Private Lives
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PRIVATE LIVES THE PRESENTATION OF MARRIAGE IN ENGLISH DRAMA 1930 - 1990 GLENN BURNS A Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosphy School of English University College, University of New South Wales 1999 DECLARATION I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and that, to the best my my knowledge and belief, it contains no material previously published or written by another person nor material which to a substantial extent has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma at UNSW or any other educational institution, except where due acknowledgement is made in the text of the thesis. ---- -- ----~ i ABSTRACT Despite the broadening of the subject matter of English drama in its "new wave" period from the late nineteen fifties, it is striking to see how much of enduring mainstream English drama has a domestic focus. The purpose of this thesis is to provide the first full-length study of marriage on the English stage from 1930 to 1990. The thesis examines the way in which a number of important playwrights have fashioned drama from the conflict between the public, or institutional, functions of marriage and the private, or relational, functions of marriage. The thesis places this conflict into historical context. This will show that the conflict between the private and public aspects of marriage is not one of clearly opposed opposites but one that is made dynamic by significant social and legal changes to the status, function and conventions of marriage. The thesis also demonstrates that this conflict is further complicated by class considerations and by the particular circumstances of each marital partnership. From the wealth of material available, I have chosen to examine in detail the work of seven playwrights who have made significant contributions to domestic drama or domestic comedy. Playwrights have been selected because their plays gained a strong audience on first performance and because, through numerous revivals and through publication of scripts, they have earned an enduring place in English drama. John Osborne's Look Back in Anger, which, in 1956, ushered in the "new wave", is the pivotal play for discussion. The previous generation is represented by Noel Coward, J. B. Priestley and Terence Rattigan. The "new wave" and its aftermath are ii represented by Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard and, finally, Alan Ayckbourn. Despite a wide variety of approaches to the topic of marriage, these writers tend to assume a middle class audience and to follow or adapt the traditions of realism or comedy of manners. This thesis argues that despite real, even radical, changes to marriage, to accepted sexual practices and to the status of women in the sixty years under discussion, the mainstream theatre has tended to be conservative in its presentation of marital and sexual matters, especially in continuing to reinscribe a public/private opposition determined by gender. i i i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS For his supervision of the final, and most important, years of this thesis, I would like to convey my thanks and gratitude to Dr. Adrian Caesar. Without his encouragement and willingness to share his time and knowledge, this thesis would not have been completed. I also owe a great debt to Associate Professor Joy Hooton who enthusiastically endorsed the project at the beginning and oversaw the first two years of its progress. And for their significant and welcome assistance along the way, I would like to thank Dr. Elizabeth Lawson and Dr Philippa Kelly. I would also like to thank all my family and friends who have seen too little of me during the research for and the writing of this thesis and who must have too often thought that, because of the relative lateness with which I took up my formal study of English Literature, I would never finish. I would like to thank, especially, my Canberra friends who have offered me food and shelter and their excellent company on my many visits to the National Capital in connection with this project. All these people share in whatever is worthwhile in this work. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract i Acknowledgements iii Introduction 1 Chapter One Noel Coward on being 25 "Clamped Together Publicly" Chapter Two Variations on the Well Made Play: 61 J. B. Priestley and Terence Rattigan Chapter Three John Osborne's Look Back in Anger 121 Chapter Four Harold Pinter: Belonging and Betrayal 158 Chapter Five Tom Stoppard: Changing Perspectives on 218 Marriage Chapter Six Alan Ayckbourn's Comedies of Marital 265 Collision Conclusion 307 Bibliography 320 1 INTRODUCTION The institutions of marriage and English drama both underwent a period of significant, even radical, change from the late nineteen flfties, a period of liberation and diversification which has changed both institutions irreversibly. This thesis seeks to examine not only how English drama has changed and how it has presented the changes in marriage and sexuality but also to put these changes into