Journal of American Studies of Turkey
13
(2001) : 13-22
Antiquity and the Making of American Myth: The
Oresteia and Mourning Becomes Electra[1]
Ahmet Beþe
Throughout recorded history, the tales and stories, which once had theological, historical and philosophical significance and are called myths have dominated human experiences. Theatre in the Western world has been, above all, a mixture of ritual, imitation and myth. The need for ritual survives to the present day in many cultures, as can be seen in wedding ceremonies, various festivals, church services and even in some sports events. The need to imitate, or the ‘mimetic instinct’, is one of man’s oldest and most basic instinctive characteristics. Out of ritual and imitation came the need to create or regenerate myth. Myths served as the basis for rituals by which the early perceptions and predictions of humanity and those of nature could be psychologically reconciled. “Myths have their historic time and meta-historic time; the time in which they came into being and their universal validity outside of time. They are intelligible in translation-from language to language, from one civilization to another, from one religious system to another” (Kott 241-242). Thus, myths and rituals are still operative in theistic and cultural hierarchies of the world. Studying a myth or a series of myths is simultaneously studying difference and commonality of a culture in question.
Modern
drama has turned to ancient myths in varying attempts and purposes because of
an interest in the reinterpretation of traditional themes and motifs in the
light of modern cultural, psychological, political and aesthetic
preoccupations, as conspicuously seen in the adaptation of Aeschylus’ the Oresteia into an American version,
Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra.
The adaptation of the Oresteia is
O’Neill’s attempt to construct the Athenian model and define its variable
realizations particularly in America. Aeschylus’ dramatic form was classical
history of Attic drama and it was a form which could be imitated to O’Neill’s
purposes of search for aesthetic dramatic form and reinterpretation of myth,
psychology and culture in relation to social criticism.
Aeschylus,
who lived from 525 to 456 B.C., is the first important Greek dramatist, and is
often regarded as the founder of Western drama. “He wrote largely about traditional themes, based on myths and
Olympian law” (Cassady 3). Aeschylus’ most cited work today is considered to be
the Oresteian Trilogy (458 B.C.),
which is based on Greek mythology, and “is the only extant trilogy by any Greek
dramatist” (Cook and Dalin xxxv). The plays (the Agamemnon, the Choephori
and the Eumenides), which make up the
trilogy deal with the concept of revenge, the record of crimes and their
inevitable punishment (judgment) in the house of Atreus. The legend of the
house of Atreus portrays the experiences of the characters and the relationship
of the Pelops family with the gods. The details of the Oresteia start with the struggle of the sons of Pelops, Atreus and
Thyestes, over Thyestes’ seduction of Atreus’ wife, and more importantly, over
the throne of their father. The series in the trilogy start before the action
of the story begins: Atreus has kept his brother Thyestes from the throne of
Argos and driven him out of the country. The conflict between two brothers is
not only a personal revenge but also a dynastic struggle and the results of the
action “extend to the whole society and into the dimension of the gods” (Porter
29).
In
the Agamemnon, the first play of the Oresteia, Thyestes’ son Aeghistus and
Atreus’ son Agamemnon face the dilemma of blood vengeance, central to the
action. Aeghistus, in order to avenge his father’s (Thyestes’) murder, seduces
Agamemnon’s wife Clytemnestra; they together murder King Agamemnon and take
hold of his throne. In the Choephori,
the second play of the trilogy, Orestes, the third generation continues the
dilemma and avenges his father, Agamemnon’s murder by murdering both Aeghistus
and Clytemnestra. The curse in the house of Atreus, that moral violence which
provokes further violence starts from before the beginning of the trilogy and
continues on in the first two plays. “Agamemnon is the sinner who meets his
doom, Clytemnestra is the sinner who continues the chain of evil; the
characterization of each and the relations between them are limited to what
this conception requires” (Leeming 70). The theme is that men of violence do
things which outrage justice, bring retribution and provoke further deeds of
violence. The situation as a whole and in broader sense is that the past is an
active factor as a living and controlling element in the present. The past is a
prediction of the entire set and the dramatic destiny of Orestes.
In
the third play, the Eumenides, the
cosmic powers engage in the action and hereditary blood vengeance is ended. In
Greek religion it is the Olympian gods, notably Phoibos Apollo and Pallas
Athena who are particularly associated with the practices of civic life.
