcome the real bad days. In this final scene, Henley depicts the power of sisterhood and supports women to make mutual relationships in order to fight the patriarchal dominance. Though, at the beginning of this work the connection between the South and feminism might have been seen as contradictory, this work has revealed that the South is the most valuable source of emancipation and liberation of the main characters.

Sisterhood gives the MaGrath sisters power over themselves and helps them to cope with the dominance of men typical of the South. As they do not have the official power, the interpersonal bonding is very important for them. Sisterhood is the way to overcome the crisis of their identities.

Beth Henley as an awarded dramatist, who has written approximately 13 plays (3 of which have been turned into films), is recognized as perhaps the most artistically successful female American dramatist in the second half of the 20th century. Moreover, with worldwide productions of many of her plays, Henley has begun to develop an international reputation. Scholars must now recognize that Henley’s appeal goes beyond viewing her as a regional playwright, making political or sociological statements about the role of women in the South.

I hope that this work changes the focus of the way we can appreciate Henley’s theatre. I claim that the message of her plays is much more feminist than most critics realize. And I also believe that it inspires many women to examine their own lives and relationships.

APPENDIX List of Works by Beth Henley

Plays

• Am I Blue (1972) • Crimes of the Heart (1978) • The Miss Firecracker Contest (1979) • The Wake of Jamey Foster (1981) • The Debutante Ball (1985) • The Lucky Spot (1986) • Abundance (1990) • Control Freaks (1992) • Signature (1995) • L-play (1996) • Impossible Marriage (1998) • Family Week (2000) • Sisters of the Winter Madrigal (2003) • Ridiculous Fraud (2007) • The Jacksonian (2013)

Screenplays

• The Moon Watcher (1983) • True Stories, with Stephen Tobolowsky (1986) • Crimes of the Heart (1987) • Nobody’s Fool (1994 film) (1987) • Miss Firecracker (1989)

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