A Successful Play with a Contemporary Setting:
Eliot wrote The Family Reunion (1939) after The Murder in the Cathedral. The Family Reunion is Eliot's first successful play with a contemporary setting, characters, and speech. Once during an interview, Eliot claimed that “The Family Reunion is still the best of my plays in the way of poetry.” In this play he has tried to compete with the naturalistic prose - drama, and not to appeal merely to a select cultured audience, but to the people at large. The play has been provided with the realistic setting of a parlour.
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| An Introduction to the Play The Family Reunion by T.S. Eliot |
Extently Imitation of Shakespeare's Hamlet:
The play is remarkable great in the quality of its verse but it is defective as drama because it has little action. Eliot's criticism of Shakespeare's Hamlet may quite be applied to Harry. In indicating what he considered to be a failing in Shakespeare's play, Eliot remarked, “Hamlet (the man) is dominated by an emotion which is We inexpressible , because it is in excess of the faces as they appear…. We must simply admit that here Shakespeare tackled a problem which proved too much for him.” Eliot is concerned with the poet's struggle to express and evoke his meaning in all its fullness.
A Brief Direct Action in Harry's Return and Departure:
The direct action of the play consists of the return Harry Lord Monchensey to his home after an absence of eight years and his departure again, after about three hours which causes the death of his aged mother from heart - failure. That is the event with which the play deals but the whole drama, the inner drama of the religious experience of sin and expiation has a vaster action and a deeper significance.
Setting of the Title of the Play:
The title of the play is ironical. The Family Reunion suggests that the play would depict the coming together of a family, the happy reunion of its members, after years of separation. But the unexpected happens. Contrary to expectation, the play depicts the disintegration of a family, whose members come together only to separate during the course of the same evening. As the play opens, we find that the various members of the Monchensey family have come to Wishwood at the invitation of Amy. Dowager Lady Monchensey. They have been invited to celebrate her birthday as well as to welcome home her eldest son, Harry, who is returning after an absence of eight years. Each of the members of the family is spiritually and emotionally isolated from the other, and so the family get together is superficial and meaningless. The assembled aunts and uncles are at cross purposes with each other, the two younger sons, Arthur and Jones, do not come at all, and Harry himself leaves the home that very day, after a brief stay . Mary and Agatha also intend leaving her. Amy's dreams, her hopes, are shattered and she is broken - hearted. She exclaims pathetically that they would all leave her. The shock kills her. Thus in the play there is only disintegration and disunion.
Duality of Action:
A poetic play has a doubleness of action which the prose play does not have. In The Family Reunion also we have this duality of action. On the ordinary material plane it may be regarded as an ironic comedy of manners, or an ordinary thriller depicting a story of crime, detection, and punishment. On a higher spiritual level, it presents a story of sin and expiation for that sin. These two levels or planes of action are closely integrated through Downing, who may not be a spiritual character, but who has superior psychological insight.
The Plot of the Play and its Weaknesses:
Eliot's skill in plot construction in The Family Reunion has been universally admired. The action of the play moves on two different levels - the material and spiritual and the two actions have been closely integrated. The gap between the two levels has been skilfully bridged with the help of Downing who has psychological insight, understands the emotional tensions from which Harry, his master, suffers, and so interprets, and illuminates his conduct which is baffling and bewildering to the other common place characters. Thus despite duality and complexity, there is unity of action. The unities of time and place also have been strictly observed. The entire action takes place in the residence of Monchensey - family in Wishwood, and the time taken is not more than three hours.
But the plot of the play also has certain well - marked weaknesses. For one thing it is lacking in conflict and suspense. Harry, the chief protagonist, has to choose between the ordinary common place life lived on the material plane, and the path of suffering and expiation, the path of martyrdom. There is no important or significant event in the play. Nothing really remarkable happens. In an age of science when faith in the supernatural is lacking, they look unreal and unconvincing. However, the end of the play is weakest point. It is forced and unnatural. It does not become clear what exactly is Harry's mission and his destination, and how he hopes to achieve his own salvation. It leaves the readers baffled and confused as to the future of Harry. We are told that he is going out to a world of love and terror, but the world that awaits him remains a mystery for the readers and spectators.
Major Themes of the Play:
Eliot has worked out three major themes in the play. (a) There is the theme of sin and expiation and atonement for that sin through suffering. (b) There is the theme of the oneness of time, the continuity of the past, the present, and the future. (c) There is the theme of spiritual loneliness and isolation and the difficulty of communicating these spiritual states. The central theme of the play is the theme of sin and expiation. Harry Lord Monchensey, kills his wife (or at least he imagines that he has killed her) by throwing her over the rails into the sea. Ever since, he has suffered from haunting sense of guilt. He feels that certain unknown eyes ever watch him. He returns to Wishwood in the hope of escaping the eyes, and finding some rest and mental peace there. But the eyes, the Furies, the goddesses of Revenge, pursue him here also. Closely integrated with the theme of sin and expiation is the theme of the continuity of time, the oneness of the past and the present.