Aeschylus solves the dilemma in favor of the social system and Athenian
democracy with an establishment of a new court. In the trial Apollo, the god of
law and order, uses a successful theory as an advocate of Orestes and supports
it by myth. He takes the responsibility of the murders of Orestes and promises
to protect his agent. In any case, there is an avenger who is not following
evil desires of his own. He is instead reluctant and is directed by the command
of Apollo in his awful deed of murdering Aeghistus and Clytemnestra. Apollo,
however, is barely able to keep his promise by himself against the Furies or
the Erinyes who, as prosecuting counsel, defend that the murder of a mother is
intolerable. In the Eumenides,
Aeschylus gives us the obvious dramatic excitement of the Furies and of the
trial. The presentation of the voting in the city-state becomes the pattern of
justice in the trial, and Aeschylus makes Athena a member of that jury which is
the prototype of all Athenian councils. Justice will be secured neither blindly
through further crime by Orestes, nor by Apollo’s divine plan of ceremonial
purification, but by an impartial trial. “Orestes takes refuge at Athena’s
altar, and the succession of thrilling scenes continues-Athena’s appearance,
the pleas, the institution of the trial, with accusation, defense, testimony,
voting and verdict” (Kitto 94). At the end of the play, the jury of citizens’
vote and Athena adjudicate to acquit Orestes who returns in triumph to Argos.
In
American drama, it is O’Neill, as one of the first modern dramatists, who
experimented with theatrical devices by using the works of major forefathers of
the Greek theatre such as Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. O’Neill’s
dramatic career is a series of experimental efforts to find a dramatic form
that could best convey his purposes and messages he wanted to share with his
public. When he started his career by working in amateur theatre companies, the
mainstream American dramatic tradition was of melodramatic and romantic strain.
After the Revolutionary eras and the Civil War, melodrama still continued its
existence especially with the perspectives of history and folk myth. O’Neill
was never satisfied with these dramatic forms and his experimentalism included
various approaches that ranged from melodrama, realism and expressionism to
adaptations of Greek and Renaissance stage conventions. The adaptation of the Oresteia to an American situation was,
in a way, a result of his experiment with the Greek dramatic form. O’Neill was
attracted to Greek tragedy because “it dealt with the ‘Mystery’ within a
conventional structure; it came out of a relatively homogenous culture and was
well supplied with legendary themes” (Porter 28). On the other hand, he tried
to convert the Greek myth into modern psychology in Mourning Becomes Electra.
O’Neill
borrowed both form and the content based on Greek myth in order to create
modern psychological drama. His purpose of adjusting the Greek text into his
own style stems from his interest in metaphysics and human psychology in
relation to social paradoxes. The social dimension of O’Neill’s action in Mourning Becomes Electra extends into
the Puritanism, in particular. In broader sense, however, it extends into the
spiritual evils of human relations and experiences.
Mourning Becomes Electra follows the general outlines of the Oresteian Trilogy. O’Neill borrows the three divisions of the Oresteia (changes them as Homecoming, The Hunted and The Haunted), and fits them into his plot structure. Before the action of the first play, Abe Mannon (Atreus) dispossesses his brother David Mannon (Thyestes) because of David’s seduction of, and subsequent marriage to, Marie Brantome whom Abe himself desired. Abe avenges his brother by ruining the family house, in which the seduction took place, and building a new one for himself. Abe Mannon’s hatred of his brother is the start of the fated family life of the Mannons. In Homecoming, the first play, David Mannon’s son Adam Brant (Aeghistus) seeks vengeance for his father’s death and seduces Christine Mannon (Clytemnestra) away from her husband, Ezra Mannon, Agamemnon of the play. The Mannon family awaits the return of Ezra Mannon from the Civil War. Christine who falls in love with Adam Brant kills her husband by giving him poison instead of a medicine on his return. But Christine’s daughter, Lavinia (Electra), herself in love with Adam, discovers the truth of this relationship. In The Hunted, Lavinia convinces her brother Orin (Orestes) about the reality of her father’s death and the nature of the relationship. Orin murders Brant and confronts his mother with the fact of Brant’s death, upon which she commits suicide. And the last play, The Haunted is about a judgment on Orin and Lavinia, the last Mannons of the play. Orin, however, can no longer live within the situation because of his role in the destruction of his mother. Thus, he concludes by killing himself and leaving Lavinia with her ‘Furies’.
