EUGENE O'NEILL'S MOURNING BECOMES ELECTRA: A CLASSICAL

TRAGEDY IN MODERN PERSPECTIVE

modernizes a Greek famous trilogy of Aeschylus' Oresteia. It is presented in 1931, the

time of Depression when millions became unemployed and hungry. America, the land

of prosperity and opportunity, was now the bitter land of dissatisfaction. Hard times

affect artists and intellectuals to seek causes and to express social concern. Many

writers moved to shout out against a system that could produce the kind of poverty

and general chaos. While the other dramatists in their work faced the controversial

issues of the time, O'Neill was becoming more introspective. Though he was deeply

saddened by the plight of the poor, O'Neill nevertheless avoided sociological attacks

or propaganda in his play. He was becoming more and more interested in private

worlds, even if they found in universal myths. Working harder than ever, ambitiously

vying with the Greek dramatists for size in drama, he presented to America and the

world perhaps the best play of the thirties, Morning Becomes Electra. Certainly the

play possessing the greatest tragic depth, it is far different from the plays produced

shouts of protest against hard times, and more lasting.

In this trilogy, Homecoming, The Hunted and The Haunted, O'Neill has gone

back to one of the world's greatest classical tragic stories of Aeschylus' Oresteia. He

retells the story of Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, Orestes and Electra and the theme of

the Furies with an almost contemporary rearrangement and interpretation. He

dramatizes his conviction that the Greek concept of fate could be replaced by the

modern notion of psychological, especially Freudian, determination. The Mannons are

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driven to their self-destructive behaviour by inner needs and compulsions they can

neither understand nor control. The play is not an exemplification of the Greek

religious problem of fate, for O'Neill has reconceived the old doctrine of nemesis in

terms of modern biological and psychological doctrine of cause and effect. The

concept of fate is interpreted in modern psychological terms that render it more

acceptable to modern audience.

Structural Approach and Plot Development

In a similar manner to its Greek prototype, O'Neill chooses to set the tragic

action into motion before going in depth with the first part of the trilogy. In the

previous generation, as Lavinia (the Mannon's daughter) exchanged a speech with

Seth( the Mannon's gardener) telling him, what she knew about her grandfather, that

Abraham dispossesses his brother, David Mannon because he falls in love and marries

a Canuck nurse named Marie Brantome, whom she was Abraham's desire. To

legitimize their child, Abraham does not only dismiss them both out of the house, but

he actually razes the family home to the ground and builds a new one for "he wouldn't

live where his brother had disgraced the family."(1.1.17.27) *1As a result, David's

son, Adam Brant seeks vengeance on the Mannon Family for his father and mother's

tragic suffering and death. He does that by seducing Christine Mannon away from her

husband, the present head of the Mannon family, Ezra, whose return from the Civil

War is expected in Homecoming, the first part of the trilogy.

The choice of the Civil War as a background for the play is very appropriate.

It is an even suitably remote from the present, possessing, thereby, a ''sufficient mask

O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra. Singh, J. ed. 2003. All subsequent quotations are taken from *1
.this edition, number of the play, act, page and the line (s) will appear after each quotation

2
of time and space, so that audiences will unconsciously grasp at once that is primarily

a drama of hidden forces, fate, behind the lives of the characters." (Bigsby 1983 78) It

has added an advantage of providing a perfect rationale for setting the play in house

built in imitation of Greek style, thereby, Bigsby adds at the same context "for the

New-England setting, with its puritanical view of sexuality and the life force, stood in

sharp contrast to the iconography (representation of ideas or meanings through visual

images) of its Greek setting." As the Greek were familiar with the details of the

Trojan War, the Americans were well-acquainted with the Civil War. Here, O'Neill

shows the same interest in the past as the Greek tragedians. It is his belief that "one

cannot write anything of value or understanding about the present, and his desire is to

avoid the complexities of contemporary life or the past as well." (Floyd 1979 29)

To reflect the modern concept of the America dream, O'Neill in Mourning

presents a number of dreamers thwarted in their quest for happiness by hostile and

complex psychological forces innate in their nature and against which they can do

nothing. As a matter of fact, the trilogy is primarily concerned with Christine's quest

for happiness which occupies the first two parts and then with Lavonia's as she takes

the role of her mother in the third part. Indeed, the two women constitute the nucleus

of the plot in the trilogy as the other characters seek their happiness in relation to

them.

