Term
The novel is divided into four Parts: Wave, Argil and Mold, Plant and Phantom, and Wake. Within these parts are Chorus sections, consisting of play-like dialogue between characters, as well as Time Machine sections, which give brief histories and flashbacks of individual characters’ lives.
The story takes place on Anopopei, a fictional island somewhere in the South Pacific. American forces are faced with a campaign to drive out the Japanese so that Americans can advance into the Philippines. The novel itself focuses on the experiences of one platoon, overseen by Lieutenant Hearn and General Cummings. Although Mailer does not write about the significance or details of the campaign, it is implied that this platoon, like all platoons in the Army, is simply just obeying orders, uncertain what those orders might be. |
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Definition
| Norman Mailer - The Naked and the Dead |
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| he novel begins with Michael K, a poor man with a cleft lip who has spent his childhood in institutions and works as a gardener in Cape Town. Michael tends to his mother who works as a domestic servant to a wealthy family. The country descends into civil war and martial law is imposed, and Michael's mother becomes very sick. Michael decides to quit his job and escape the city to return his mother to her birthplace, which she says was Prince Albert. |
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| J M Coetzee - Life and Times of Michael K |
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Term
| David Lurie is a South African professor of English who loses everything: his reputation, his job, his peace of mind, his dreams of artistic success, and finally even his ability to protect his own daughter. He is twice-divorced and dissatisfied with his job as a 'communications' lecturer, teaching one class in romantic literature at a technical university in Cape Town in post-apartheid South Africa. Lurie's sexual activities are all inherently risky. Before the sexual affair that will ruin him, he becomes attached to a prostitute and attempts to have a romantic relationship with her (despite her having a family), which she rebuffs. He then seduces a secretary at his university, only to completely ignore her afterwards. His "disgrace" comes when he seduces one of his more vulnerable students, a girl named Melanie Isaacs, plying her with alcohol and later, when she stops attending his class, falsifying her grades. |
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| As an English teacher at Albert Mission College, Krishna has led a mundane and monotonous lifestyle comparable to that of a cow, but this life of his took a turn when his wife, Susila, and their child, Leela, come to live with him. With their welfare on his hands, Krishna learns to be a proper husband and learns how to accept the responsibility of taking care of his family. He felt that his life had comparatively improved, as he understood that there's more meaning to life than to just teaching in the college. However, on the day when they went in search of a new house, Susila contracts typhoid after visiting a dirty lavatory, keeping her in bed for weeks. Throughout the entire course of her illness, Krishna constantly tries to keep an optimistic view about Susila's illness, keeping his hopes up by thinking that her illness would soon be cured. However, Susila eventually succumbs and passes away. Krishna, destroyed by her loss, has suicidal thoughts but gives them up for the sake of his daughter, Leela. He leads his life as a lost and miserable person after her death, but after he receives a letter from a stranger who indicates that Susila has been in contact with him and that she wants to communicate with Krishna, he becomes more collected and cheerful. |
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| R K Narayan - The English Teacher |
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Mohun Biswas is born in rural Trinidad to parents of Indian origin. His birth was considered inauspicious as he is born "in the wrong way" and with an extra finger. A pandit prophesies that the newborn child "will be a lecher and a spendthrift. Possibly a liar as well", and that he will "eat up his mother and father". The pandit advises that the boy be kept "away from trees and water. Particularly water". A few years later, Mohun leads a neighbour's calf, which he is tending, to a stream. The boy, who has never seen water "in its natural form", becomes distracted and allows the calf to wander off. Mohun then hides in fear of punishment. His father, believing his son to be in the water, drowns in an attempt to save him, thus in part fulfilling the pandit's prophecy. This leads to the dissolution of the family. Mohun's sister is sent to live with a wealthy aunt and uncle, Tara and Ajodha. Mohun, his mother, and two older brothers go to live with other relatives.
The boy is withdrawn prematurely from school and apprenticed to a pandit, but is cast out on bad terms. Ajodha then puts him in the care of his alcoholic and abusive brother Bhandat, an arrangement which also ends badly. Finally, the young Mr Biswas decides to make his own fortune. He encounters a friend from his school days who helps him get into the business of sign-writing. While on the job, Mr Biswas attempts to romance a client's daughter but his advances are misinterpreted as a wedding proposal. He is drawn into a marriage which he does not have the nerve to stop and becomes a member of the Tulsi household.