O’Neill
models his work, Mourning Becomes Electra,
on Oresteian Trilogy by adapting the
plot structure into a modern context to convey his own messages to his
audience. Plot, in Aristotle’s terms, is the arrangement of the incidents. It
is also the structural principle, which defines the limits of the action within
the limits of the cultural pattern, and provides a form, which the dramatist
can use to present his ideology. O’Neill follows the sequence of events of the Oresteia especially in the first two
plays but the third play; The Haunted,
differs in some respects from Aeschylus’ model. As Patrick Roberts notes, “the
circumstances of blood-feud are remote enough from the modern audience’s
experience, especially in the context of a totally different age and culture”
(179). It is obvious that the complex of Hellenic and Christian values is in
sharp contrast. O’Neill changes the personalities and the motivations of the
characters in the action, and thus replaces the traditional Greek cultural
pattern of blood revenge and Olympian theology with modern psychology and
Puritanism. As the cultural situation changes, the significance of the
traditional pattern is modified. O’Neill modifies the myth in the Oresteia and provides a key to the
meaning of the action in Mourning Becomes
Electra. So, the tragic patterns in Aeschylus and O’Neill relate very
differently to the overall meaning of the plays in question.
The
first setting of the first part in Mourning
Becomes Electra is the exterior of the Mannon house, built in imitation of
Greek style with the white pillars in front, which creates a functional irony
for the New England setting with its Puritanical view. “The self-destructive
fatalism of Greek theatre, symbolized by the furies, is transmuted into a
Calvinist conscious which makes the self its own enemy” (Bigsby 80). Argos in
the Oresteia becomes the New England
of 1865 in the play and New England with notions of sin, guilt and punishment
is a perfect setting for such a trilogy. Through the external walls of the
‘tomb-like Mannon house’, we move to the interior and symbolically from the
social to the psychological, from the public to the private. O’Neill’s purpose
of changing the situation and the setting from Athens to New England is also
his search for expressing the human condition related to his own culture. The
main incident of the plot in Mourning
Becomes Electra is, then, given a name, Puritanism, as O’Neill visualizes
it.
The
heritage of Puritanism in Mourning
Becomes Electra is apparent in both the stage setting and in the attitudes
of the characters in the house of Mannon. Apart from Christine who ‘ain’t the
Mannon kind’ with her attitudes and possessions, the members of the Mannon
family as Anglo-Saxon, old settlers, successful merchants, in short, Puritans
“the elect” are preoccupied with death, the cold remainder of Calvinist dogma.
O’Neill’s attraction to a Greek drama which involves issues of life and death
in relation to mythical and spiritual contexts of that society finds expression
in Mourning Becomes Electra. Death
instinct becomes the impulsion and dramatic structure of both plays. In
Olympian theology, death is linked with social convention; moreover it is an
expression of the will of the gods. In Puritanism, redemption is not possible
for the sinner; once damned (fallen from grace), neither society nor God can
help the sinner. The reprobate is isolated forever. O’Neill’s concern with death
in the play stems from the criticism of the view of death in Puritanism. His
intention is to present and criticize the concept of death in Puritan theology.
Ezra Mannon:.Death made me
think of life. Before that, life had only made me think of death! … That’s
always been the Mannon’s way of thinking. They went to the white meetinghouse
on Sabbaths and meditated on death. Life was a dying. Being born was starting
to die. Death was being born. That white meetinghouse. It stuck in my
mind-clean-scrubbed and white-washed-a temple of death! (O’Neill 92).
The Mannons think in Puritan categories and act with a Puritan mentality. Along with the preoccupation with death, one of the other dominant symbols of the Mannon’s Puritanism is their attitude toward love and sex. The problem of love and sex starts even before the beginning of the play with Abe Mannon’s hatred of his brother, David Mannon when he declared his secret love affair with Marie Brantome. It is also the start of the family curse and continues in different ways throughout the play, because their Puritan conscience dominates the romantic aspect of their characters in their static world. Though Ezra and Christine’s marriage is based on romance, it soon turns into disgust, as Ezra Mannon expresses his dissatisfaction:
Ezra: What are bodies to me? …Ashes to ashes, dirt to dirt!
Is that your notion of love? Do you think I married a body? …You made me appear a lustful beast in my own eyes! -as you’ve
done since our first marriage night (O’Neill 102).