The curse on the house of Mannon, which is exemplified by Adam's

determination to avenge his mother's death, is similar to the curse that befalls the

house of Arteus in the Greek trilogy. Like the Greek tragic heroes, all the Mannon are

punished. From the beginning, they have a feeling of being imprisoned in a dark cage

built by the shadows of the past out of which there is no escape. Lavinia states that

attitude to Seth "You've been with us Mannons so long! You know there's no rest in

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this house which Grandfather built as temple of Hate and Death!''(3.4.181.7) As a

result, the Mannon yearn for a release first, in love untainted by pride and sin, and

second, in death itself in their ceaseless longing to escape the ugly reality of their

actual lives. O'Neill suggests this longing with three principal symbols-the South Sea

Islands, the mother images, and the sea chant sung by Seth the gardener who leads the

chorus of the town's people.

The first part of the trilogy, Homecoming begins with the Mannon family

waiting for the arrival of Ezra Mannon from the Civil war. Here, we have a close

imitation of the Aeschylean trilogy in which O'Neill sheds light on the events that

take place during the absence of Ezra or the Agamemnon of Greek trilogy. Like

Clytemnestra, Christine has been having an affair with Adam who used to visit the

house ostensibly to court her daughter, Lavinia. The introduction of Lavinia in

Homecoming is O'Neill's invention and choice. In so doing, he aims at reproducing

the Electra legend in modern psychological terms. As the events show, there is a deep

and bitter enmity between Lavinia and her mother. In a clear Freudian manner,

Christine tells Lavinia "I know you Vinnie! I've watched you ever since you were

little, trying to do exactly what you're doing now! You've tried to become the wife of

your father and mother of Orin. You've always schemed to steal my place." (1.2.33.3)

This accusation is verified by Lavinia's declaration to her father, "You're the only man

I'll ever love! I am going to stay with you" (1.3.52.25) Accordingly, Homecoming

opens with a portrayal of Brant's revenge as well as his own yearning for an ideal

state of happiness, which he cherishes but, like the other characters, never achieves. It

appears symbolized as the Blessed Isles for the first time in the play. Describing the

inhabitants of the isles, Adam dreamily says "Aye! And they live in as near the

Garden of Paradise before sin was discovered as you'll find on this earth!... The

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Blessed Isles, I'd call them! You can forget there all men's dirty dreams of greed and

power!" (1.1.22.11-12)

In fact, O'Neill is always disturbed by the failure of man to find peace and

forgiveness in his life. Therefore, he often makes his characters escape to an ''idyllic

retreat," wherein they find ''release, peace, security beauty, freedom of conscience and

sinlessness." (Roberts 1975 178) However, Adam's chances of realizing his dream

dwindle as he is informed of the imminent homecoming of his rival Ezra who also

dreams of going with his wife "on a voyage together- to the other side of the world-

find some island where [they] could be alone awhile."(1.3.58.2-3) Instead of killing

his daughter or bringing a concubine, Ezra returns a changed man with a heart

sickness. In the past, his relationship with his wife was marked by tension and

emotional indifference. Because of his ingrown egotism and guilty attitude towards

sex, Ezra does not, at the beginning of the play, know how to love. Desire for his wife

take the form of brutal and clumsy lust that turns their romance into disgust. Leaving

his wife alone for a long period of time during the war results in loathsome hatred, a

desire to be avenged, and a longing for passionate love that Christine realizes upon

meeting Adam. Having been sick of death, blood-shedding and human corpses in the

battlefields, he is now aware of the significance of love and compassion in man's life.

Ironically, Ezra's desire for emotional regeneration comes too late. Actually, his

homecoming ushers not a new beginning in his life but the end of it. Having taken

advantage of his heart sickness, Christine affects Ezra's death by admitting having a

relationship with his cousin, Adam Brant, and offering him as medicine the poison the

latter has brought her. This part ends with Lavinia's determination not to let this crime

go unpunished in spite of Christine's denial of taking part in it. She is to avenge her

father's death.

