Summary
Act I
Scene I
The Mannon house a year after Christine’s suicide. It is shuttered and clearly unoccupied. Five men—Seth, Ames, Joe Silva (a Portuguese fishing captain), Ira Mackel (an elderly farmer) and Abner Small (a wiry clerk)—stand before it. They are all drunk and teasing each other.
When someone mentions Christine’s ghost Small looks at it uneasily and asks if she haunts the place. Seth laughs that the graveyard is full of Mannons and they all haunt the place. Small is supposed to spend the night there to win a bet, and he is confident he can do it. However, he asks Seth if he can go inside now while it is still light outside so he can get his bearings.
Seth agrees, but says they have to be careful since Vinnie and Orin will be back from China very soon. The men tease Small about their taking care of his woman and watering his grave. Seth takes him inside. The other three stand outside and discuss whether or not they believe in ghosts.
Seth returns and Mackel observes that even he doesn’t want to stay in there long. He asks Seth if there really are ghosts and Seth scoffs that he was only joking. Mackel mentions how queer it was that Ezra died on his first night back.
Ames notices someone coming up the drive and Seth observes that it is Hazel and Peter. Everyone says hello and Peter explains they’d gotten a telegram from Vinnie and Orin saying they’d landed in New York.
Suddenly Small runs screaming from the house, yelling that he saw Ezra’s ghost. He throws the money on the ground. All of the men burst unto laughter and Seth says it was just the portrait. He tells the others to move along and he will join them soon.
Hazel is a bit concerned about the stunt but Peter thinks it is amusing after Seth tells him he simply wanted to dispel rumors about the house being haunted. However, he adds that he would not stay in the house himself, which Peter and Hazel find surprising. Seth quietly explains “there’s been evil in that house since it was first built in hate –and it’s kept growin’ there ever since” (338). He urges the two of them to persuade the siblings not to live there.
Peter agrees and says they have to open it up right now though. Seth goes to retrieve lanterns. Hazel looks uneasy and Peter tells her Seth is just old. Hazel shakes her head and says the house has always been queer; she can still picture Christine that night. She remembers how broken Orin looked at the funeral, and how he behaved like he was in a trance. Peter comforts her that the trip must have been good for them but Hazel is unconvinced.
She steps up to the door and feels a cold grip. Peter admonishes her that she is talking nonsense. They go inside to open windows.
Lavinia appears. She looks markedly different. She is fuller-figured, sensuous, and beautiful. She looks like her mother and is not wearing black. Orin appears as well, but he carries himself solemnly, looks like his father, and has a blank expression.
Lavinia urges him to be brave and tells him there are no ghosts here. He dully agrees. She leads him up the steps and he walks like an automaton. When he mentions this was the last place he saw his mother, Lavinia urges him onward and says the past is forgotten and they, in turn, have forgotten the dead.
Scene II
The sitting-room, illuminated by a candle. Lavinia enters. She seems completely changed –she wears her hair like her mother did, wears the same green dress, and has a mature and feminine air about her.
Lavinia looks at the Mannon portraits and tells them angrily that she’s done her duty. She calls for Orin, who enters and stammers that the portraits are everywhere but Mother is gone. A moment later he changes course and defiantly proclaims that he is Father’s and is a Mannon.
Lavinia rebukes him but then puts her arm around him to comfort him. She tells him to be brave and that they need to live a normal life now; they need to embrace Hazel and Peter’s friendship and love. Orin is suspicious by her comment of love, and accuses her of being like Mother now. Even her soul was affected; he saw this happening on their trip East. Lavinia sighs and says he was fine on their trip but is back to his morbid spells.
Orin looks at her and tells her he needed to get her away from the Islands. She is confused, but tells him she did so much for him on their trip and was always so frightened by what he might do. She would never want those days back again, and thought that Orin wanted to be home. Now, though, he seems strange. Lavinia tells him sternly he must face his ghosts, and forces him to answer correctly about who murdered Father and why Mother killed herself. She kisses him in delight and he sobs. She comforts him.
Peter approaches, full of shock over how Lavinia has changed. She is flirtatious and lively, and tells him not to be afraid of her like he used to be. He comments haltingly on how pretty she is and how she is wearing color. She is quite pleased.