Mr Biswas becomes very unhappy with his wife Shama and her overbearing family. The Tulsis (and the big decaying house where they live) represent the communal way of life which is traditional throughout Africa and Asia. Mr Biswas is offered a place in this cosmos, a subordinate place to be sure, but a place that is guaranteed and from which advancement is possible. But Mr Biswas wants more. He is, by instinct, a modern man. He wants to be the author of his own life. That is an aspiration with which Tulsis cannot deal, and their decaying world conspires to drag him down.[4] Despite his poor education, Mr Biswas becomes a journalist, has four children with Shama, and attempts several times to build a house that he can call his own, a house which will symbolize his independence. |
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Definition
| V S Naipaul - A House for Mr Biswas |
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Term
| It tells the story of Elizabeth Hunter, the powerful matriarch of her family, who still maintains a destructive iron grip on those who come to farewell her in her final moments upon her deathbed. |
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Definition
| Patrick White - The Eye of the Storm |
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Term
| The novel's protagonist, Iris Chase, and her sister Laura, grow up well-off but motherless in a small town in Southern Ontario. As an old woman, Iris recalls the events and relationships of her childhood, youth and middle age, including her unhappy marriage to Toronto businessman Richard Griffen. The book includes a novel within a novel, a roman à clef attributed to Laura but published by Iris. It is about Alex Thomas, a politically radical author of pulp science fiction who has an ambiguous relationship with the sisters. That embedded story itself contains a third tale, the eponymous ..., a science fiction story told by Alex's fictional counterpart to the second novel's protagonist, believed to be Laura's fictional counterpart. |
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Definition
| Margaret Atwood - The Blind Assassin |
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Term
| The story revolves around four characters: Dr. Aziz, his British friend Mr. Cyril Fielding, Mrs. Moore, and Miss Adela Quested. During a trip to the Marabar Caves (modelled on the Barabar Caves of Bihar),[6] Adela thinks she finds herself alone with Dr. Aziz in one of the caves (when in fact he is in an entirely different cave), and subsequently panics and flees; it is assumed that Dr. Aziz has attempted to assault her. Aziz's trial, and its run-up and aftermath, bring to a boil the common racial tensions and prejudices between Indians and the British who rule India. |
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Definition
| E. M. Forster - A Passage to India |
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Term
| The novel follows a young artist from the Yale School of Fine Arts named Tod Hackett. who has been hired by a Hollywood studio to do scenic design and painting. While he works he plans an important painting to be called "The Burning of Los Angeles," a portrayal of the chaotic and fiery holocaust which will destroy the city. While the cast of characters Tod befriends are a conglomerate of Hollywood stereotypes, his greater discovery is a part of society whose "eyes filled with hatred," and "had come to California to die."[1] This undercurrent of society captures the despair of Americans who worked and saved their entire lives only to realize, too late, that the American dream was more illusive than they imagine. Their anger boils into rage, and the craze over the latest Hollywood premier erupts violently into mob rule and absolute chaos. |
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Definition
| Nathanael West - The Day of the Locust |
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| Published in 1924, not long after the canonization of Joan of Arc by the Roman Catholic Church, the play dramatises what is known of her life based on the substantial records of her trial. Shaw studied the transcripts and decided that the concerned people acted in good faith according to their beliefs. He wrote in his preface to the play: |
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Definition
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| The story mixes pathos and humour while illustrating the dilemmas of immigrants and their offspring as they are confronted by a new, different society. Contrasted in the setting of a different host culture, disparate aspects of non-British cultures emerge. Middle-and working-class British cultures are also satirised through the characters of the Chalfens and Archie. |
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Definition
| Zadie Smith - White Teeth |
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Term
A 1928 play by George Bernard Shaw. It is satirical comedy about several political philosophies which are expounded by the characters, often in lengthy monologues. The plot follows the fictional English King Magnus as he spars with, and ultimately outwits, Prime Minister Proteus and his cabinet, who seek to strip the monarchy of its remaining political influence. Shaw's preface describes the play as:
