The Family Reunion by T.S. Eliot As A Modernist Play
This article will explore The Family Reunion as a play that belongs to the modern era. The Family Reunion is a play that was written by T.S. Eliot and first published in 1939. The time from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century is known as Modernity. That time was characterised by emancipation and secularisation. That was the period when WWI (1914–1918) and WWII (1939–1945) have taken place.
During such times, there was continuous shifting of paradigms in the social, cultural, political, and economic contexts. The shifting paradigms, not only, were they reflected in Modernism, but also, they had their consequences manifested in modernisation. Modernism has had great repercussions in literature but was more concerned with the parallel and overlapping developments in art, philosophy, and criticism while modernisation included most of the movements at the time.
Some features of modernisation will be examined in the play, The Family Reunion by T. S. Eliot, in the following paper, such as alienation, existentialism, and the theatre of the absurd.
The Analysis of The Play
The family reunion tells the story of the Monchensey family. Amy is the oldest sister and Dowager Lady Monchensey who is clinging on to life by sheer willpower according to Dr. Warburton as Amy illustrates in words:
“AMY.
I do not want the clock to stop in the dark.
If you want to know why I never leave Wishwood
That is the reason. I keep Wishwood alive
To keep the family alive, to keep them together,
To keep me alive, and I live to keep them.
You none of you understand how old you are
And death will come to you as a mild surprise,
A momentary shudder in a vacant room.
Only Agatha seems to discover some meaning in death
Which I cannot find.” (Eliot, 1. 1. Lines 80–90)
Wishwood is a symbol that is personified as Amy’s legacy. The setting takes place in Wishwood which is located north of England where, nearly, the whole family gathers, including the two brothers of her late husband: Colonel the Honourable Gerald Piper and the Honourable Charles Piper, for Amy’s birthday.
The time scope in the play is relatively parallel and cyclic, between past, present, and future, affecting each other to reflect the state of people at the time. That foreshadows Eliot’s disturbed state of mind as reflected in an essay about the sense of time in The Family Reunion; “Eliot’s bitter experience is lucidly shown in his characters throughout a close reading of his biography. Eventually, it finds out the state of human beings between the first and the second World Wars, the state of meaninglessness and absurdity of the cyclical movement without any change of life in the course of events of the play.”
The themes of sin, expiation, and death are evident throughout the play. Each character in the play goes through a purgatory experience to overcome guilt through suffering. Harry, One of Amy’s three sons, is, arguably, the main character in the play.
Harry is consumed by the guilt of the death of his wife in Wishwood on a boat when he was not around because he did in fact want her dead. Thus, he keeps seeing the Eumenides who are the Greek deities of vengeance as they keep chasing and haunting him. Till far off in the play, when it turns out that Agatha, Mary, and Denman. Denman is a servant while Mary is the childhood companion of Harry and the daughter of Amy’s cousin. Harry feels nostalgic for life and love-filled harmony whenever he remembers the happy carefree moments of his earlier life spent at Wishwood along with Mary.
The play is mostly written in blank verse, though not iambic pentameter, and it also incorporates elements from Greek drama and mid-twentieth-century detective plays to portray the journey from guilt to redemption. This usage of the poetic element to incorporate the language of poetry in theatre leads to the play being considered a poetic drama.
The diction is mostly connotations that the characters use to express themselves. Thus, the characters rely on descriptive and figurative imagery to relate to their feelings and emotional states.
The story is narrated from a third-person limited point of view which leads the reader to an objective form of understanding of the character’s words and actions rather than thoughts. The tone of the narration reflected in the words of the characters is bitter, pessimistic, and nostalgic and there are several instances in which such tones are highlighted.
The tone of narration reflects the alienation that the characters feel throughout the play as they go through a state of helplessness and acceptance of fate. That tone foreshadows the characterisation used in the play. All the characters draw on The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus. Albert Camus addressed the topic of suicide in his essay to judge if life is worth living. The myth referred to in the title of the essay speaks of Sisyphus who tries to cheat death and is eternally punished and left with no other option, he revolts by accepting his absurd situation to shoulder his burden while making an ascent once again. Sisyphus is a figure related to Greek mythology.
Camus defined absurdity as the futile search for meaning in a universe devoid of God and meaning. Thus, absurdity tends to rise as a result of the tension between our desire for order, meaning, and happiness, while on the other hand, the indifferent natural universe refuses to provide that.