Lavinia calls Orin over and he and Peter shake hands in greeting. Orin begins to tease Lavinia darkly, asking Peter if he sees how she has Mother’s clothes and has become romantic thanks to the Islands. Surprised, Peter asks if they really went there. Orin replies that they did thanks to Mannon connections and that they turned out to be Vinnie’s islands, not his. He felt sick from the pagans and naked women but Vinnie loved the men. Lavinia interjects angrily and calls him disgusting as he pushes on with visions of dancing and moonlight under the palms.
Orin does not stop, asking her if she remembers Avahanni. Lavinia is furious now, and urges him to stop joking and find Hazel. He is perturbed and accuses her of wanting to get rid of him, but walks stiffly out.
Peter marvels at the change in Orin and, in a strained voice, Lavinia explains it was their parents’ deaths. She then looks at him and asks if he still loves her and he says of course he does. She admits she thought of him a lot and feels she has done her duty and deserves love. She explains Orin was only teasing about the native, but then says dreamily that the Islands set her free, made her stop thinking about death, and made her contemplate how the native women had no knowledge of sin and lived lovely lives.
After a moment Lavinia checks herself and throws her arms around Peter, proclaiming she is ready for love and that they must marry and have an island for themselves on land. Peter is aroused but surprised by her boldness. He asks about Orin and she says he is unwell but when he suggests he live with them Lavinia bursts out that she must leave the past behind. She confides to him that Orin feels guilty about Christine’s death because they’d quarreled and he said harsh things to her. She says they must tell Hazel to be wary of strange things he might say. Peter agrees.
Lavinia and Peter embrace just as Orin and Hazel enter. Orin is enraged but then pretends he is fine. He haltingly says congratulations are in order. Hazel looks uneasy.
Act II
Ezra’s study, a month later. Orin is sitting at his father’s desk writing. He has aged a great deal and looks like his father. He smiles grimly and looks to the portrait of his father, asking if the dead man wants the whole truth.
Lavinia knocks and when Orin opens the door she asks why he locked it. He says he was reading Ezra’s law books. Lavinia is suspicious of his strange behavior. Orin says he hates the sunlight and prefers artificial light because it is better for his work; God’s light does not make sense.
His brooding and ill health weary Lavinia but he grins that he is quite well, despite her wishes. She whirls on him and tells him he shouldn’t say such things. He slumps down. He wonders why she never leaves him alone with Hazel for that long—does she think he will let something slip? He adds that he is afraid of himself but he is drawn to her purity. Hazel should be kept away from him because he cannot see the love in her eyes for a murderer.
Lavinia agrees that Orin is a danger in that he might burst out the truth, and when Orin laughs harshly that she needs to confess she says he is becoming her conscience. She asks again how Orin could have loved their vile mother. Orin replies that she is scheming to leave him just as Christine did and that she will want to know what he is writing.
Worried, Lavinia asks and Orin finally tells her it is a whole history of the family’s crimes from Abe all the way to them. He has traced all their secrets and their evil destiny. When he says most of it is about her, Lavinia is horrified. He tells her gleefully “so many strange hidden things out of the Mannon past combine in you!” (354). He accuses her of wanting the first mate on their voyage just like she wanted Brant for herself. He continues and says she loved all the handsome native men and that is why she became pretty; she especially liked Avahanni when he stared at her and stripped her naked with his eyes.
Lavinia protests this but Orin demands she tell him what she did with Avahanni the night he was sick. Lavinia admits she kissed him in gratitude because he was innocent and good and made her feel love could be natural.
Lavinia’s temper flares up when Orin retorts she did more than that, and she claims she is not his property and she can do what she wants. He screams hoarsely that she is lying and a whore and he will kill her. Lavinia is frightened and says she wasn’t telling the truth. Orin believes her but insists she is guilty in her mind.
Lavinia is exhausted and warns him to stop torturing her and he says calmly that she should kill him; maybe they can plan it together. After all, he is Father and she is Mother. Lavinia puts her hands over her ears and begs him to leave her alone. Orin accuses her of plotting something and planning to leave with Peter. At this Lavinia breaks down and sobs. Orin stares at her and says the damned do not cry. He begins to write again.