...a comedy in which a King defeats an attempt by his popularly elected Prime Minister to deprive him of the right to influence public opinion through the press and the platform: in short, to reduce him to a cipher. The King's reply is that rather than be a cipher he will abandon his throne and take his obviously very rosy chance of becoming a popularly elected Prime Minister himself. |
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Definition
| G B Shaw - The Apple Cart |
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| A romantic comedy in three acts, in verse, it is set in the Middle Ages. It reflects the world's "exhaustion and despair" following World War II, with a war-weary soldier who wants to die, and an accused witch who wants to live. In form, it resembles Shakespeare's pastoral comedies. |
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Definition
| Christopher Fry - The Lady's not for Burning |
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| a three-act play written by Irish playwright ... and first performed at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, on 26 January 1907 It is set in Michael James Flaherty's public house in County Mayo (on the west coast of Ireland) during the early 1900s. It tells the story of Christy Mahon, a young man running away from his farm, claiming he killed his father. The locals are more interested in vicariously enjoying his story than in condemning the immorality of his murderous deed, and in fact, Christy's tale captures the romantic attention of the bar-maid Pegeen Mike, the daughter of Flaherty. The play is best known for its use of the poetic, evocative language of Hiberno-English, heavily influenced by the Irish language, as Synge celebrates the lyrical speech of the peasant Irish. |
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Definition
| John Synge - The Playboy of the Western World |
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Term
| A controversial play portraying working classes of Dublin and their engagement in the struggle for independence. |
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Definition
| Sean O'Casey - The Plough and the Stars |
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| often regarded to be one of the finest American plays of the 20th century. The play concerns the Tyrone family – including parents James and Mary and their sons Edmund and Jamie. Mary is addicted to drugs and Edmund is ill with tuberculosis. The "Long Day" refers to the setting of the play, which takes place during one day. The play is semi-autobiographical. |
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Definition
| Eugene O'Neill - Long Day's Journey into Night |
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| [This play] is about Stanley Webber, an erstwhile piano player in his 30s, who lives in a rundown boarding house, run by Meg and Petey Boles, in an English seaside town, "probably on the south coast, not too far from London".[11][12] Two sinister strangers, Goldberg and McCann, who arrive supposedly on his birthday and who appear to have come looking for him, turn Stanley's apparently innocuous birthday party organised by Meg into a nightmare. |
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Definition
| Harold Pinter - The Birthday Party |
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Term
| The play tells the story of Michael Ransom, a climber, who, against his better judgement, accepts the offer of the British press and government to sponsor an expedition to the peak of F6, a mountain on the border of a British colony and a colony of the fictional country of Ostnia. Ransom is destroyed by his haste to complete the expedition ahead of the Ostnian climbers. |
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Definition
| W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood - The Ascent of F6 |
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Term
| The plot centers on Nina Leeds, the daughter of a classics professor at a college in New England, who is devastated when her adored fiancé is killed in World War I, before they have a chance to consummate their passion. Ignoring the unconditional love of the novelist Charles Marsden, Nina embarks on a series of sordid affairs before determining to marry an amiable fool, Sam Evans. While Nina is pregnant with Sam's child, she learns a horrifying secret known only to Sam's mother: insanity runs in the Evans family and could be inherited by any child of Sam's. Realizing that a child is essential to her own and to Sam's happiness, Nina decides on a "scientific" solution. She will abort Sam's child and conceive a child with the physician Ned Darrell, letting Sam believe that it is his. The plan backfires when Nina and Ned's intimacy leads to their falling passionately in love. Twenty years later, Sam and Nina's son Gordon Evans is approaching manhood, with only Nina and Ned aware of the boy's true parentage. In the final act, Sam dies of a stroke before he can learn the truth. This leaves Nina free to marry Ned Darrell, but she declines to do so, choosing instead to marry the long-suffering Charlie Marsden, who proclaims that he now has "all the luck at last." |
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Definition
| Eugene O'Neill - Strange Interlude |
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An expressionist play by Eugene O'Neill about a brutish, unthinking laborer known as Yank as he searches for a sense of belonging in a world controlled by the rich. At first Yank feels secure as he stokes the engines of an oceanliner, and is highly confident in his physical power over the ship's engines.