Thus, the characters believe that nothing will ever change or redeem the past and that leads them to think that it is futile to make an effort as they contemplate the meaninglessness of everything as evident in the following quotations:
“AGATHA.
I mean painful, because everything is irrevocable,
Because the past is irremediable,
Because the future can only be built
Upon the real past. Wandering in the tropics
Or against the painted scene of the Mediterranean,
AMY.
Nothing is changed, Agatha, at Wishwood.
Everything is kept as it was when he left it,…” (Eliot, 1. 1. Lines 110–115)
“HARRY.
…Murder was there. Your ordinary murderer
Regards himself as an innocent victim.
To himself he is still what he used to be
Or what he would be. He cannot realise
That everything is irrevocable,
The past unredeemable.” (Eliot, 1. 3. Lines 69–74)
Harry talks of himself in a distant tone as if trying to explore his own feelings, thoughts, and dreams while Agatha uses imagery figuratively to draw on the mind’s eye of the built future against the painting of the Mediterranean.
The attitude that the universe is without purpose and that human life is futile and meaningless is evident. Under such circumstances, man’s existence becomes absurd. In both form and content. Thus, the play portrays human beings as isolated from others. This apparent irrationality is an expression of the absurd predicament of man, whose existence has no reason.
Amy and Agatha, both, believed that neither changed as was evident in their heated exchange:
“AMY.
And I thought that time might have made a change in Agatha
It has made enough in me. Thirty-five years ago
You took my husband from me. Now you take my son.
AGATHA.
I know one thing, Amy:
That you have never changed. And perhaps I have not.
I thought that I had, until this evening.
But at least I wanted to. Now I must begin.
There is nothing more difficult. But you are just the same:
Just as voracious for what you cannot have
Because you repel it.
AMY.
I prepared the situation
For us to be reconciled, because of Harry,
Because of his mistakes, because of his unhappiness,
Because of the misery that he has left behind him,
Because of the waste. I wanted to obliterate
His past life, and have nothing except to remind him
Of the years when he had been a happy boy at Wishwood;
For his future success.
AGATHA.
Success is relative:
It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things,
It is what he can make, not what you would make for him.
AMY.
Success is one thing, what you would make for him
Is another. I call it failure. Your fury for possession
Is only the stronger for all these years of abstinence.
Thirty-five years ago you took my husband from me
And now you take my son.
AGATHA.
Why should we quarrel for what neither can have?
If neither has ever had a husband or a son
We have no ground for argument.
AMY.
Who set you up to judge? what, if you please,
Gives you the power to know what is best for Harry?
What gave you this influence to persuade him
To abandon his duty, his family and his happiness?
Who has planned his good? is it you or I?
Thirty-five years designing his life,
Eight years watching, without him, at Wishwood,
Years of bitterness and disappointment.
What share had you in this? what have you given?
And now at the moment of success against failure,
When I felt assured of his settlement and happiness,
You who took my husband, now you take my son.
You take him from Wishwood, you take him from me,
You take him…” (Eliot, 2. 3. Lines 1–68)
On the contrary, most if not all of the characters in the play managed to find some form of solace in their own acceptance of fate and change in perspective as evident in the following epiphanic quotations:
“MARY.
Oh! . . . so . . . you have seen them too!
AGATHA.
We must all go, each in his own direction,
You, and I, and Harry. You and I,
My dear, may very likely meet again
In our wanderings in the neutral territory
Between two worlds.
MARY.
Then you will help me!
You remember what I said to you this evening?
I knew that I was right: you made me wait for this —
Only for this. I suppose I did not really mean it
Then, but I mean it now. Of course it was much too late
Then, for anything to come for me: I should have known it;
It was all over, I believe, before it began;
But I deceived myself. It takes so many years
To learn that one is dead! So you must help me.
I will go. But I suppose it is much too late
Now, to try to get a fellowship?
AMY.
So you will all leave me!
An old woman alone in a damned house.
I will let the walls crumble. Why should I worry
To keep the tiles on the roof, combat the endless weather,
…” (Eliot, 2. 3. Lines 108–126)
Amy’s turning point was, arguably, the most interesting turning point because earlier in the play, she did not want ‘the clock to stop in the dark’ and that was countered by the end of the play when the clock did stop in the dark. The clock is a symbol of life and the stopping of the clock means death. When the clock stopped that was when everything came to a momentarily stop and the curtains drew the play to an end with Agatha’s words; “May they rest in peace.” (Eliot, 2. 3. Line 356).