Act III
The study. The portraits’ eyes seem possessed of cruel inner life. Lavinia wrings her hands tensely and wishes aloud that Orin would kill himself but then stops herself, horrified. Seth arrives and tells her that a servant, Hannah, is throwing a fit. Lavinia sighs and goes to talk to her.
The doorbell rings and Seth lets Peter and Hazel in. Hazel shudders that she hates this house and that Orin is getting worse. She is frustrated because Lavinia never leaves him alone. Peter laughs at this but Hazel says she is serious and that Lavinia’s had a bad influence on her brother. Peter becomes annoyed, but their fight only lasts a moment. Hazel asks Peter if he really wants to marry Lavinia and he is surprised at her query. She becomes flustered and starts to tear up. Peter has to leave for a council meeting and is happy to do so when Orin comes in saying he needs to talk to Hazel alone.
Once it is the two of them Orin hurriedly gives her an envelope and tells her not to let Lavinia see and that if he dies or she tries to marry Peter Hazel needs to make sure Peter reads what is inside. Hazel is confused. Orin tells her that Lavinia does not deserve happiness and that she, Hazel, ought to not love him anymore. She is hurt and Orin wavers but reiterates his desire.
Hazel suggests he come stay with her family and Orin is tempted. He hopes he can but he will have to sneak out. This prompts Hazel to ask why he is so afraid of his sister.
A noise sounds in the hall. Orin hisses that she has to keep the envelope secret and go home and lock it up.
Lavinia enters and feels something strange in the air. She asks where Peter is and smiles anxiously that the two of them look mysterious. Lavinia notices Hazel awkwardly move the envelope behind her. Orin tells his sister he is going to Hazel’s house and Hazel assents.
Lavinia looks at them and says he is not, which prompts Hazel to burst out that Orin is of age and can do what he wants. Orin stands up for himself as well, but Lavinia angrily tells Hazel to mind her own business.
Hazel prepares to leave, telling Lavinia that they are not friends anymore. She forgets to conceal the envelope and Lavinia bars her way, asking what is in there. She demands Hazel give it to her and yells that Orin is a coward. She looks at him intensely and tells him he is a Mannon; she adds that he must not do this for Mother’s sake.
Orin is unyielding but Lavinia frantically says she will do anything if he makes Hazel give it back. Orin pauses and asks if this is true. He then tells Hazel to give him the manuscript and that he will not be by tomorrow. He says stiffly that the Orin she loved died in the war. Hazel sobs and runs from the room.
Orin looks at Lavinia and says she must know she has to give up Peter and she replies that she knows. A distorted, lustful look comes over his face and he reminds her that she said she’d do anything. Realization dawns in Lavinia and she asks what horrible thing he is thinking of. He tells her that she has come to mean so much to him and that perhaps he loves her too much. He touches her hair, saying it is like Christine’s, and with this Lavinia realizes exactly what he intends.
With a look of horror, she says he can’t mean this, but he replies that of course he does—how else would he keep her here? She would be as damned as he if they consummated their relationship.
Orin sees her shocked face and starts to sputter that he needs certainty and they must go pray and confess together. Lavinia scoffs that she has nothing to confess. Crazed, Orin looks at the portraits and yells that they cannot break Lavinia and will have to haunt and hound her for ages. Lavinia screams that he is insane and is too vile to live; he would kill himself if only he weren’t a coward.
Orin is stricken and asks if she means it. She sobs that she does. Orin is tortured, wondering aloud if this would be justice and if Mother is speaking through Lavinia. If he killed himself, he could be with her on an island. He directs his words to Christine, thinking she is in the house now. He claims she is calling him to come home.
At this Lavinia tells him to stop but he pushes her out of the way. At this moment Peter returns, asking for Hazel. In an unnaturally calm voice, Orin tells him she went home, then announces he is going into his study to clean his pistol because it’s gotten so rusty.
After Orin walks away Lavinia makes to follow him but does not. She throws herself at Peter and begs him to hold her close and tell her nothing matters but love. He is confused but she goes on about getting married and having a garden and how she loves things that grow upward toward the sun, not things that twist and live in shadow. Her voice rises almost hysterically as if she is waiting to hear something.
A shot sounds. Lavinia staggers weakly. She mechanically hides the envelope in a drawer and locks it. She catches the eyes of the Mannon portraits and says defiantly that she belongs to Mother, not them, and will live in spite of them. She squares her shoulders and marches stiffly from the room.