However, when the weak but rich daughter of an industrialist in the steel business refers to him as a "filthy beast," Yank undergoes a crisis of identity. He leaves the ship and wanders into Manhattan, only to find he does not belong anywhere—neither with the socialites on Fifth Avenue, nor with the labor organizers on the waterfront. |
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Definition
| Eugene O'Neill - The Hairy Ape |
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Term
Walter and Ruth Younger, their son Travis, along with Walter's mother Lena (Mama) and Walter's sister Beneatha, live in poverty in a dilapidated two-bedroom apartment on Chicago's south side. Walter is barely making a living as a limousine driver. Though Ruth is content with their lot, Walter is not and desperately wishes to become wealthy. His plan is to invest in a liquor store in partnership with Willy and Bobo, street-smart acquaintances of Walter's.
At the beginning of the play, Walter and Beneatha's father has recently died, and Mama is waiting for a life insurance check for $10,000. Walter has a sense of entitlement to the money, but Mama has religious objections to alcohol and Beneatha has to remind him it is Mama's call how to spend it. Eventually Mama puts some of the money down on a new house, choosing an all-white neighborhood over a black one for the practical reason that it happens to be much cheaper. Later she relents and gives the rest of the money to Walter to invest with the provision that he reserve $3,000 for Beneatha's education. Walter passes the money on to Willy's naive sidekick Bobo, who gives it to Willy, who absconds with it, depriving Walter and Beneatha of their dreams, though not the Youngers of their new home. Meanwhile, Karl Lindner, a white representative of the neighborhood they plan to move to, makes a generous offer to buy them out. He wishes to avoid neighborhood tensions over interracial population, which to the three women's horror Walter prepares to accept as a solution to their financial setback. Lena says that while money was something they try to work for, they should never take it if it was a person's way of telling them they weren't fit to walk the same earth as them. |
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Definition
| Lorraine Hansberry - A Raisin in the Sun |
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This one-act play concerns two characters, Peter and Jerry, who meet on a park bench in New York City's Central Park. Peter is a middle-class publishing executive with a wife, two daughters, two cats and two parakeets. Jerry is an isolated and disheartened man, desperate to have a meaningful conversation with another human being. He intrudes on Peter’s peaceful state by interrogating him and forcing him to listen to stories about his life, and the reason behind his visit to the zoo. The action is linear, unfolding in front of the audience in “real time”. The elements of ironic humor and unrelenting dramatic suspense are brought to a climax when Jerry brings his victim down to his own savage level.
Eventually, Peter has had enough of his strange companion and tries to leave. Jerry begins pushing Peter off the bench and challenges him to fight for his territory. Unexpectedly, Jerry pulls a knife on Peter, and then drops it as initiative for Peter to grab. When Peter holds the knife defensively, Jerry charges him and impales himself on the knife. Bleeding on the park bench, Jerry finishes his zoo story by bringing it into the immediate present: "Could I have planned all this. No... no, I couldn't have. But I think I did." Horrified, Peter runs away from Jerry, whose dying words, "Oh...my...God", are a combination of scornful mimicry and supplication. |
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Definition
| Edward Albee - The Zoo Story |
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| a 1962 play by Edward Albee. It examines the breakdown of the marriage of a middle-aged couple, Martha and George. Late one evening, after a university faculty party, they receive an unwitting younger couple, Nick and Honey, as guests, and draw them into their bitter and frustrated relationship. |
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Definition
| Edward Albee - Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf? |
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| a play by David Mamet that won the Pulitzer Prize in 1984. The play shows parts of two days in the lives of four desperate Chicago real estate agents who are prepared to engage in any number of unethical, illegal acts—from lies and flattery to bribery, threats, intimidation and burglary—to sell undesirable real estate to unwitting prospective buyers. It is based on Mamet's experience having previously worked in a similar office. |
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Definition
| David Mamet - Glengary Glenn Ross |
