Summary:
Scene Eight, set in the Summer of 1971, takes place at Emma and Jerry’s apartment. Emma is preparing lunch when Jerry arrives at the apartment. He pours some wine, and Emma begins drinking vodka, to Jerry’s surprise.
Emma tells Jerry that she bumped into his wife, Judith, the day prior. Jerry is confused, and wonders why Judith did not tell him about the encounter. Jerry asks Emma if she thinks Judith knows about their affair. Jerry responds, “she’s too busy. At the hospital. And then the kids. She doesn’t go in for…speculation (p. 126, ellipsis in original).
Jerry then tells Emma that Judith has her own “admirer” (p. 126). He explains that this admirer, another doctor, “takes her for drinks” and that “it’s…irritating” (p. 127).
Unprompted, Emma asks Jerry, “have you ever thought of changing your life?” (p. 127). He responds simply, “it’s impossible” (p. 128). Emma proceeds to ask him if he thinks Judith is being unfaithful to him, and he says she has not. Next, she asks if Jerry has ever been unfaithful. “To whom?” he asks. “To me,” she responds (p. 128). Again, he says “no” (p. 129). They continue to discuss Judith’s fidelity, before Emma says, “I’m pregnant. It was while you were in America” (p. 130). The scene ends with Jerry saying “I’m very happy for you” (p. 130).
Scene Nine, the play’s final scene, occurs in Robert and Emma’s bedroom during a party in the Winter of 1968. Jerry is sitting in the room when Emma comes in. “I’ve been waiting for you,” Jerry says. He then begins to complement her, and moves towards her, saying “I’ve been watching you all night. I must tell you, I want to tell you, I have to tell you” before trailing off mid-thought (p. 134). She accuses him of being drunk and he does not deny it.
Jerry embraces Emma. He begins to tell her of his memories of her and Robert’s wedding. “I should have had you, in your white, before the wedding. I should have blacked you, in your white dress…” he says (p. 135). Emma tells him that she should return to the party, but he continues to regale her with hyperbolic descriptions of his affections for her. Jerry then kisses her, she pulls away, and he kisses her again.
Robert enters the room, and Emma tells him, “your best man is drunk” (p. 137). Jerry tells Robert that he had “decided to take the opportunity to tell your wife how beautiful she is” and Robert responds, “quite right” (p. 137). Jerry says “I speak as your oldest friend. Your best man” and Robert responds, “you are actually” (p. 138).
Robert then leaves the room, as the play ends with Jerry and Emma staring at each other in the bedroom.
Analysis:
While Betrayal focuses in large part on the dysfunctional marriage of Robert and Emma, it offers less of an examination of Jerry's marriage to Judith. Jerry seldom mentions Judith unless he is asked about her, and she never appears onstage. We know that she is a doctor, and that she is committed to her work, but we know little else about her. Judith's lack of appearance on the stage can be read symbolically. Indeed, one gets the sense that she hardly appears in Jerry's life at all. In Scene Seven, Emma says "I ran into Judith yesterday. Did she tell you?", Jerry responds "No, she didn't" (p. 103). In this scene, Jerry also tells Emma that Judith "has an admirer" but instead of being upset or attempting to intervene, he finds it merely "irritating" (107). Put simply, Jerry seems to express little interest in Judith at all, except to worry about her finding about his affair with Emma, a fear that he expresses in Scene Six. As with Robert and Emma, it appears as though Jerry and Judith are involved in a loveless marriage that neither of them have the courage to end. Thus, when Emma asks Jerry in this scene, "have you ever thought...of changing your life?" it should not surprise us that he says "it's impossible" (p. 108).
Scene Eight also features an exchange that highlights a key aspect of Emma's character. Of all the characters in the play, one could say that Emma is portrayed most favorably. She does not speak negatively of others or drink to excess, and is shown to be kind and caring to both Robert and Jerry. At the same time, Emma also exhibits a certain lack of self-awareness. For example, in this scene, she asks Jerry "have you ever been unfaithful?" (p. 109). The answer to the question is obvious – of course Jerry has been unfaithful given that he is currently engaged in an extramarital affair with Emma. Additionally, in Scene One Emma says to Jerry that Robert has "betrayed me for years," without acknowledging that she and Jerry did the exact same (p. 18). Seen cumulatively, these two instances indicate that Emma does not feel a sense of guilt about her actions, or that she even views her actions as transgressions at all. Again, Pinter is committed to creating characters whose flaws are not at all hidden.
In Scene Nine, we are taken back to the beginning of Emma and Jerry's affair. Having scene the fall-out of this affair in the play's first eight scenes, we are now finally afforded a view into how everything began. It is an especially troubling scene. Jerry's behavior is reprehensible, and his refusal to accept Emma's rejections to his advances surely constitute a form of assault. . When Emma reminds him that Jerry was her "husband's best man," in order to remind him of the baseness of his propositions, he simply reminds, "No. Your best man" (p. 114). Any questions surrounding the immortality of Jerry's character should surely be put to rest here.
Perhaps the most interesting element of this scene is Jerry's use of language. Whereas in the play's earlier scenes he is fairly laconic and muted, here he reaches for elevated and hyperbolic language in order to seduce Emma. He invokes numerous clichés and speaks at length, while the earlier scenes of the play are punctuated frequently with the stage directions "silence" and "pause." Compared to his manner of speech in the play's earlier scenes, it is as though Jerry expends all his linguistic capacities in this scene, and that Emma and Jerry's affair (and Robert's subsequent discovery of the affair) was the genesis of the stilted dialogue in the rest of the play.
Jerry's attempts to woo Emma are ultimately interrupted by Robert, who enters the bedroom after Jerry's second attempt at kissing Emma. It is a most suspicious scene, but as always, if Robert has any suspicions he does not voice them. The play then ends on a note of supreme irony with Robert confirming that Jerry is both his "oldest friend" and his "best man" (p. 117). It is a wrenching exchange and an intense end to the play, but by now we already now that the play will by no means contain a happy ending (p. 117).