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 The second part of the trilogy, The Hunted begins two days after the murder of

Ezra. It opens with a description of Ezra's death as "fate" and with Christine's

prophetic wondering that sheds light on O'Neill's intention to keep what is essential to

Greek tragedy, namely, violent death and fatal determinism. Christine cries

protesting; "Why can't all of us remain innocent and loving and trusting? But God

won't leave us alone. He twists and wrings and tortures our lives with others' lives

until-we poison each other to death!" (2.1.75.27-29) This shows that prophecy is a

conspicuous feature of all forms of traditional narrative. In this part, Orin, the son,

(Orestes of the Greek trilogy) returns from the war. He has been wounded in the head

and has suffered, like his father, from overexposure to death. He also becomes the

target of Christine and Lavinia's affection. Each one fights strongly to win him to her

side. In an attempt to abort Lavinia's plan to avenge Ezra's murder with the aid of

Orin, Christine, in an Oedipal manner makes a comparison between her and Lavinia.

She says: "But we've always been so close, you and I, I feel you are really-my flesh

and blood! She isn't [i.e. Lavinia]. She is your father's. You are part of me. (2.2.89.20-

21)

It is now Orin's golden chance to realize his long repressed unconscious desire

to substitute his father in his mother's life. Indeed, rather than feeling sad at his

father's sudden death, he rejoices it. Orin's reaction here "recalls his creator's

resentment of his father, his deep devotion to his mother, his neurotic sensibility, and

his emotional and intellectual instability." (Engel 1953 298) Orin now seeks the

Islands of happiness with the intense longing of Ezra. He expresses his wish to go

with his mother to the heavenly Isles. He says "Those Islands came to mean anything

that wasn't war, everything that was peace and warmth and security. I used to dream I

was there… There was no one there but you and me. And yet I never saw you, that's

6
the funny part." (2.2.94.6-10) The last two prophetic sentences foreshadow the later

development of the plot Orin is never to realize his dream since he is competing with

Adam to gain the love of the same woman.

On her part, Lavinia tries to persuade Orin that the murder of their father

should not go unpunished. Here, Lavinia becomes the sold instigator of Adam's

murder and the mover of the tragic action. While Orestes in the second part of the

Aeschylean trilogy was the chief instrument of vengeance, O'Neill chooses to give

Lavinia the combined dramatic functions of the prophetess, the avenger Orestes and

the chorus, thus centering the subsequent tragic action on her. Accordingly, it seems

that O'Neill follows Euripides' Electra, not only diverging from Aeschylus, but also

disregarding the Electra of Sophocles wherein brother and sister divide the part of the

protagonist. He actually believes that the three Greek tragedians fail to exploit the

tragic implications of Electra's character, thus depriving her of the heroic stature she

deserves. He says ''Aeschylus had simply dropped her, Sophocles left her triumphant

and Euripides finished her off with a banal marriage." (Muller1956 270)

In her revenge, Lavinia is not only driven by the Mannon sense of justice and

her love for her father, but also by her frustrated love for Adam and jealousy of her

mother. Since Christine has 'stolen' the love of both men, Lavinia determined to take

from her mother Adam's love, which is her life. At Lavinia's instigation, Orin shoots

Adam at Blackridge where he hears him speaking of the Blessed Islands to his

mother. He stops before his mother to tell her "I heard you planning to go with him to

the island I had told you about- our island- that was you and I!"(2.5.127.33-34)

Having gotten rid of his rival, Orin dreams, like his father, of living in a state of grace

and forgiveness and going on a long voyage with his mother only, without Lavinia.

However, Orin's efforts to regain happiness end in failure as Christine's decision to

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commit suicide when she knew that Brant is killed by her son Orin, which is O'Neill's

most conspicuous departure from Aeschylus, leaves Orin mentally distraught and

hysterically accusing himself of killing his mother, the woman he most loves.

The last part of the trilogy, The Haunted, is enveloped in deeper sin and

gloom. It opens with the return of Lavinia and Orin from the Blessed Isles. Unlike

Lavinia, Orin comes back from the Islands haunted by guilt and remorse that stand as

a substitute for the Greek Furies, which torment the Orestes of the Greek trilogy. The

Furies that haunt Orin consist, not only of an active madness of blood-guilt for the

death of his mother, but also the transition of his fixation for her into an incestuous

passion for Lavinia, of which his sudden awareness is provocation for his suicide.

