high-brow soap opera ( )

Looking at these two works now, one is so struck by the similarities, it is remarkable to consider their differing fates at the time of their appearance. As it happens I finished reading The Awakening the same day as I went to see Strange Interlude, so the points of comparison stood out. Both are American, experimental in form, controversial in content.

Both feature female characters who are constrained by the society in which they live - or perceive themselves as being thus constrained. Edna and Nina are adored by a variety of men and exploit that as suits them. They are both unusual characters who question the social conventions around them.

Edna, in The Awakening, is never a 'good' mother or wife, increasingly dissatisfied with the expectations of society, she begins to take steps to live her own life. She more or less abandons her children, she moves out of her house once she has developed a capacity to earn money via her art, she takes lovers - all this whilst her husband attempts to keep up appearances, hoping as a doctor has advised him, that Edna's behaviour is an aberration that will correct itself.

Nina, having lost her juvenile love in WWI, becomes a nurse of wounded soldiers and starts sleeping with them - maybe that will make them feel better. That nothing is going to assuage the guilt she carries for the death of her beloved, is the rationale for all her actions. She then marries a well meaning dullard she doesn't love, so that he can provide the children she needs in her life as a sensible substitute to look after - doubtless even she can see that sex with every injured US soldier isn't going to be possible. Deliberately marrying other than for love, she then finds out that her husband's family has hereditary madness, this after falling pregnant. Her husband is in blissful ignorance of both these things and she continues with scheming to keep it that way. Abortion is no problem, and then taking a secret lover in order to provide a baby with better odds of being born sane. Science in this period raises such moral issues as eugenics.

Chopin writes in the 1890s, O'Neill in the 1920s, so some thirty years later, but nonetheless, both are writing of scandalous, controversial topics. Both writers were known. Yet Chopin's novel was generally critically reviled and forgotten until it received a feminist stimulus in the second half of the twentieth century. Interestingly, from that special interest beginning - 'it is good because....' - it has become considerably elevated to more like - 'it is good' fullstop. O'Neill's play was as long as Chopin's novel was to the point, six hours or so, it was very difficult technically due to his experimention with asides to the audience, a substantial aspect of the play. Undoubtedly he was better known to his audiences, having already won two Pulitzers. Still, although it too received censorial treatment here and there, including banning, it was nonetheless a huge hit.

It is impossible not to wonder about the different immediate fates of these works. Yes, O'Neill was more famous than Chopin, but this does not strike me as sufficient explanation by any means. Male fares better than female? Maybe, but the US by then had lots of hugely popular female writers. Perhaps it is relevant that the 1920s in the US was in general a freer period than before and after.

I wonder, however, if the ways in which these stories end has something to do with it. Nina is a morally ambiguous character. She claims always to be acting to further the happiness of others (at the expense of the happiness of others, we might observe), but even if this claim were true, it means she is doing so through methods that we can scarcely feel happy about. Lying to her husband, a secret abortion, a lover who she keeps even after she no longer needs him for his original purpose. And one can also question if it is true that she is acting in a noble way to further the happiness of others. She is a person who wishes to suffer, this is established right at the start of the play. She never wavers from that, maybe even keeping her lover is to exacerbate her pain. Even after her husband dies and her son, guessing the situation, gives his approval of her marrying her lover, she does no such thing, but instead marries the man who has been her substitute father and a figure to be gently mocked and used over the decades. No straightforward bliss for Nina.

Edna has a husband who is willing to put up with her bad behaviour to an extent we can admire from a distance. She has two lovers, one of which is also a love. Having established her independence, now living on her own, earning enough to support both her and the woman she has to do the 'work', having foisted her children on her own mother, and two lovers at the begging, she suddenly decides to kill herself. Frankly, if I could get Nina and Edna close enough, I'd knock their heads together, hope that brought them to their senses. The ending of The Awakening has no good explanation. I understand, from reading around, that it is due to an inability to otherwise be free of constraint. But there is no such thing as freedom from constraint and Chopin certainly doesn't think there is. How do we avoid the conclusion that this is not a strong woman, but a weak one, maybe even a mentally ill one? It is simply not sufficient to say she was the victim of her society. The author herself lived in an almost entirely female society as far as immediate family went and was not exactly conventional in her own dealings with men. Appreciating the reasons why The Awakening is so highly regarded, it has shortcomings that leave me in doubt overall about it. One must also have doubts about a writer who withdrew the moment her work was criticised. It was not only criticised for content, but also for style and I am sure if Chopin had listened to some of that criticism and acted upon it, she might have ended up an important writer beyond the current justifications for her canonisation. What we can conclude is that Chopin was no driven writer, if she so easily withdrew from it.