Act IV
Three days later. The sun shines brightly on the Mannon house. Seth whistles and sings “Shenandoah,” commenting aloud that Lavinia is picking flowers just like her mother did and how odd it was that a soldier died cleaning his gun.
Lavinia walks up to Seth. She appears as she used to –thin, haggard, unattractive. She tells him to give the flowers to Hannah to set out for when Peter comes. Seth tries to convince her to get rest but she waves him away and says there is no sleep in this house of death and hate. She tells Seth excitedly that she will marry Peter and go away, and he approves heartily. She will close up the house and leave the portraits in the dark and be the last Mannon.
Hazel approaches, dressed in black. She meets Lavinia’s defiant, hard eyes and bursts out that she knows Orin didn’t kill himself by accident. Lavinia warns her but she persists, accusing Lavinia of driving him to do it. She begins to sob and tells Lavinia she has come to beg her not to marry Peter and ruin his life. She explains how he used to be a wonderful son and brother but now is already changed for the worse; Lavinia is ruining him and he might even do what Orin did.
Lavinia will hear no more. She threatens Hazel to leave or she will get Orin’s pistol. Hazel is traumatized and asks how she could be like this. She informs Lavinia that she hopes she will do the right thing and that she ought to let Peter read the manuscript before they marry. Lavinia sighs that the dead never die.
Peter approaches. Hazel walks away, calling that she knows Lavinia has a conscience and will do what is right. Lavinia shoots back that she has nothing to be forgiven for.
Peter tells her they must move away from this house. Lavinia tells him about what Hazel said and he is defiant and angry. She looks at him closely and realizes he has changed; his eyes look suspicious. She begs him to marry her this very evening so nothing can come between them. Peter is wary of this after the recent death and begins to wonder if she isn't telling him something. She frantically clings to him and declares she wants love and a moment of happiness before the dead come to drive them away. She calls him “Adam.”
Peter thinks she is hysterical. Lavinia falls quiet. In a dead voice, she tells him she cannot marry him and he must leave and go home to his mother and sister. Love is not for her.
Peter finds it hard to fathom what she is saying and asks if it was the manuscript, or if she did something with the native. Lavinia is repelled by his question but states forcefully that she did lust with the man. She boldly states she wanted to and she was his fancy woman. Peter cannot handle this and stammers that it is no wonder Orin killed himself and that he hopes she will be punished. He runs off.
Lavinia swiftly reverses her course and calls out that was a lie and she didn’t mean it. She then tells his retreating figure goodbye.
Seth comes back around and Lavinia tells him stoically that she is bound here to the Mannon dead. She cackles. Seth warns her not to go in the house.
Lavinia asserts that she isn’t going the way of suicide but can only punish herself. She will remain in the house and will live with the dead; this will be a worse punishment. The curse will be paid out when she dies.
Seth grimly says he understands. He agrees to shut the windows and to have Hannah throw out the flowers. Lavinia squares her shoulders and marches woodenly inside, shutting the door behind her.
Analysis
After suggestions of incest, two murders, two suicides, and one self-imposed exile, Mourning Becomes Electra comes to an end. While we will spend most of our time discussing Lavinia, it behooves us to look to Orin briefly, particularly asking why does he commit suicide when he does? First, the war had addled his brain; while not insane, he was certainly traumatized by it. His “brain fever” precluded him from engaging in real life once back at home. Every relationship he had was fraught with tension –his hatred for his father, love for his mother, and love/hate for his sister all increased to extreme degrees. He could not find a way to settle down with Hazel. He assumed his father’s role in many respects and was doomed to his fate. Critic Stephen Black sums him up in “The Haunted,” saying “All that is left of Orin is a shell, not yet dead, reduced to the base, or basic, desire, an openly incestuous longing for his sister.” When he makes this proposal to her, borne out of his fear of being left alone, he realizes just how low he has sunk and decides he has to kill himself. As Seth notes, it is a queer fate indeed for a soldier to kill himself while “accidentally” cleaning his gun.
