Summary
The scene is the Simeon Winthrop barge in Boston, a sunny day about a week later. Anna is sitting in a rocking chair and “looks unhappy, troubled, frowningly concentrated on her thoughts” (47) and Chris is wandering around the room uneasily, his visage full of anxiety. He begins to sing in a doleful voice.
Anna doesn’t want to hear it and wishes they were back in New York. Chris wonders why she wants to be here, as she goes ashore a lot and watches movies and has fun with Mat. When he says this, his voice sharpens and he adds that it’s not right. Anna is offended and asks what he is insinuating and Chris, horrified that she has misunderstood him, apologizes. She is mollified and says if she thought he really thought that, she’d get the hell off of the barge.
He remarks that she is swearing a lot more and blames Mat for being a sailor. She disagrees with this characterization, and corrects him that he is a stoker, not a sailor. Chris is unimpressed. Anna warns him not to start trouble with Mat, but then asks more gently what is bothering him. Chris replies earnestly that he wants her to marry a steady fellow with a job on land.
Anna is derisive, saying she wishes he could have seen the little “home” in the country she once lived in. If he keeps talking, she adds, she will tell him the truth someday. Chris woefully asks if she likes Mat and when she says yes, he asks if she loves him. When she says yes his face darkens and he asks if she will marry him. She says no and admits sadly that maybe if she had met him four years ago she would have said yes, but she is not good enough for him.
Chris finds this talk crazy but she laughs mournfully and says she will take a walk to the end of the dock and watch the ships passing. Alone, Chris goes outside to look at the sea, and curses it.
Mat appears and greets Chris in a friendly manner. He is ebullient, claiming he will be marrying Anna before the day is over. Chris implies Anna is not going to do that and is going to make a fool of him. Mat does not want to believe her and asks the two of them to talk man-to-man because they ought not to be at each other’s throats.
Chris admits he does not want Anna to be married because he just got her back, and he does not want Anna to be alone when Mat ships out again. He also assumes Mat will have women in every port. Mat protests that he is over with that part of his life and she is the one woman for him. Death could not make him forget her. He adds that Chris will see her much more than before, as he left her alone for fifteen years.
Chris is chagrined and says it was to keep her away from the sea. Mat scoffs and lampoons him for his silly views; the sea in his opinion is the only life for a real man, the only place to be free. The sea came for him and he bested it. Chris shakes his head and says he went through way worse storms, claiming that today men who sail aren’t like the men in the old days.
Their argument continues and Chris grabs a knife and springs at him, but Mat grabs him and takes the knife away. He pushes Chris down to protect himself and stares at him with hatred. He says he has no more patience but grudgingly admits he is impressed by the man attacking him alone.
Anna enters, first pleased to see Mat but then annoyed that he has fought with her father. He says he did not fight with him, just defended himself, and says it was only a bit of an argument. She asks her father what they argued about and when he says the sea, she is relieved that it’s just that old nonsense. Mat says this is not entirely true because they were fighting about her as well.
She demands to know what it was about and Mat says he loves her. She admits she did not want to believe this or tell him this, but she bursts out that she loves him too. Chris is crushed. Mat is elated and says they will have a grand life together. He kisses her and she kisses back.
The next moment, though, shaking a bit, she walks to the door and says goodbye. He does not understand. He helps Chris up but Chris wants nothing of his overture. Mat is annoyed. Anna turns around. Her face “is composed and calm again, but it is the dead calm of despair” (59). Anna tells Mat solemnly that she cannot marry him. He thinks she is joking but she maintains her seriousness and he realizes she is telling the truth. She says it is the best thing she can figure out to do. Mat assumes Chris is the problem. Chris is indeed brimming with malevolent excitement, but Anna rebukes him and tells him not to make things worse. She tells Mat she would never listen to her father’s craziness.
Mat presses her on what it really is but she will not answer. He guesses she is married to someone else and she says no. He does not care about any reason she might proffer, he promises, and says he will force her to go ashore and marry her if he has to. She asks what right he has to do that. Looking at both men’s faces, her expression goes hard. She tells them both they are treating her like a piece of furniture and that they’re both wrong about her.
Looking at them intently, she says she is going to tell her story because it doesn’t matter anymore, and she’s almost told her father this numerous times anyway. She tells Mat to remember what he said a second ago and he stoutly promises he will. She begins by saying no one owns her and she does what she pleases and does not care what anyone else says. She then explains everything in a bitter and angry tone, saying the farm was awful and the youngest son Paul drove her to prostitution so she left the farm and got a nurse job. She felt caged in and was lonesome so she did what she had to do.