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| Primarily of the Bildungsroman genre, [this book] follows the emotions and experiences of its eponymous heroine, including her growth to adulthood and her love for Mr. Rochester, the Byronic master of fictitious Thornfield Hall. In its internalisation of the action—the focus is on the gradual unfolding of Jane's moral and spiritual sensibility, and all the events are coloured by a heightened intensity that was previously the domain of poetry—[this book] revolutionised the art of fiction. Its author has been called the 'first historian of the private consciousness' and the literary ancestor of writers like Joyce and Proust. The novel contains elements of social criticism, with a strong sense of morality at its core, but is nonetheless a novel many consider ahead of its time given the individualistic character of the eponymous protagonist and the novel's exploration of classism, sexuality, religion, and proto-feminism. |
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Definition
| Charlotte Bronte - Jane Eyre |
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| The novel follows two modern-day academics as they research the paper trail around the previously unknown love life between famous fictional poets, Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte. [the book] is set both in the present day and the Victorian era, pointing out the differences between the two time periods, and satirizing such things as modern academia and mating rituals. The structure of the novel incorporates many different styles, including fictional diary entries, letters and poetry, and uses these styles and other devices to explore the postmodern concerns of the authority of textual narratives. The title Possession highlights many of the major themes in the novel: questions of ownership and independence between lovers; the practice of collecting historically significant cultural artifacts; and the possession that biographers feel toward their subjects. |
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Definition
| A. S. Byatt - Possession: A Romance |
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Term
The novel tells the story of Jude Fawley, who lives in a village in southern England (part of Hardy's fictional county of Wessex), who yearns to be a scholar at "Christminster", a city modelled on Oxford. As a youth, Jude teaches himself Classical Greek and Latin in his spare time, while working first in his great-aunt's bakery, with the hope of entering university. But before he can try to do this the naïve Jude is seduced by Arabella Donn, a rather coarse and superficial local girl who traps him into marriage by pretending to be pregnant. The marriage is a failure, and they separate by mutual agreement, and Arabella later emigrates to Australia, where she enters into a bigamous marriage. By this time, Jude has abandoned his classical studies.
After Arabella leaves him, Jude moves to Christminster and supports himself as a mason while studying alone, hoping to be able to enter the university later. There, he meets and falls in love with his free-spirited cousin, Sue Bridehead. But, shortly after this, Jude introduces Sue to his former schoolteacher, Mr. Phillotson, whom she eventually marries. However, she soon regrets this, because in addition to being in love with Jude, she is physically disgusted by her husband, and, apparently, by sex in general. Sue soon leaves Phillotson for Jude. Because of the scandal Phillotson has to give up his career as a schoolmaster.
Sue and Jude spend some time living together without any sexual relationship, because of Sue's dislike both of sex and the institution of marriage. Soon after, Arabella reappears and this complicates matters. But Arabella and Jude divorce and she legally marries her bigamous husband, and Sue also is divorced. However, following this, Arabella reveals that she had a child of Jude's, eight months after they separated, and subsequently sends this child to his father. He is named Jude and nicknamed "Little Father Time" because of his intense seriousness and moroseness.
Jude eventually convinces Sue to sleep with him and, over the years, they have two children together and expect the third. But Jude and Sue are socially ostracised for living together unmarried, especially after the children are born. Jude's employers dismiss him because of the illicit relationship, and the family is forced into a nomadic lifestyle, moving from town to town across Wessex seeking employment and housing before eventually returning to Christminster. Their socially troubled boy, "Little Father Time", comes to believe that he and his half-siblings are the source of the family's woes. The morning after their arrival in Christminster, he murders Sue's two children and commits suicide by hanging. He leaves behind a note that simply reads, "Done because we are too menny."[1][2] Shortly thereafter, Sue has a miscarriage.
Photochrom of the High Street, 1890–1900
Beside herself with grief and blaming herself for "Little Father Time"'s actions, Sue turns to the church that she has rebelled against and comes to believe that the children's deaths were divine retribution for her relationship with Jude. Although horrified at the thought of resuming her marriage with Phillotson, she becomes convinced that, for religious reasons, she should never have left him. Arabella discovers Sue's feelings and informs Phillotson, who soon proposes they remarry. This results in Sue leaving Jude once again for Phillotson. Jude is devastated and remarries Arabella after she plies him with alcohol to once again trick him into marriage.