Since Lavinia takes the place of her mother, the oedipal theme here acquires a

conscious intensity unknown to Orin before. Orin wants to regain his lost Island (his

mother) through Lavinia, while at the same time, punishing himself for his crime with

conscious sin of incest. Moreover, Orin's act of shutting himself away from daylight is

symbolic of his rejection of life and happiness. He says to Lavinia "(Harshly) I hate

the daylight. It's like an accusing eye…perpetual night-darkness of death in life –that's

the fitting habit for guilt." (3.2.158.24-25)

Orin here is resolved to draw Lavinia with him to the dark world of death he

now inhabits. He wants her to feel as guilty as he does. He tells her, "can't you see I'm

now in father's place and you're mother?...I'm the last Mannon you're chained

to?"(3.2.164.16-19) As a logical reaction to his disillusionment with his dream, Orin

is determined to punish Lavinia as his inseparable partner in sin and not to allow her

any happiness. His reaction to the fact that Lavinia found "her island'' with Peter is the

same as it was towards his mother when she spoke of hers to Brant. Actually, Orin

now is jealous of Peter Niles as he was jealous of Brant and his father. In his self-

8
imposed solitude, Orin contemplates the tragic situation of his family and notices that

it is not justice that drives Lavinia to kill her mother's paramour, but her jealousy and

desire to be in her mother's place. Lavinia wants now to have a normal life and to

forget the past that is associated in her mind with death, darkness, and hatred. She told

Peter "hold me close, nothing matters but love, one must have peace…once we're

married and have a home with a garden and trees!"(3.3.177.18-27) To abort her dream

of happiness, Orin decides to commit suicide. Orin death means reunion with his

mother and release from guilt. He says:

Mother! Do you know what I'll do then? I'll get on my

Knees and ask your forgiveness and say I am glad you

found love, Mother! I'll wish you happiness you and

Adam! You've heard me! You're here, in the house

now! You're calling me! You are waiting to take me

home! (3.3.176.24-29)

Lavinia's attempt to escape the "temple of Hate and Death" and to achieve

happiness by marrying Peter ends in failure as Orin asked Hazel to make Peter read

his letter before he married Lavinia. Orin revealed another secret of his sister who

spent days with him in the islands. Lavinia told Peter this secret "I wanted him! I

wanted to learn love from him-love that wasn't a sin! And I did. I tell you! He had me!

I was his fancy woman!"(3.4.188.19-20) Commenting on the significance of this

psychological technique, Bloom points out: "Through the dramatic use of the

Freudian slip of the tongue, O'Neill creates the climax of his trilogy. Lacking the

benign goddess, Athena of Aeschylus' trilogy who ultimately purges Orestes of his

guilt, there is not mitigation for the neurosis, ridden Mannon family of O'Neill's

drama."(Bloom 2007 28)

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 There is no hope of regeneration and the realization of the dream of the

Blessed Isles is denied to Lavinia as to all other characters in the play. Peter's

desertion of Lavinia comes as nemesis for her guilt and as natural recoil of the first

original crime of dismissing Marie Brantome, the symbol of love. Rather than killing

herself, which is an easy solution for her dilemma, Lavinia chooses, as a kind of self-

punishment to imprison herself inside the Mannon house with the ghosts of the dead

continuously haunting her. She told Seth:

Don't be afraid. I'm not going the way mother and

Orin went. That's escaping punishment. And there's

no one left to punish me. I'm the last Mannon. I've got

to punish myself ! Living alone here with the dead is a

worst act of justice than death or prison! I'll never go

out or see anyone!...until the curse is paid out and the

last Mannon is let die! (3.4.189.13-20)

The other aspect in which O'Neill tries to emulate his Greek example is the

extensive reference to the mask ostensibly worn by the characters in the play. They

are not real masks. Rather, O'Neill suggests their presence through facial expression

in the stage direction. Here, masks are used to show the hidden conflicts in the

characters' minds between the death instinct and the life instinct. Of this O'Neill says:

"With Mourning Becomes Electra masks would emphasize the drama of the life and

death impulses that drive the characters on their fates and put more in its proper

secondary place, as a frame, the story of the New England family." (Cargill 1961 120)