Language and Versification:
The versification of the play is not the result of genius or inspiration, but it has been achieved through constant labour and practice over a long period of time. The verse form used in The Family Reunion is flexible enough to incorporate every kind of contemporary life. The flexibility and variety of Eliot's versification and diction is clearly brought out in the very opening scene of the play. There are three different levels of diction and versification corresponding to the three different groups of characters.
Eliot's Handling of the Orestes - myth:
In order to avoid the influence Shakespeare, Eliot went to the great Greek dramatists for his inspiration and for his themes. The Family Reunion is an excellent example of Eliot's use of the mythical technique. In The Family Reunion he has used the Greek Orestes - myth and the Greek conception of the Furies as the basis of his play. According to Greek mythology, a curse fell on the house of Atreus because of the sin of Clytemnestra who murdered her husband Agamemnon. After eight years, his son, Orestes, returned to Argos, and avenged his father's murder by killing his mother. Ever since, he was pursued and haunted by the Furies, the three sisters, goddesses of Revenge, in Greek mythology. The curse on the family of Atreus finds a close parallel in the curse on the Monchensey family. Both the families suffer on account of the sin of an ancestor and the sin is visited on the head of the children. But in the Orestes - myth it is mother who kills the father; here it is the father who attempts at killing the mother and finally leaves her and goes away. The Furies that haunt Harry by their objective presence indicate that the source of Harry's suffering does not lie in himself but in something beyond his own knowledge. They, at first, haunt Harry like the fateful spirits of revenge, but towards the end of the play appear as the bright angels. The Furies symbolises Harry's sense of guilt and they also symbolize the powers beyond that govern human destiny, the operation of inflexible laws whose working none can escape.
The Role of the Chorus:
Eliot has borrowed this dramatic device from the Greek dramatists, but he has much enriched it and imparted to it a new value and significance The Chorus in the Family Reunion is more original. Its members actually take part in the action of the drama. It is made up of Harry's uncles and aunts - ivy, Violet, Charles and Gerald - who are involved in the action of the play. But at certain specific moments they withdraw for a while from the action of the play, become merely spectators and express their thought in union. The members of the Chorus are characters who move and live entirely on the material, physical plane, and fail to understand the spiritual drama of sin and expiation which forms the very centre and care of the play. Unlike the traditional Chorus, the Chorus in the play does not illuminate and clarify, and thus contribute to a better understanding of the play. Immediately after the Chorus has spoken in unison, it disintegrates into the individual voices of its different members, who comment and criticise each other and voice their individual feelings.
The Chorus makes its first appearance towards the middle of the First Scene of Part 1. It voices the general feeling of unrest which results from its difficulty of understanding the spiritual drama. In its second appearance at the end of Scene I, Part I, it voices its feeling of fear and insecurity and regrets that it has been implicated in the doom or misfortune. The Chorus is absent in the second scene of the play because it has nothing to do with spirituality. The third Scene of Part I presents the Chorus again and it strikes a note of fear. In Scene I. Part II, the Chorus speaks of the inherited sense of agony and the deception in the face of certain inflexible laws. In the second scene of Part II the Chorus is again absent. Thus in the play Eliot's handling of the Chorus is original and unique.
Eliot's Art of Characterization:
Eliot could achieve remarkable success in language and versification, his characters are usually stock characters, flat and unchanging. They are not individualised. They have all a sort of family likeness. They are all drawn from the same social state i.e., the aristocratic or the upper middle class. They are usually divisible into two broad category, characters who are flat, dull and insensitive, and characters with unusual spiritual insights, remote from everyday experience, and so difficult to comprehend. They all lack life and reality. The play marks an advance in his art of characterization, for the characters of the present play are more alive and natural than the flat and symbolic characters of Murder in the Cathedral. The characters in the play can be easily classified into three groups according to the different levels of reality on which they live.
(a) There are the ordinary commonplaces, characters living entirely on the material plane; and having no spiritual insights. Amy, Ivy, Violet, Charles, Gerald, etc. belong to this group. (b) There is Harry, Lord Monchensey, the chief protagonist, with deep spiritual insight, living on a higher plane, superficial personages of the first group. (c) There are certain characters, intermediaries who come up to the brink of spiritual understanding but without being in the depth of it, and who help the hero to work out his salvation. To this group belong Mary and Agatha.
The Drama of Love's Revelation:
Amy, Dowager Lady Monchensey, is a domineering lady of uncommon will power and determination. She loves Harry, but her love is possessive and ego - centric. Even when her sons were little boys, she planned and designed their games and sports and now she plans and designs the future of Harry. She would like him to marry Mary. She loved her ecstatically and felt that the child Amy was carrying was reality her own child. Therefore, she is her real mother by right of love, though another gave her birth. This love's revelation makes Harry realise the true nature of his sin. His crime is simply a repetition of the crime of his father. The family is under a curse and like Orestes or like Christ, he must expiate and atone to redeem his family from the curse. In this way, love's revelation leads to spiritual enlightenment and Harry is enabled to make the ‘right election’.