By the time we get to “The Haunted” it is clear that this is Lavinia’s play. Prior to this point, she was described as resembling her mother but as too thin, garbed all in black, her hair tightly pulled back, and a dour expression on her face. She knew Peter loved her but did not plan to marry because she wanted to remain close to her father. She punished her mother with the “just” act of killing Brant and, after Christine’s resulting suicide, takes Orin on a long trip to the East. When “The Haunted” starts O’Neill devotes a great deal of text to her physical and dispositional changes. He says it is an “extraordinary change,” that her movement are sensuous, that “she now bears a striking resemblance to her mother in every respect, even to being dressed in the same green her mother had affected” (340). Her hair is flowing and lustrous, she “seems a mature woman, sure of her feminine attractiveness” (341). Knowing that she has changed, she brightens in delight when both Orin and Peter stammer that she has gotten so pretty. This change can be attributed to her trip to the Islands, where she revels in feeling free for the first time. She tells Peter, “I loved those islands. They finished setting me free. There was something there mysterious and beautiful –a good spirit –of love –coming out of the land and sea. It made me forget death” (348). And until she rids of him completely, she tells Peter that she wants love, deserves love, and that the Islands taught her this.
So, what happened to Lavinia over there? Orin accuses her of not only liking the naked men’s attention but of engaging in sexual relations with one of them. Lavinia, for her part, vacillates between admitting to this and backtracking to say she didn’t do anything, or just kissed Avahanni. It is abundantly clear something happened given her immense changes, of course. Breaking this down: first, she left the Mannon house, filled with its history and hatred and looming portraits. The Islands are a sinless, Puritanism-free place where she realizes death does not matter and people can live their lives as they see fit without the cruel censure of Puritan morality and its self-appointed enforcers. Second, her mother and her father, the latter of whom she had inappropriate feelings for, are not there. She has essentially replaced her mother, but has projected her sexual longings onto appropriate men like the natives and Peter.
Despite the fact that this new Lavinia seems happier, less guilty, and attracted to more fitting men, there are few disconcerting elements of this development for Lavinia. O’Neill certainly wasn’t a feminist and his major plays often bear criticism that they possess misogynistic elements. In regards to Mourning, critic S. Georgia Nugent explains that “the representation of the woman’s sexual satisfaction or initiation is displaced and suppressed; in fact, it is completely unclear whether there has even been a scene of initiation.” Later, when Peter angrily flees the house and spits out that it is no wonder Orin killed himself, “O’Neill effects an important transposition, which manages to equate or replace criminal activity with sexual activity. The punishment which might indeed be meted out to the woman on the grounds of her implication in multiple deaths is here seen as merited on the grounds of her participation in sexual relations.”
Critic Susan Harris Smith also looks at Lavinia in depth, focusing on feminism and her body in particular. She begins by noting that Lavinia only becomes a classically tragic figure when she sublimates the “natural” and “female” parts of herself and gives into the Mannon furies at the end. O’Neill clearly “privileges the sexual asceticism and patriarchal structure of Puritanism because those are the contexts in which Lavinia is ennobled through her final renunciation of a private physical and emotional wellbeing when she capitulates to the Mannons’ constituted authority.” In terms of Lavinia’s body, it is uniquely gendered and she has to choose between her father’s androgynous, sterile body and her mother’s problematized sexuality. In bulk of the play, and, importantly, at the end, Lavinia’s whole body is her father’s “repressive moralism” but above the neck she is her mother’s unfettered sensuality. Once she has her sexual awakening of sorts at the Islands, she essentially becomes her mother, ridding of her father’s associations with her body. However, Smith writes “it is important to note that the audience is directed to see Lavinia as a replica of Christine and that O’Neill describes her through the male characters’ eyes only as a sexual being, and not as what they take to be her ‘real’ self, which is associated with her father’s physique.” We only see her body through this male gaze, which puts her squarely in the tradition of Marie and Christine before her –other women who “belonged” to the Mannon men and household. Finally, when Lavinia renounces life and love and takes up permanent residence in the dark recesses of the Mannon house, it is not to embrace her newly liberated body; rather, “in a state of dried-up androgyny and completely disempowered, Lavinia enters a tomb of her own, finally unable to transcend the death-dealing oppositions of masculinity and femininity.” She does not own her own body or her own voice, she no longer mounts a challenge to authority or expectations, and she gives in to the patriarchal system; this is all validated by O’Neill in his elevation of her to a tragic heroine.