Thus, the mask is not only an image of a fate which links the Mannon family,

it is also shaped by their own denial of change and by an obsession with the past

which allows the mask dominance that denies the character its individuality. In other

10
words, the notion of the mask becomes internal to the character. The physical and

psychological resemblance among the female characters on one hand and the male

characters on the other is another sign of their shared fate. Adam's physical semblance

to the Mannon gives Orin a terrible psychological shock when he shoots him. He

hysterically says: "By God, he does look life father!… He looks like me too. May be

I've committed suicide!"(2.4.121.21)

Finally, the structure of the trilogy depicts the enclosed nature of the Mannon's

fate. The play consists of reiterative interior and exterior scenes that reflect the

repetitive nature of the action performed. Moreover, the repetition of some of the lines

and the fundamental strategy of creating characters that, physically and

psychologically resemble their parents show clearly the inevitability of the tragic

destiny the dramatist is leading his characters to.

Thematic Approach

In ''Working Notes and Extracts from a Fragmentary Work Diary'', O'Neill

states his intention to give a modern psychological interpretation to the classical

concept of fate ''without benefit of gods for it must … remain a modern psychological

play of fate springing out of the family."(Falk 1958 129) The trilogy is concerned

with the fated family life of the Mannon.

Mourning Becomes Electra illustrates the struggle between the life-force and

death, in which attempts to express natural sensual desires and love of others or even

of life itself are overcome by the many forms of death: repression derived from the

Puritan religion, death-in-life engendered by society's values, isolation, war, and

actual physical death. This struggle is present not only in the plot structure, where

each play culminates in actual death, but also in the setting, the actors' faces, stances,

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and costumes, and repetitive refrains. Darkness, associated with death, pervades the

plays: Homecoming, for instance, begins with the sunset, moves into twilight, and

ends in the dark of night; The Hunted takes place during night; The Haunted spans

two evenings and a late afternoon, indicating the inevitable coming of night, darkness,

and death as Lavinia retreats to rejoin the host of dead Mannons.

The Mannon house itself, seen by the audience at the beginning of each play,

stands amid the beauty and abundance of nature. It has a white Greek temple portico

which, O'Neill directs, should resemble "an incongruous white mask fixed on the

house to hide its somber grey ugliness." That the house is an ironic inversion of the

affirmation and love of this life associated with the Greeks is soon obvious. Christine

thinks of the house as a tomb of cold gray stone, and even Ezra compares it to a

"white meeting house" of the Puritans, a temple dedicated to duty, denial of the

beauty of life and love—to death. The house itself is not only alienated from nature

but also isolated from the community, built on the foundations of pride and hatred and

Puritan beliefs. Its cold facade and isolation symbolize the family which lives within

it, whose name indicates their spiritual relationship to Satan's chief helper, Mammon.

The "curse" of this house stems from the effects of materialism, Puritanism,

alienation, and repression of all that is natural, a death in life.

The stiff, unnatural bearing of the Mannons and the look of their faces are

further evidence that the family is dead in the midst of life. Even the townspeople

comment on the Mannons' "secret look." Their dead, mask like faces, in portraits of

Orin and Ezra, on Christine's face when she is about to commit suicide, on Lavinia's

face after Orin's death, all indicate the Mannons' denial of life, their repression of their

sensual natures, and then-refusal or inability to communicate with others. The dark

costumes of all the family also indicate the hold that death has on them and

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accentuates the green satin worn first by Christine and later by Lavinia as they

struggle to break out of their tomb and reach life.

The instinct of love and life survives strongest in the women, but even they are

defeated. The search for pure love through a mother-son relationship is futile, for the

Oedipal complex leads beyond the bounds of a pure relationship, as Orin finally

realizes. Family love, too, fails, as is evident in the relationships between Christine

and Lavinia and Ezra and Orin. Even love between men and women fails—as in the

cases of Christine and Ezra and Lavinia and Peter—to triumph over the alienation and

loneliness of the Mannon world.