After one final, desperate visit to Sue in freezing weather, Jude becomes seriously ill and dies within the year. It is revealed that Sue has grown "staid and worn" with Phillotson. Arabella fails to mourn Jude's passing, instead setting the stage to ensnare her next suitor.
The events of Jude the Obscure occur over a 19-year period, but no dates are specifically given in the novel.[note 1] Aged 11 at the beginning of the novel, by the time of his death, Jude seems much older than his thirty years, for he has experienced so much disappointment and grief in his total life experience. It would seem that his burdens exceeded his sheer ability to survive, much less to triumph. |
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Definition
| Thomas Hardy - Jude the Obscure |
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Term
Joe Lampton, recently demobilised from the armed forces of late 1940s Britain, is starting in a new job with the Municipal Treasury in the town of Warley. He was a POW who spent his captivity studying to pass his accountancy examinations. He is an orphan whose parents were killed in an air raid against his home town. He is determined to make something of himself, targeting a high-paid job with a thousand a year salary. He notices, shortly after arriving, a young man with an expensive car and a pretty girl friend and he realises that this lifestyle and appearance is what he aspires to. The book centres on Joe's efforts to secure a future he can take pride in.
In Warley, he takes lodgings with the Thompsons, a middle-class couple living in the better part of town, known locally as "T'top". Lampton is delighted to find himself already socially advantaged by taking, quite literally, a "Room at the top", and this serves as a metaphor for his ambition to better himself and to leave behind any vestige of his former life and acquaintances, many of whom he characterises as "zombies", lacking any trace of genuine life and character. Everything about Warley is an improvement on his former life in Dufton. The Thompsons introduce him to the local amateur dramatic society, which is in need of new faces, and there he meets Susan Brown, the only daughter of a very successful local businessman. He also meets the apparently cold and standoffish Alice Aisgill, who plays many of the leading lady parts. Alice and Joe are drawn together through intelligent conversation, and their relationship soon becomes a highly rewarding sexual one, in spite of what Alice perceives to be a significant age difference.
Although supposedly betrothed to Jack Wales, the dashing scion of a wealthy local family, the naive and childish Susan allows Joe to woo her; meanwhile, Joe and Alice develop their relationship through clandestine sex in a borrowed apartment. Joe has a way with words, and convinces Alice of his affections for her - consolidating this during a stolen few days away in a country cottage, during which Alice declares her undying commitment to Lampton; in the meantime, Joe's silver tongue and persistence also enable him to seduce Susan, who becomes pregnant. This is part of Joe's plan; Joe loves Alice, but wants to marry Susan so as to achieve his social ambitions, and to demonstrate that he can outdo Wales in his battle for the girl's affections; people are becoming aware of the relationship with Alice, and exposure threatens his future (it would force him to leave town), so Joe is not averse when Susan's father insists on their immediate marriage, sweetening the offer with a "thousand a year " job, on condition that he drop Alice for good. Alice, distraught at the break-up, is found severely injured after a drunken car crash near where she and Joe first consummated their love, and dies shortly afterwards.