The Imagery in the Play:
T. S. Eliot uses images and metaphors very admirably and successfully. The creators of images such as (1) “Let us meet you and I / Against the sky / like a patient etherized upon a table”, (2) “The worlds revolve like ancient women / Gathering fuel in vacant lots” could create equally wonderful and touching images in The Family Reunion. This ability and efficiency proves that he is both a poet and a dramatist. There are given a few of images used in The Family Reunion:
(a) “Spring is an issue of blood
A season of sacrifice
And the wail of the new full tide
Returning the ghosts of the dead
Those whom the winter drowned
Do not the ghosts of the drowned
Return to the land in the spring? "
(b) “It is really harder to believe in murder
Than to believe in cancer. Cancer is here:
The lump, the dull pain, the occasional sickness :
Murder a reversal of sleep and waking. "
Eliot tends to identify by metaphor the different aspects of cynical movement in nature. Winter, death or old age, right, ruins and the sea have ready - made associations with each other, and so have spring, youth or birth, dawn the city, and rain of fountains. Like his poems and other plays in The Family Reunion too we come across the images of rose and garden, of heaven and hell, of innocence and experience, of light and darkness. Comparable images of water and underwater, of rain and river and sea continue to appear in this play also.
The Symbolism in the Play:
The present play is built around the Orestes myth. But Eliot has mixed the mythical element of purgation with the modern drawing room comedy. According to C. H. Smith, “The ritual struggle between the dominion of earth and the dominion of heaven provided the fundamental conflict of the play, and the events in Aeschylus's version of the myth provided a situation with dramatic possibilities, which the playwright explored in modern terms.” The spring season is symbolic of a season of sacrifice. Harry represents the spirit of the New Year. He is conscious of a spiritual reality which brings him in conflict with his worldly mother.
Mysticism in the Play:
All Eliot's plays record mystic experiences. Becket, Harry, Celia Copplestone, Colby Sunkins and the Elder Statesman, all of them experience a consciousness which is beyond expression. It lifts them above the ordinary plane of human experience and the plays record their reaction to such an experience. The two levels of choice hinted at The Family Reunion where Harry dedicates himself to the higher aspiration, and Agatha spends her life as the efficient Principal of a women's college. Even the minor characters, apparently unaffected by the main incidents, attain a clear perception of their role, when freed of the clogging personality; they speak in the chorus as a family - community.
A Play of Sin and Salvation:
The special existential character of The Family Reunion lies in the theme of sin and expiation. It is a play on sin and expiation, guilt and responsibility. Harry is tortured by a sense of responsibility for the death of his wife. He even feels that he might have murdered her. But this is not so. The loss of his wife results in the inner shock which brings to consciousness an inherited sense of guilt. The central problem posed by Eliot in the play is whether sin can be transmitted from father to son without affecting the spiritual freedom of the son. The son has a responsibility to atone for the parental guilt. But such a responsibility instead of robbing him of his freedom makes him conscious of his sinfulness and thus summons him action and decision.
Shortcomings in the Family Reunion:
(a) Weak Plot and Lack of Action:
In The Family Reunion was not more successful. In this play, Harry's inward plight does not arise out of any logical succession of events. The second weakness of the plot lies in the fact that there is very little action in the play. The events are not arranged in a logical order.
(b) The Eumenides:
Another shortcoming of the play is the introduction of the Eumenides in modern drawing - room comedy. They are out of place not only because they cannot be convincingly presented on the stage, but also because their benevolent role as “bright angels” has not been effectively dramatised. The Eumenides also fail to impress us with the fact that they are the guiding spirits of benevolent deities leading Harry on to the path of spiritual self - realization.
(c) The Passive Hero:
Harry is a passive hero and his goal is not clearly presented. When Harry appears distracted in the first scene and tells us that he has pushed his wife overboard, we consider his mental suffering as a natural result of his action. But in the scene with Agatha when it dawns on his mind that probably he has not committed his wife's murder, there remains little justification for his insanity.
(d) Weakness in the Poetic Quality:
About the two lyrical duets, one between Harry and Mary on Page 55, and the other between Harry and Agatha on Page 100, which have shorter lines. The actors have to speak lines often so overburdened with cryptically associative images that no audience can be expected to follow the meaning. The poetry is not abstract: that is its whole trouble.
Failure in the Verse:
Grover Smith says that in its poetic quality, The Family Reunion exhibits on the one hand, its greatest success and on the other hand its greatest failure. Eliot has written this play differently from other plays in which blank verse metre is used. Here the stresses correspond to speech, so that a new kind of scansion will be required for this. But it is not very new.
Deficiency in the Chorus:
About making two aunts and uncles and Chorus and also individuals Eliot says, “The device of using four of the minor personages, representing the family, sometimes as individual character - parts and sometimes collectively as Chorus, does not seem to me very satisfactory. For one thing, the immediate transition from individual, characterized part to membership of a Chorus is asking too much of the actors: it is very difficult transition to accomplish.”
The Play, Failure on the Stage:
The Family Reunion is also a little disappointing as a drama because his hero strikes us, as he did the author, as “an insufferable prig.” In his complacent suffering and arrogant isolation, Harry is unconvincing and we do not really understand him. Hence in spite of Eliot's claim that it is still the best of his plays in the way of poetry, The Family Reunion is a failure on the stage.