The leitmotif of the South Sea Islands, symbols of escape from the death cycle

of heredity and environment of New England society, is present throughout the three

parts of the play. The islands represent a return to mother earth, a hope of belonging

in an environment far removed from Puritan guilt and materialism. Brant has been to

these islands; Ezra wishes for one; Orin dreams of being on one with Christine;

Christine wants to go to an island; Orin and Lavinia do finally travel to the islands.

However, they come to realize that they cannot become a permanent part of the island

culture, but must return to the society to which they belong by birth and upbringing.

As symbols of escape, then, the islands, too, finally fail.

The Mannons try all avenues of escape from their deathly isolation. David

Mannon attempted to escape with Marie Brantome, but finally turned to drinking and

suicide. Ezra 'escaped' through concentrating on his business and then on the business

of death, war, before he realized the trap of death. Christine focuses her attempts to

escape first on her son and then on Brant. Orin tries to escape through his mother's

love, then through Hazel's, and finally, in desperation, suggests an incestuous

relationship with Lavinia. Lavinia does not see the dimensions of the death trap and

13
does not desire escape until her trip to the islands, where she experiences the

abundance of guilt-free life. After her return, she is willing to let Orin die, just as

Christine let Ezra die, in order to be free to love and live. But then, too late, she feels

the curse of the guilt associated with the Puritan beliefs and realizes that she cannot

escape. Lavinia learns that Orin was right: the killer kills part of himself each time he

kills until finally nothing alive is left in him. She underscores this in her last

conversation with Peter, remarking, "Always the dead between [us]. . . . The dead are

too strong."(3.4.187.29) Death itself is the only real escape for the alienated, guilt-

ridden Mannons.

The Classical and Modern Traits

In narrative line O'Neill's trilogy Mourning Becomes Electra follows

Aeschylus' Oresteia to tell modern story of familial strife, jealousy, love, hate, sin and

repentance. O'Neill adapts the story almost wholesale, in trilogy form: the Mannon

family (House of Atreus) awaits the arrival of Ezra Mannon (Agamemnon) from the

Civil War (Trojan War) which has just concluded. His wife Christine (Clytemnestra)

has been having an affair with Adam Brant (Aegisthus). The wife and her lover killed

Ezra Mannon. The daughter Lavinia and the son Orin (Electra and Orestes) avenged

their father's murder and then to end with torment by guilt.

Though the story is based dramatically on Oresteia, O'Neill puts his touches

on certain events just to be his own modern private universal version. "He keeps what

is essential to tragedy, death and determinism."(Berlin 1982 111) In the original

version, Orestes and Electra murder both Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, whereas in

O'Neill's version, Orin and Lavinia murder only Brant, which drives Christine to kill

herself. Similarly, in the original, the Furies drive Orestes mad, whereas in O'Neill's

14
version, Orin's guilt drives him to commit suicide. In the most important and

interesting variation from the original, whereas the central character of The Oresteia is

Orestes, the central character of O'Neill's drama is the Electra figure, Lavinia. The

only survived member of the family at the end, she entombs herself in the family

mansion, closing all the doors and vowing to terminate the family curse by doing

penance alone with the family ghosts until the end of her days, thus imbuing the

female with the power to determine the family's ultimate fate.

On the other hand, O'Neill again expands the use of the classical device which

is the chorus in Mourning, in which each of the three parts in the trilogy begins with a

fairly lengthy scene involving a group of townsfolk not only provide exposition about

the Mannons that helps the audience follow the storyline, but they also comment on

the behaviour of members of the Mannon family in ways that suggest the

sociocultural and moral context of their actions and help to guide the responses of the

audience. Seth, the mannons' groundkeeper and handyman, appears in all three parts

of the choral interludes but also with the main characters, and in particular, provides

counsel to the central figure, Lavinia, whom he seems to favor among all the

Mannons.

Another device that seems to be derived from Greek drama is the mask.

O'Neill makes use of it indirectly to capture modern psychological insights and

hidden conflicts of the mind on stage. He did not use actual masks, but instead,

throughout the drama, describes characters' faces as (mask-like) and makes a point of

the facial resemblances among members of the Mannon family.