Room at the Top concludes with Joe drunkenly attempting to cope with remorse over Alice’s death and his successful scheme to marry upwards. He is reassured that nobody blames him for Alice's death - but he knows this is wrong, and the book closes with him aware of his conscience, forced to live with his guilt and his responsibility for what has happened. |
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Definition
| John Braine - Room at the Top |
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Term
| The play is a two-act tragicomedy that ridicules Hunter's political enemies with lightly veiled characters corresponding to many important political figures in early New York, including the Rev. William Vesey, Adolphe Philipse, Thomas Smithfield, and Lewis Morris. The story takes place in a hidden room in the basement of the governor's mansion where a secret society meets plotting to take over the colony. Several characters, led by Adolphe Philipse, are duped into dressing like women to seduce the governor general and kidnap him. When they are found out, the seditious plotters are exposed and run out of town. |
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Definition
| Robert Hunter - Androboros |
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Term
| a 1923 play by Elmer Rice; it has been called "... a landmark of American Expressionism, reflecting the growing interest in this highly subjective and nonrealistic form of modern drama."[1] The author of this play takes us through Mr. Zero’s trial, execution, excursion and arrest going into the afterlife. During the whole series of this episodic journey Mr. Zero is surprisingly oblivious to his deepest needs, wants and desires. The story focuses on Mr. Zero, an accountant at a large, faceless company. After 25 years at his job, he discovers that he will be replaced by an adding machine. In anger and pain, he snaps and kills his boss. Mr. Zero is then tried for murder, is found guilty and hanged. He wakes up in a heaven-like setting known as the "Elysian Fields." Mr. Zero meets a man named Shrdlu, then begins to operate an adding machine until Lieutenant Charles (Louis Calvert), the boss of the Elysian Fields, comes to tell Zero that he is a waste of space and his soul is going to be sent back to the earth to be reused. The play ends with Zero following a very attractive girl named Hope (who may not actually exist) off stage. |
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Definition
| Elmer Rice - The Adding Machine |
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Term
An American play in the tradition of the English Restoration comedies of the seventeenth century; it takes its cue from Sheridan's The School for Scandal, a British comedy of manners that had revived that tradition a decade before. Royall uses the form to satirize Americans who follow British fashions and indulge in 'British vices'. Thus, the play is often concerned with portraying the contrast between European and American culture. It was the first American Comedy to receive production from a professional acting company.
The play marks the first comedy written by an American citizen that was professionally produced.[1] The play is most remembered for its prologue: an evaluation of home-made versus foreign goods and ideas and offers the play's most prominent part, along with the introduction of the Yankee character. |
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Definition
| Royall Tyler - The Contrast |
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Term
The play is remarkable because many critics consider it to be the first "modern" drama, a play that focused more on the psychological complexities of its characters and on the role of social determinism the characters' lives than on dramatic or melodramatic retellings.
n Act I, the audience meets Philip Fleming, manager of an inherited mill that's facing some financial troubles. He speaks with Joe Fletcher, a street peddler, and talks about his new wife, Margaret, and their new baby, Lucy. Fletcher leaves and Doctor Larkin enters and informs Fleming that he has just delivered a baby to a young immigrant woman named Lena Schmidt, and he has discovered that Fleming is the father. He advises Fleming to go to Lena. Meanwhile, Margaret is at home with baby Lucy, talking to the nursemaid, Maria Bindley. Maria reveals that her sister, Lena, has been despondent since the birth of her child, though Maria does not know who the father is.
In Act II, Doctor Larkin lectures Margaret and Philip separately about how additional stress will worsen Margaret's glaucoma. Margaret talks to Maria and agrees to go and visit her sister, hoping it will cheer her.
In Act III, Margaret visits the Bindley/Schmidt household, only to find that Lena has just died after writing a letter. Margaret compels Maria to read her the letter, which reveals that Philip was the father of Lena's baby. After sending everyone away, including sending a child to bring her husband to the house, she is left alone with the howling child and begins to nurse.
Act IV opens with a now-blind Margaret at home. Philip has been missing for seven days, but returns home to find that Margaret has taken in his illegitimate son. She tells him "the wife-heart has gone out of me," but also says she will stand by him as he tries to rebuild himself in business and reputation around the town. |
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Definition
| James Herne - Margaret Fleming |
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Term
| . Its title—not, perhaps, a very happy one—is explained in this saying of one of the characters: "Marry for whim and leave the rest to the divorce court—that's the New York idea of marriage." Like all the plays, from Sardou's "Divorçons" onward, which deal with a too facile system of divorce, this one shows a discontented woman, who has broken up her home for a caprice, suffering agonies of jealousy when her ex-husband proposes to make use of the freedom she has given him, and returning to him at last with the admission that their divorce was at least "premature." In this central conception there is nothing particularly original. It is the wealth of humourous invention displayed in the details both of character and situation that renders the play remarkable. |
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Definition
| Langdon Mitchell - The New York Idea |
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