Of course, Strange Interlude is nothing if not six hours of shortcomings. The National Theatre's current production of it is cut down to a mere three and a half hours or so and one can only suppose that it has been pruned with an agenda. There is an imbalance between tragedy and comedy which I doubt exists in the original, the one that was so hugely popular when it first appeared. If The Awakening was reviled, Strange Interlude was both pilloried and parodied. Most famously in Animal Crackers, you can see the relevant segment here. And there is Spencer Tracy with Joan Bennett in My and My Gal here.

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http://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpress.com/2013/08/16/the-awakening-by-kate-chop... ( )

Questo dramma è "un pasticcio d'amore e di odio e di dolore e di maternità", come fa dire l'autore alla sua protagonista, quella Nina che è il deus ex machina della vicenda. E' una donna fatale intrappolata nella sua stessa morbosità e smania di possesso; non un personaggio positivo, ma una straordinaria creazione letteraria. Le sue controparti maschili sono tre, dalle personalità opposte ma accomunati da una passione totalizzante per Nina: carnale quella di Ned, sentimentale e convenzionale quella di Sam, platonica e quasi paterna quella di Charles. Sono i tre lati dell'amore, a cui Nina non vuole rinunciare e che farà di tutto per conservarsi sino alla fine, rovinando di fatto la loro vita e per riflesso anche la sua. [SPOILER] Solo quando suo figlio, prodotto e simulacro di questi tre amori, la lascerà sola pronto a farsi una vita lontano dal suo controllo Nina si sentirà finalmente in pace, svuotata ma libera di tornare ad un'esistenza semplice e quasi infantile. [FINE SPOILER]
E' un dramma che riesce ad essere allo stesso tempo figlio dei suoi tempi e molto attuale: la tecnica del flusso di coscienza è tipica del modernismo e le influenze delle teorie Freudiane (che avevano vasta eco in quel periodo) sono evidenti, tra complessi edipici e frustrazioni sessuali; eppure la sensibilità con cui sono tratteggiati i personaggi è vicina alla nostra, essi sfidano le convenzioni del tempo per diventare universali.
Il dualismo tra i pensieri intimi (esplicitati tramite lunghi monologhi interiori) ed i dialoghi veri e propri, per quanto straniante permette un'immersività quasi totale, perchè consente di scandagliare la psiche dei protagonisti, imparando a conoscerne mente e anima.
Un' opera profonda e articolata (ben nove atti che si snodano in quasi trent'anni), che ho letto e riletto scoprendone ogni volta qualche lato nuovo: la consiglio a tutti gli amanti del buon teatro. ( )

356. Strange Interlude A Play, by Eugene O'Neill (read 24 Apr 1949) (Pulitzer Drama prize for 1928) I finished reading this on April 24, 1949, and said: "Shakespeare certainly leaves more to his actors, O'Neil has the whole thing interpreted for his actors, they simply have to follow instructions. Reading some parts it seemed to me they'd sure seem awkward on the stage. The frankness I found amusing. It is the story of a girl whose lover dies in the war, She marries a guy with insanity in his family and so won't bear his baby but has another impregnate her. The rest is the story of the mixup and its consequences. ( )

O'Neill uses an odd device where the actor reveals his inner thoughts in addition to speaking. I'd be interested in seeing it performed just to see how this was accomplished on stage. However, I can't imagine a 9 act play being presented very often. All the main characters are over-wrought and selfish. Not one of O'neill's better works. ( )