欲望号街车分析

Mary's Struggle with the Angel in the House Abstract: This essay attempts to study Eugene O'Neill's artistic portrait of Mary Tyrone of Long Day's Journey into Night, from the aspect of Mary's morphine addiction and her subsequent madness. The author argues that Mary's madness is not only an escape from her desperation but a passive rebel against the stereotyped role of a mother woman. Having suffered for more than 20 years, Mary refuses to play the role of "the angel in the house" any longer, insisting on the return to her world of dreams and in the search of a female utopia. T he portrait of Mary represents the desperate struggle and lonely resistance of a 19th Century American woman under the pressure of a traditional society.

Key words: O'Neill Long Day's Journey into Night Mary the angel in the house Madness

Long Day's Journey into Night (1941) is one of the most influential plays of Eugene O'Neill's. The value of the work lies in not only the rich autobiographical color of the writer, but also the characters, especially the female image of profundity and complexity. The heroine Mary is a metaphor of Ella，the playwright’s mother in real life. The two mothers share similar appearance，character and life experience. The playwright portrayed Mary as the center of the family with deepest sympathy, and entrusted with the deep connotation on the mad behavior after Mary took morphine. It demonstrated that American women’s helpless and lonely struggle under the weight of traditional gender roles in the 19th century.

Mary's insane performance and helpless and lonely struggle did not get enough attention it deserved in the critics for a long time. Many critics analyzed the play’s content and theme in detail, but they seemed to ignore the inner world of Mary which t he playwright’s invariably focused on. Not only that, the image of Mary had often been misread denied even condemned by the critics. For example, James Robinson believed that Mary in the play is " a dangerous and destructive character “;while Michae Hinden even accused her of ruining the eldest son Jamie; in Louis Sheaffer’s opinion, “She is a poor victim on the surfac e, but actually is a fierce victimizer”; while Brendan Gill believed, " Long Day's Journey into Night" illustrated the theme, " Women have a terrible destructive nature." [1]Those attitudes reflected the stylized positioning and evaluation of the traditional socio-cultural towards women. Women are either the angel or the devil. From another perspective, it also reflected such a widespread phenomenon: Women, even in literary works, can only to fit the social role and satisfy the requirements in order to be accepted in the society.

So, what role do women play in the 19 century American society?

In the 19th century, American society just provided women with one respected and accepted society role - the role of a mother wife. The role of a mother woman at that time had another name--Virginia Woolf called it the Angel in the House. Now, let’s see Virginia Woolf’s overview of it:

I will describe her as shortly as I can. She was intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming. She was utterly unselfish. She excelled in the difficult arts of family life. She sacrificed herself daily. If there was a chicken, she took the leg; if there was a draught she sat in it—short she was pure. Her purity was supposed to be her chief beauty—her blushes, her great grace. In those days—the last of Queen Victoria—every house had its Angle. [2]

Generally speaking, women at that are required to sacrifice themselves continuously and give in to meet the role of others. Thus, no matter what state of mind and the knowledge layer a woman had, they had tried to make their own roles to meet this requirement. Books, women's magazines, children literature and all kinds of media also invariably requested them to selflessly give up their dreams, and entrusted their hopes and abilities to men.

In fact, the Angel in the House was admired unanimously by traditional society and the mainstream culture not only in the United States, but around the world in a long historical period. It’s one of the biggest myths and lies about women.

A mother-wife, sacred idealized female role in numerous literary works, was the only choice after Mary married James. Like the vast majority of 19th century American women, Mary Katsumi devoted herself to be a good mother-wife. However, she did not live in a happy and joy life as the media and myths promised, on the contrary, she paid a terrible price, with physically and mentally exhausted. “Long Day's Journey into Night" describes Mary’s 20 years of marriage from multi-faceted perspective and different characters. It concentrated on her unfortunate experience and put a question mark on the holy but tragical role of a mother-wife.

Before marriage, Mary is a happy girl, who is her father’s pet. She is sent to a convent to be educated as a lady. The peaceful and stable life provides a greenhouse to cultivate her gentle and sensitive temperature. Days are full of light and happiness. There is nothing for her to worry about. Her father has already arranged everything well enough to satiate her requirements. Sometimes, she even feels her mother’s jealousy. She is so spoiled that hardship is unimaginable word for her to understand. Love, rich and stable is a natural definition about the concept of home to her. However, a bad good luck appears before her when she meets the handsome stage star—James Tyrone. Mary cannot help herself falling in love with James at the first sight, neither the famous actor. All his charm and chivalry gracefulness create a romantic love adventure. Within a year, she changes her original ideal, later she becomes the wife of an actor．