perspective by examining theatrical and marital trends in the generation before and in the generation after the frrst performance of John Osborne's Look Back in Anger in 1956. Without this perspective, it is difficult to judge why Look Back in Anger seemed so revolutionary on its first appearance. Though now it is possible to attribute only "mythic significance" 1 to Osborne's play, the play did revitalise English theatre, encourage new writers for the theatre and drew new audiences to the theatre. And the success of Look Back in Anger led to a period of experimentation with theatrical style and with the content of drama. And with this, the theatre became part of the social reassessment which brought about the changes of the sixties and seventies. The purpose of this thesis is to examine the attitudes to marriage, especially in relation to the public and private roles of husband and wife, as portrayed on the mainstream English stage since 1930. Howard Brenton has distinguished "two kinds of plays - those set in rooms and those outside rooms"2 and my concern is clearly with the former. Close attention will be paid to the works of seven different playwrights in order to see how far their plays dramatise an acceptance of, or obstacles to, the concept of 1 B. Bergonzi, Wartime and Aftermath: English Literature and its Background 1939- 1960 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 153 2 H. Brenton, quoted in j. Bull, Stage Right: Crisis and Recovery in British Contemporary Mainstream Theatre (London: Macmillan, 1994), p. 87 2 "companionate marriage", a concept which had first gained currency in the nineteen twenties.3 The playwrights to be discussed have been chosen because they have contributed frequently, or made especially noteworthy contributions, to the dramatic presentation of marriage over the sixty years since 1930, because their plays achieved popularity when first performed and because they have earned a degree of longevity. Osborne's play, because of its lasting impact on twentieth century English drama, will be the pivotal work for discussion. Pre-Osborne drama to be discussed will focus on the works of Noel Coward and the attempts of]. B. Priestley and Terence Rattigan to extend the dominant form of the thirties and forties - the well made play. The second half of the thesis will concentrate on the different approaches of Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard and Alan Ayckboum to domestic comedy during a time when the patriarchal model of marriage was being increasingly discredited. As a general observation it is true that, as the century has progressed, drama has reflected a move towards companionate marriage and towards greater equality of the sexes. However, I will caution against an assumption of a simple progression in these trends by arguing that the plays of Noel Coward, especially the comedies of the thirties and forties, clearly show that sexual liberation was not an invention of the sixties and, further, that the continued popularity of the plays of Alan Ayckbourn reveal that audiences well into the 1990s are still capable of responding to portrayals of patriarchal marriages. That the patriarchal model of marriage varies in different circumstances and changes over time, and that marriage always involves a tension between the personal and the institutional, provides the conflict exploited by 3 ]. Finch and P. Summerfield, "Social Reconstruction and the Emergence of Companionate Marriage, 1945-59" in D. Clark (ed.), Marriage, Domestic Life and Social Change (London and New York: Routledge, 1991), p. 7 3 playwrights in what might be termed "domestic drama". Various commentators outline the inherent conflicts and tensions in marriage which playwrights continue to exploit. To John Gillis love and marriage is "the unresolved contradiction" ;4 to Jessie Bernard the pull of excitement versus the desire for security is the "intrinsic and inescapable conflict in marriage"5 and Weeks talks of the tensions between "compulsory monogamy and pleasure, between enhanced individualism and familial responsibility".6 The strictly patriarchal marriage separates husband and wife into public and domestic roles and militates against a companionate marriage: the cultural expectation of great intimacy between men and women clashes with the very different and, in some ways contradictory, socialisation of the sexes. 7 If the patriarchal strictures are observed absolutely, a happy and fulfilling marriage is virtually impossible. Kate Millet famously observed that men and women are "two cultures" .8 But the move towards companionate rather than patriarchal marriage has altered, not necessarily removed, all the possible tensions. Moreover, the move away from patriarchal marriage has not been universal and society's changing allocation of gender roles has complicated some matters even further. And, because of the focus on middle class marriages in the majority of plays to be discussed, the importance of social prestige to the middle class (and of marriage to middle class prestige) keeps a strong public element in the equation.