Puritans
were the strict guardians of public morality, and sexual indulgence was one of
the most degrading sins among them. O’Neill’s observation, however, is that
they were associated with a repressive attitude towards sexual impulses. In Mourning Becomes Electra, a dominant
symbol of love is degenerated by Puritan values into lust. Lavinia who feels a
sort of romance to Captain Brant tries her best not to reflect her feelings and
declares that she ‘hates love’. Physical love is dirty and degrading in Puritan
category. In this sense, it is impossible to deny Freudian psychology to
motivate the action in the play, especially in the areas on the sex drive to
life adjustment, the dangers of repression and more importantly on the ‘Oedipus
complex’ that every male is attracted to the woman who resembles his mother and
every female desires a man who resembles her father. Though Freudian hypothesis
explains the complex of attitudes of Orin and Lavinia, as directed at parents
of the opposite sex, it is not the intention of this article to evaluate
Freudianism of the play. So, apart from implied ‘oedipal fantasies’ (Orin’s
love for his mother, further transmuted to his sister, Lavinia) and ‘electra
complex’ (Lavinia’s love for her father), Christine’s sense of love for Brant and
Lavinia’s secret love for him all end up with self-destruction and deaths.
Love, as the only life force, turns out to be the agent of death rather than a
cure for the Mannons. The values in the Mannon family are so distorted that
there is a sexual and psychological deformity, which is the mark of their
Puritan heritage, as O’Neill’s interpretation of Puritanism.
O’Neill
interprets his community experience making use of the mythic and ritualistic
nature of Greek drama. In other words, he replaces the cultural components of
Athenians (as the Olympian dimension and supernatural powers), which are
contradictory to twentieth century American way of thinking, with Puritanism,
Anglo-Saxon non-conformism and Freudian psychology, the heritage of Western
culture. Though the tragic patterns differ considerably from Athenians to New
Englanders, their outlines persist in the heritage of Western culture which
offers both conventional imagery and motifs to Western drama,
such as revenge, the problem of evil, the significance of light and darkness
and the Furies.
The
Furies stand either as realities or as phantoms (subconscious, hallucinations);
they are so intense that both plays revolve around them. In fact, the Furies
(just as the past guilt) in both plays are at the heart of a complex humanity.
In Aeschylus, the Furies first appear as expression of Orestes’ guilty
conscience; they are real only to him: “I know you do not see these beings; but
I see them; I am lased and driven! I can’t bear it! I must escape!”(Aeschylus
143). In the Eumenides, they act as
prosecuting counsel in Orestes’ trial and finally become guardians of the
Athenian heritage. Thus, Hellenic culture emerges out of the darkness of the
past, not by denying the Furies but by reconciliation with them. O’Neill
replaces these mythical figures with hallucinations and representations of
certain unconscious fantasies. They are presented as his analysis of the
spiritual ills of the modern Western heritage and as disorders of the social
system. It would be difficult, however, to suppose that social disorders would
not be paralleled by disorders of a culture, at large.
O’Neill incorporates the cultural situation of his community into the material he uses in his play, just as Aeschylus draws on materials that are part of his audience’s cultural heritage. The tragedy of the Mannons involves Puritan heritage and Freudian psychology; relatively opposing forces melt into a unity and each supplies motivation for the action. The tragedy of Pelops involves war and politics as well as a domestic triangle and these aspects are unified in the same way: “... the successive murders of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra and her lover, the madness of Orestes are seen in the context of wider issues of war, politics and religion” (Roberts 152). Compared to the realities of the Western world, Aeschylus had, at least, the possibility to convey the cruelty and injustices to the Athenian audience. As Steiner notes: “The landscape of terror was entirely familiar to the audience, and this familiarity was both a spur and a limit to the poet’s personal invention” (319). The prominent difference in both plays stems from the uses of cultural components of respective communities, in particular.
The difference of the resolution of both Aeschylus’ and O’Neill’s versions makes the cultural determinants clear. The subjects of both plays are on “judgment”. Aeschylus’ resolution well fits into the cultural attitudes and working of fifth century Athenian mind. In this respect, the Oresteia involves a hero in the sense of a member of a larger group rather than a separable being. “In concluding movement of the drama, the hero is purged of all guilt and “reborn”, a new society is initiated and the cosmos is ordered on all levels” (Porter 31). It is mainly because of this unique process that the hero (mostly presented as a part of particular ruling family who has a social importance in the shared substance of myth) is a character of necessity and is not isolated altogether. “What the form then embodies is not an isolable metaphysical stance, rooted in individual experience, but a shared and indeed collective experience, at once and indistinguishably metaphysical and social, which is yet capable of great tension and subtlety…” (Williams 18). In Athenian theological process, suffering leads to a new life for the individual and community.