That phrase left the audience wondering: Who are ‘They’? that Agatha referred to when it was only Amy’s funeral. The characters in the play are complicated as they search for meaning and contemplate existence and that reflects the feature of existentialism as evident in the following quotation:
“CHORUS.
We do not like to look out of the same window, and see quite a different landscape.
We do not like to climb a stair, and find that it takes us down.
We do not like to walk out of a door, and find ourselves back in the same room.
We do not like the maze in the garden, because it too closely resembles the maze in the brain.
We do not like what happens when we are awake, because it too closely resembles what happens when we are asleep.
We understand the ordinary business of living,
We know how to work the machine,
We can usually avoid accidents,
We are insured against fire,
Against larceny and illness,
Against defective plumbing,
But not against the act of God.
But the circle of our understanding
Is a very restricted area.
We do not know what we are doing;
And even, when you think of it,
We do not know much about thinking.
What is happening outside of the circle?
And what is the meaning of happening?
And what is being done to us?
And what are we, and what are we doing?
To each and all of these questions
There is no conceivable answer.
We have suffered far more than a personal loss —
We have lost our way in the dark.” (Eliot, 2. 3. Lines 274–312)
The conflict of the characters is more inner than outer. However, it is due to the outside absurdity that is going on that the characters are made to feel the way they do. The recurrent theme of death is a huge factor that is manifested in the characters’ helplessness against God’s will.
The characters draw on Jean-paul Sartre’s existentialism as they realise there is no escape. According to Sartre’s theory of existentialism, “existence precedes essence” and only by existing and acting a certain way do we give meaning to our lives. There are no fixed instructions as to how a human being should be and no God to give us purpose.
The feature of the theatre of the absurd was a reflection of the despair felt at the time because of all the changes in paradigms and numerous movements that preceded the two world wars socially, culturally, economically, and Politically. Eventually, there is no clear reason why things are the way they are. Thus, the symbol of a curse is reflected upon life in the final scene between Mary and Agatha as follows:
“[Enter, from one door, Agatha and Mary, and set a small portable table. From another door, enter Denman carrying a birthday cake with lighted candles, which she sets on the table. Exit Denman. Agatha and Mary walk slowly in single file round and round the table, clockwise. At each revolution they blow out a few candles, so that their last words are spoken in the dark.]
AGATHA.
A curse is slow in coming
To complete fruition
It cannot be hurried
And it cannot be delayed
MARY.
It cannot be diverted
AGATHA.
This way the pilgrimage
Of expiation
Round and round the circle
Completing the charm
So the knot be unknotted
The crossed be uncrossed
The crooked be made straight
And the curse be ended
By intercession
By pilgrimage
By those who depart
In several directions
For their own redemption
And that of the departed-
May they rest in peace.” (Eliot, 2. 3. Lines 318–356)
The plot of the play is broken down into four instances. The first one is the exposition which is the arrival of Harry. The story unravels slowly till Harry decides to abandon Wishwood, encouraged by Agatha. That leads to a heated argument between Agatha and Amy. The second instance was when the climax took place and that is when the clock stopped in the dark. The third instance is the denouement which is Amy’s funeral. The fourth instance is the resolution when Agatha and Mary clarified that life can only be accepted as it is.
The play belongs to the theatre of the absurd. Martin Esslin coined the term “The Theatre of the Absurd” in his 1960 book of the same name. He defined it as such because all of the plays written between 1940–1960 emphasized the absurdity of the human condition. Whereas we tend to use the word “absurd” synonymously with “ridiculous,” Esslin was referring to the original meaning of the word– ‘out of harmony with reason or propriety; illogical.’ Essentially, each play renders man’s existence as illogical, and moreover, meaningless. This idea was a reaction to the “collapse of moral, religious, political, and social structures” following the two World Wars of the Twentieth Century.
In the end, this paper explored The Family Reunion as a play that belongs to the modern era by introducing modernity, modernism, and modernisation and examining three features of modernisation that are found in the play. Modernity is the time from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century characterised by emancipation and secularisation. During such times, there was WWI (1914–1918) and WWII (1939–1945) along with continuous shifting of paradigms in the social, cultural, political, and economic contexts. Modernism was more concerned with the parallel and overlapping developments in art, philosophy, and criticism. The modernisation included most of the movements at the time.
The examination of the three modernisation features that are found in the play; alienation, existentialism, and the theatre of the absurd, led to the conclusion that the play belongs to the theatre of the absurd.