Mat is livid with rage and Chris is in agonizing pain. He does not want to listen but Anna forces him, saying it is his fault because he kept her inland. She was in a brothel for the last two years where both sailors and “nice” inland men came to her. She begins to sob hysterically. In a bitter but pleading tone she asks Mat of his promise. She asks what he would think if she said getting out to sea and on the barge had cleaned her of that past, that meeting him had shown her a real man because he was a “sea man as different from the ones on land as water is from mud” (67), and that was why she fell in love with him and wanted to marry him. But she knows she cannot keep this from him and she had to tell him the truth. She pleads with him to know that loving him has made her clean, honest, and decent.
Mat is unmoved and rages that he will kill her. He rushes at her, Chris intervenes, and then Mat stops him. Anna dully asks him just to do it. Mat woefully says he won’t but has a right to—she is rotten and made a fool of him. He cannot believe God kept him alive and roaming the earth for this shame to come.
Anna screams at him to get out and he agrees, saying he will get roaring drunk and ship away forever. Chris grabs his arm and says maybe he ought to marry Anna now. Mat refuses and claims she destroyed him and he hopes she will be tormented forever.
Anguished, Anna tries to run after him but stops. Chris looks at her and slowly says he will go get a drink too. He breaks down and says he thought she was not that kind of girl. The next moment he comforts her and says it is not her fault, which pleases her, but then he blames the sea for bringing the Irish Mat to her and ruining everything.
Anna listens to him wearily and tells him just to go get drunk. He asks what she is going to do. She says maybe get drunk, maybe not, maybe leave. None of it matters and he shouldn’t care anyway. Chris leaves.
Analysis
Anna has a series of brutal, devastating emotional experiences in this act.
She’s been going to shore with Mat, it seems, dating and enjoying each other’s company, but she is “unhappy, troubled, frowningly concentrated on her thoughts” (47). It’s clear that she likes him and has convinced herself that things are not going to end up well. She admits to Chris that she’s not going to marry Mat because (not telling him the full truth yet) it’s not the right time— “If I’d met him four years ago—or even two years ago—I’d have jumped at the chance, I tell you that straight” (50). We know why she’s saying that, but Chris doesn’t even try to probe her reasoning or understand her pain. When Mat shows up, he confesses his love to her and while she initially pushes back against him, she finally tells him, “Sure I do! What’s the use of kidding myself different? Sure I love you, Mat!” (58) but follows it up a bit later by crying, telling him goodbye, and moving to leave the room.
The real trauma comes moments later when the men's petulance and fighting over their claims to her pushes her to finally admit the truth about her past. She has to admit that one of her family members “started [her] wrong” (65) by sexually assaulting her. She left her family and went to St. Paul, where the nurse job was profoundly annoying and lonesome so she turned to prostitution. Her father and Mat, she realizes, are “like all the rest” (66); in fact, she tells her father, “If you’d even acted like a man—if you’d even been a regular father and had me with you—maybe things would be different!” (66).
The situation is made manifestly worse because of how terribly her father and Mat act. Chris falls into paroxysms of grief, trying to say it’s a lie and eventually exonerating himself of all responsibility by claiming it’s the sea’s fault. Critic Daniel Boulos explains, “In the light of the conflict that has just occurred onstage, this passage borders on the absurd. Anna has just revealed her past as a prostitute and as a result been rejected by Burke. Chris then frames these events as something the sea has done to him, virtually negating Anna’s loss, not to mention his responsibility for what happened to her. Burke’s main transgression, Chris implies, was not his brutal rejection of Anna but rather bringing the truth of Anna’s past to light and forcing Chris to face it. Chris is unable to see past what he views as his own victimization and instead casts blame for that victimization onto the sea. But in the context of the scene that has just passed, characterized by what Engel called a ‘melodramatic sensibility,’ Chris’s characterization of Burke as a ‘dirty trick’ of the sea seems child-like and simplistic.”
As for Mat, he is filled with self-righteous, violent rage rooted in misogyny, excoriating Anna by calling her a slut and claiming he will kill her. The worst thing of all is that Anna didn’t really expect either man to act any other way; she knows men and despises them. She angrily tells her father and lover, “...and all men, God damn ‘em! I hate ‘em! Hate ‘em!” (66), and once the two of them leave/prepare to leave, she is weary and fully resigned to her fate.