Mary is thirsty to hold a home, but at the same time, despises it as a mean and incomplete one. Marriage life is totally different from her girlish dream. As a victim，she suffered physical illness due to her husband’s miserliness. When Edmund was Born, she was sick, but James, her husband had a cheap doctor to treat her illness. The wrong prescription of Morphine resulted in her later addiction to this poison. Spiritually, her life is unsatisfied. As an actor’s wife, she had to tour around without a comfortable home. There is merely an unstable house, always engaging in cheap hotel, transferred to another with the tour group, and waiting for her husband lonely day and night. As an Irish family，the Tyrones are alienated out of the Puritan society. Their

Yankee neighbors are reluctant to communicate with them. James’ failure in making big money and his miserliness could not provide a decent home for Mary. Eugene’death makes Mary sad and a strong sense of guilt. To Mary, a spoiled daughter of a wealthy family, all of these disasters are too sharp and hard to bear．She is the innocent victim and also the guilty victimizer. Ella，the prototype of Mary in reality endures various kinds of guilt in her inner heart. She dislikes her mother, while adores her father. She is spoiled to get anything she wants. She intends to transfer this Electra complex to her husband, who is more than ten years older than her. She is always seeking for paternal protection. But the marriage with an actor smashes all the beautiful dreams she once cherished. “Mary Tyrone, for example, is denied the lavish home and the minor social triumphs she experienced as a young girl at home and at exclusive schools, the munificence that her father provided.” The naive schoolgirl has to face the hardships forward，which she could not anticipate and by no means expect. With her oversensitive frailty, Mary is like a rose in the green house, while James has“rare flashes of intuitive sensibility”.Her life is exposed to the outside society，without shield，living with a rock head and heart husband, to whom land is the best shelter. He would like a mortgaged land rather than a stable and presentable home. Sometimes, a club or a barroom is a free place regardless of responsibility and endurance. Home means different significance to the two types of individuals with completely different childhood experiences. “Oh, I’m so sick and tired of pretending this is a home! You won’t help me! You won’t put yourself out the least bit! You don’t know how to act in a home! You don’t really want one! You never have wanted one—never since the day were we married! You should have remained a bachelor and lived in second—rate hotel and entertained your friends in barrooms!”

Although James and Edmund knew that the "wife and mother" role was so heavy for Mary to bear, but they still expect her to re-dedicate herself to take the responsibility.

The Tyrones looked very concerned about her health, and thought her health as more important than anything. When James talked with the eldest son Jimmy about the little son Edmund who had tuberculosis, he was worried about the bad news would impact Mary's recovery. It seemed that Jimmy and Edmund were really pity to their mother, and they often blamed father for his meanness to their poor mother. However, as the playwright and behavior through their confessions revealed, the reason that they concerned about the health of Mary is from their own needs: they need a "mother and wife" to take care of them.

Given the indifference of the Tyrones, we can easily understand why Mary finally went mad. The society and the family’s requires of the "wife and mother" role was so overwhelmed to Mary, and finally drove her to use morphine to escape the pain of playing this role. It can say that the family's indifference made her feel helpless, and eventually had to get rid of inner loneliness and sorrow by morphine, in other words, morphine became Mary’s "escaping mask of despair". [3]

Notably, Marie dependence on morphine and the madness caused by morphine became not only a way to escape the social and family pressure, but a way to resist this pressure.

Mary in Madness used girlhood dreamy memories to away from the reality of the world of men and returned to the monastery where lived with groups of women. The work highlights the dreams and memories, stressed symbolically of her girlhood dream of being a nun or a pianist - these wishes showed girl Mary didn’t intend to become a traditional "wife- mother."

Conclusion

Mary’s attraction stays in her past girlish purity, which likes a blossoming rose emitting its fragrance around. Anyone passes by appreciates its beauty and livingness. However，now she is a morphine addict. This poison like a serpent saps her energy and vitality. She is excavated from the rich soil withering day by day. At the end of the play, Mary, carrying her wedding dress detaches from the present, lost in the remembrance for the past. Mary rejected the Tyrones expectations and requirements, even the dearest Edmond could not change her mind. She insisted on the true self and determined to continue the dream. What’s more, her pursuit is more determined, and this determination is clearly from her female experience which gave her a painful l esson. After more than 20 years’frustrations and setbacks, she firmly rejected the "wife and mother" role, back to the dream world of her own and to find the belonging of woman.

Reference:

[1] 参见James Robinson, Eugene O'N eill and Oriental Thought: A Divided Vision(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1982) 178; Michae Hinden, Long Day's Journey into Night: N ative Eloquence

(Boston: G. K. Hall & Co. , 1990) 43; Sheaffer, Son and Artist ( Boston: Little, Brown and Company,

1973)515; Brendan Gill, "U nhappy Tyrones," N ew Yorker 12M ay 1986: 93- 94.

[2] Virginia Woolf, Professions for Women.

[3] Floyd, Virginia. The Plays of Eugene O'N eill: A N ew A ssessment.New York: Frederick U ngar Publishing Co, 1985.