O’Neill,
however, concludes with a self-judgment by the two remaining members of the
house of Mannon, Lavinia who punishes herself with a living death, and Orin who
commits suicide. Though order, form and meaning are restored in the Oresteia at the end, Mannons are
subjected to punishment and death in Mourning
Becomes Electra, because Puritanism does not provide a way of purging
guilt. This guilt cannot even be confessed or publicly admitted. There is no
salvation, escape or possibility of regeneration within the Puritan system. At
the end, the crimes progressively isolate Mannons from the community, whereas
Orestes’ crime does not. O’Neill’s criticism of Puritan society is that it is an
arbitrary institution which leads the individuals to isolation and
self-destruction. Puritan society does nothing to prevent the individuals from
destroying each other, and when the isolated persons meet, in so-called
relationships, their exchanges are inevitably forms of struggle.
The
Oresteia conveys a relationship
between the individual and society. The solution to Orestes’ dilemma is rooted
in the history of the Athenian nation. The Oresteia
includes ‘rebirth’ in which the hero is purified by both society and the gods.
Thus, Orestes’ purgation is sanctioned by the gods, because his guilt is more
than a social convention; it is an expression of the will of gods. It is his
fate that Orestes must murder his mother to avenge his father. Inner doubts and
hesitations will threaten him with a divine (Apollo’s) punishment if he
neglects his duty. This ideology is active in justifying Orestes himself to
Clytemnestra, “It will be your own hand that strikes you dead, not mine”
(Aeschylus 137).
In Mourning
Becomes Electra, on the other hand, the crimes are rooted in the Puritan
heritage and in the characters’ subconscious. So, the Mannons shut up inside
themselves and, for them, there is no escape from complex or heritage. Orin’s
suicide, for instance, is the judgment leveled by his Oedipal complex. He
cannot face life with the burden of causing his mother’s death. Orin commits
suicide mainly because of an active madness of bloodguilt for the death of his
mother. As for Lavinia, it is the judgment of her Puritan heritage and a
struggle with her past. She accepts her fate with Puritan spirit and locks
herself in the Mannon house to live with ghosts of the past in expiation for
all the crimes. As Lavinia finally returns to the house of Mannon at the end of
the play and shuts herself off from the world, she moves to an encounter with
the past, as O’Neill indicated, “... (Man’s) struggle used to be with gods, but
is now with himself, his own past…” (111). Lavinia’s attempt to escape from the
ghosts of the past (avenging Furies) and, in a way, her inevitable fate is no
less tragic than those who struggle with the gods in Greek mythology. At the
end of the play she devotes herself not to the gods, but to self-punishment:
And
there is 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 worse act of justice than death or
prison! I’ll never go out or see anyone! I’ll have shutters nailed close so no
sunlight can ever get in. I’ll live alone with the dead, and keep their secrets,
and let them hound me, until the curse is paid out, and the last Mannon is let
die! (O’Neill 287-88)
In
Mourning Becomes Electra, O’Neill
deals with the traditions, ideals, attitudes and values of a part of his own
community and he uses Greek myth in order to shape the plot and character
types. O’Neill sees a rich source of material in ancient myth for his study of
human nature. He also attempts to create a mythicizing procedure by elevating
the status of the Mannon family to a classical model in regard to universally
shared human feelings and emotions such as ambition, hatred, revenge, love,
etc. Yet, the play holds references, marking the American Puritanism in 1865,
which, unlike the ancient Greek idea of communally shared guilt and redemption,
charges the individual with sin and punishment. This aspect of the play is
neither the replica of an ancient model nor other popular or popularized
American myths, but a myth original in itself fulfilling the O’Neillean
function of tragedy to warn the common public about the evils of the
non-questioning attitude to what is seemingly wrong and right. Consequently,
the working of the myths in overall meaning of both plays, differs in terms of
cultural determinants of Athenians and New Englanders, as seen in Aeschylus’
and O’Neill’s vision and interpretation.
Works Cited
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Marshal and Pat Cassady. Theater and
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Albert and Edwin Dolin. Eds. Greek
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Jan. The Eating of the Gods: An Interpretation
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H.D.F. Greek Tragedy. New York:
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