Mourning Becomes Electra

Mourning Becomes Electra

-         Eugene O’Neill

Eugene Gladstone O’Neill was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in Literature. There was no scope to search the reality of America through mass media. But literature gave that scope to know about the reality of American People. 

His works are:

  Bread and Butter, 1914

  Beyond the Horizon, 1918 – Pulitzer Prize, 1920

  Anna Christie, 1920 – Pulitzer Prize, 1922

  The Hairy Ape, 1922

  Mourning Becomes Electra, 1931

  The Iceman Cometh, written 1939, published 1940, first performed 1946

      The cover story is that one of O’Neill’s enduring masterpieces, Mourning Becomes Electra (1931), represents the playwright’s most complete use of Greek forms, themes, and characters. Based on the Oresteia trilogy by Aeschylus, it was itself three plays in one. To give the story contemporary credibility, O’Neill set the play in the new England of the Civil War Period, yet he retained the forms and the conflicts of the Greek characters: the heroic leader returning from war; his adulterous wife, who murders him; his jealous, repressed daughter, who avenges him through the murder of her mother; and his weak, incestuous son, who is goaded by his sister first to matricide and then to suicide. But this play is not as simple as we describes here. This play remains more ambiguous. Who murder whom, we cannot say with surety. Who love whom, we cannot say with surety. So, at the end readers remains in the doubt.

Important characters:

Adam Brant

Ezra Mannon

Christine Mannon

Lavinia Mannon

Orin Mannon

Peter Niles

Hazel Niles

Seth- guardian

Town People

Play divided into three parts:

      Play covers lots of things like ambiguity, impact of war, generation gap, broken relationship, Electra-Oedipus complex, revenge-tragedy, etc. Ezra Mannon arrives at home after a long time. Christine, who is the wife of Ezra Mannon doesn’t like the welcome of Ezra because she has an affair with Adam Brant. Adam Brant is a cousin brother of Ezra and also like by Lavinia Mannon. Lavinia and Orin are children of Ezra and Christine Mannon.

Lavinia wants to be wife of her father. We come to know through her dialogues with Peter, who is neighbor of Mannon.

Lavinia:

                “I don’t want to meet anyone; I don’t want to see anyone.”

                “I don’t know anything about love and I don’t want to know.”

                “I can’t marry to anyone, father needs me.”

Peter:

                “He has got your mother.”

Lavinia:

                 “He needs me more (sharply).”

    So, it is lead towards the Electra complex of Lavinia to her father. Maybe because of this complex she hates her mother-Christine. Christine much talked by town people. There was no clarification but only hint given by O’Neill. Lavinia knows the secret of her mother. So, there were many problems between Lavinia and Christine’s relationship. They hate each other. See the dialogue-

Christine to Lavinia-

                         “You are born out of disgust.”

     Christine is in fear that maybe Lavinia reveals her secret in front of her father. Lavinia doesn’t like her mother because Christine like by her father. And Lavinia wants to be wife of her father.

     The death of Ezra Mannon was in ambiguity. Whether Ezra died naturally or he murdered by Lavinia or Christine, that is not clarified. So readers are in doubt. “Mourning Becomes Electra” deals with not death but with deaths. Ezra Mannon, Adam Brant, Christine Mannon, and Orin Mannon all are died at the end of the play. So whether they died naturally, murdered or suicide is not clarified by writer. Thus, O’Neill tries to curtain the matters rather reveal the matters. Same as he puts the curtain or mask on all Mannon characters.

     In short, readers are in doubt. They even don’t know that who are responsible for what. Whether characters are responsible for their destruction or they are govern by circumstances. However we cannot blame any character. All the things remain in ambiguity. Due to this reason the charm of this play remain as it is.