Moreover, as it is compared to its source, Aeschylus' Oresteia, O'Neill's

themes and characterization seem shallow. Christine, who goads Ezra into a heart

attack because of her hatred of his attitude toward their sexual relationship and her

15
love of Brant, is no match for Clytemnestra, who revenges the death of her daughter,

her insulted pride, and hatred of Agamemnon with a bloody knife. The weak, neurotic

Orin is likewise a lesser character than Orestes, whose strong speech of triumphant

justice over his mother's slain body breaks only with his horrified vision of the Furies.

Yet Ezra is more human than Agamemnon, and Lavinia's complexities far outstrip

Electra's: her recognition and acceptance of her fate is in the noble tradition of the

tragic hero.

The radical difference in the intentions of the two playwrights accounts for

some of these disparities. Aeschylus, whose major themes are concerned with the

victory of man's and the gods' laws, concludes his trilogy with the establishment of

justice on earth and the reconciliation of Orestes with society and the gods, affirming

that good has come out of evil, order from chaos, and wisdom from suffering. In

Mourning Becomes Electra, however, the curse is not lifted, but confirmed at the end,

as Lavinia gives up her futile struggle against the psychological effects of Puritanical

guilt. O'Neill's major concerns are with the detrimental effects of the materialism; the

alienation of man from meaningful relationships with others, nature, and God; the

death heritage of Puritanical beliefs; and the psychological furies that drive us all.

Although the psychological analysis of these representative members of American

society may be oversimplified occasionally, in the hands of a good director and cast

Mourning Becomes Electra is one of the few works by an American dramatist that can

truly be said to evoke the tragic emotions of pity, fear, and perhaps even awe in a

modern audience.

Once again the tragedy is with O'Neill, a natural result of life itself, in the

treatment of which one may see clearly the outlines of bourgeois society with its

acquisitive mentality which poisons the protagonists' consciousness and thus deprives

16
them of the possibility of having genuinely human relations. This interpretation of life

as the source of tragedy is what brings O'Neill's tragedy close to the classical Greek

tragedy. Yet, the purpose of the trilogy is changed in order to comment upon the

driving sexual forces found in modern man. Aeschylus wanted to make a comment

about community justice as opposed to personal revenge, but O'Neill uses the same

story to illustrate the sexual motivations of various members of the family and to

show man as victim of urges beyond his control.

Working along with the determinism connected with a family curse is the

determinism based on psyche. This is the modern psychological approximation of

Greek sense of fate that gave O'Neill his greatest challenge. For the most part, O'Neill

is successful in weaving Freud into the fabric of his tragedy. The incestuous love of

Orin for his mother and his sister, of Lavinia for her father, the love of mother for son,

of father for daughter, the hatred of father by son, of mother by daughter , these are

presented in such a way that they represent recognizable patterns in human behaviour.

Consider the following words by Christine to Lavinia: "You've tried to become the

wife of your father and the mother of Orin!" and see what Orin says when he was

staring at the dead Adam Brant:" if I had been he I would have done what he did! I

would have loved her as he loved her and killed father too for her sake." Ultimately,

the end may come with Robert Benchley words about this play: "planning carefully,

using the resources of his theatre, O'Neill tells a big story about big passions, and he

tells it with such truth that we get behind life and feel the real reality." (Berlin 1982

117)

References
Berlin, Normand. 1982. Eugene O'Neill. London: The Macmillan Press Ltd.

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Bigsby, C.W.F. 1943. A Critical Introduction to Twentieth Century American Drama:
1900-1940. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
Bloom, Steven F. 2007. Student Companion to Eugene O'Neill. New York: Green
Publishing Group, Inc.
Cargill, Oscar. (Ed.) 1961.O'Neill and his Plays: For Decades of Criticism. New
York: UP.
Engel, Edwin E. 1953. The Haunted Heroes of Eugene O'Neill. Cambridge: Harvard
UP.
Falk, Doris V. 1958. Eugene O'Neill and the Tragic Vision. New Jersey: Rutgers UP.

Floyd, Virginia. 1979. Eugene O'Neill: A World View. New York: Fredrick Unger
Publication Co.
Muller, Herbert. 1956. The Spirit of Tragedy. New York: Washington Square Press,
Inc.
O'Neill, Eugene. 2003. Mourning Becomes Electra. Singh, J. ed. Delhi: Surjeet
Publications,
Robert, Patrick. 1975. The Psychology of Tragic Drama. London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul.

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