Summary
Act I
It is two nights after Ezra’s murder and the house is wreathed in shadow and moonlight. Josiah Borden, his wife Emma, the Congregation minister Everett Hulls, his wife, and Dr. Joseph Blake arrive at the house. Borden is the manager of the Mannon shipping company and is a shrewd nan of sixty; his wife is a pure New Englander. Hills is well-fed and snobbish, but timid. Blake is kindly but self-important. The townsfolk discuss Christine’s queerness and Lavinia’s cold mien. They wonder why Ezra wasn’t laid out in the town hall rather than here, and remember him as a great man.
Borden sighs that this is a queer thing, almost like fate, to have happened. Mrs. Hills says tartly that pride goeth before a fall but Blake rebukes her. He confirms that Ezra had heart problems and that angina can strike without warning. He whispers privately to Borden that he thinks “love” killed Ezra; it’s only natural since he’d been away for a long time and Christine is so beautiful. Borden smiles salaciously.
After the townsfolk depart Christine comes outside and stands on the steps, looking out as if she wished she could fly away somewhere. Hazel approaches her and sweetly asks after her. Christine is distracted but then tells Hazel she wants her to marry Orin. She adds that Hazel must keep Vinnie away from Orin because she isn’t right. Hazel says softly that Vinnie did love her father so very much. Christine marvels at how pure of heart Hazel is and comments that if only everyone could remain that way. She says they ought to wait for Orin inside.
At that moment Orin comes up the driveway with Lavinia and Peter. He looks very much like his father but his visage is a “refined, weakened version of the dead man’s” (286). He is thin and his complexion sallow, and is at times slouchy or stiff. He wears a mustache and thus looks like Brant.
Orin wonders aloud where his mother is and muses that the house seems so ghostly and dead. Lavinia tells him that it is indeed a tomb right now. She tells Peter to go ahead and Orin asks if she is happy to see him. She says of course she is but is a bit perturbed that Orin seems so emotionless about Ezra’s death. He bursts out that he is so used to death and his mind is full of ghosts. He sneers that she wanted him to be a hero and she ought to get used to him now because “murdering doesn’t improve one’s manners!” (288). He changes the subject and asks about the Brant she mentioned in her letters. Lavinia says nothing explicit but adds that he must be on his guard and not to let his mother baby him. He is bewildered and annoyed to hear that their conflict is still going on.
At that moment Christine comes out and she and Orin happily embrace. He wonders why she seems so different but she simply kisses him. Lavinia and Christine exchange looks of hatred as she tells Orin to go inside.
Christine pulls Lavinia aside and tells her she does not understand her attitude because she has done as Lavinia asked and got rid of Brant and planned to be a good wife as long as Ezra lived. She asks why Lavinia stares at her so fixedly and begins to fear her daughter. She stammers awkwardly while Lavinia says nothing, saying she must have found something in that box but she misunderstands and she ought not to jump to conclusions. She demands Lavinia answer her when she is talking and asks fervently what she is going to do. Lavinia remains rigid and silent and walks away into the yard. Christine stands still in dread and hears Orin calling for her.
Act II
The Mannon sitting room, a bleak and imposing place completely lacking in intimacy. Portraits of Ezra Mannon’s grandfather in the uniform of an officer in Washington’s army, Abe Mannon, his grandfather’s wife, Abe’s wife, and another man wearing clothing of a prosperous ship-owner adorn the walls. They all have mask-like visages.
Hazel and Peter are in this room, discussing how hard this homecoming must be for Orin. Christine and Orin enter, and Orin is asking her suspiciously what she was doing. He is then ashamed of himself and tells her she must sit down and rest. Hazel tells Orin he must rest as well.
Orin enjoys his mother and Hazel coddling him. Orin also comments bitterly that Vinnie only coddles Father. He then says how odd it is in this house and it seems like Father isn't really dead. He shudders.
He then looks to his mother and comments that she has indeed changed and is more beautiful and younger-looking than ever. Christine forces a laugh. Lavinia stands in the doorway and looks at them. Orin turns to Hazel and asks if she remembers when he waved her handkerchief but then brutally muses on soldiers butting and bayoneting and murdering; they ought to stop waving around handkerchiefs. Hazel is shocked at his words and Peter admonishes him. Orin apologizes.
Lavinia’s voice rings out, calling for Orin to come see Father. Christine angrily says he needs a minute and Orin agrees. All that Lavinia remarks is that Orin should remember what she said. Christine is frightened at these words.
Hazel and Peter say their goodbyes and depart. Orin asks his mother why she has taken such a fancy to Hazel, especially as she never seemed to like her before. Christine explains that before she was jealous but now she only wants him to be happy. Ori, in turn,n bursts out that he was flirting with Hazel to make Christine jealous and she shouldn’t be trying to marry him off the moment he gets home. He accuses her of not writing to him and then brings up Brant.
Christine is prepared for this and deflects his question. She smiles that Orin has always been hers and Vinnie always her father’s, and she and Orin had their own special world. Orin smiles happily and laughs that no Mannons were allowed. Christine says she wants to make up for the injustice he suffered and how Ezra hated him because she loved Orin more than him. Orin is a little surprised but then declares he is glad his father is dead.
After a moment his suspicions return and he asks about Brant. Christine replies that Lavinia is a bit insane now and is too brooding and worried about nothing. She fell in love with Brant but he was after someone else. Orin interjects to ask if it is she, and Christine laughs that she is an old married woman. In fact, she adds, Brant really only wanted in the family so he could get a better clipper ship.
Orin is happy to hear all of this. Christine angrily blames Vinnie as the one who sent Orin to war and that she’s gone crazy thinking Brant is Marie Brantome’s son. Orin begins to get riled up thinking about Marie and Christine hurriedly tells him not to be so much like his father. She continues with her accusations against Vinnie and tells Orin that Vinnie has made up things about Christine visiting Brant in New York when she really went to see Grandfather. Orin wavers but embraces her after she begins to weep hysterically. She sobs that Vinnie thinks she even poisoned Ezra and Orin is shocked. She clings to him and says she is terrified of her daughter. Orin tries to calm her and says he loves her more than anything in the world.
Christine feels better and embraces him and tells him how much she loves him. Orin tells her sternly that he can forgive anything except for the thing about Brant, and that he would use his knowledge of how to kill in a situation such as that. Christine is filled with terror for Brant and admonishes her son for being cruel and horrible. He is immediately contrite and sadly mentions her lack of letters again. He explains how he felt crazy and how he longed to be with her. He asks if she knows of the book Typee, which is about the South Sea Islands.
At this Christine jumps. Orin continues, detailing how someone let him borrow it and he read it over and over again and dreamed of only the two of them being there. It even seemed like Christine was the island. Christine listens longingly and sighs that if only he hadn't gone away. She strokes his hair and he muses on how wonderful it will be—Vinnie can marry Peter and the two of them will be on their own.
Lavinia enters and Christine senses her and then snaps at her. Lavinia simply tells Orin to go see Father’s body, and he complies. Christine orders Lavinia over to her and hisses at her that there is nothing she can do –Orin thinks she is crazy and she cannot shame the Mannon family by going to the police. She gloats that Orin cannot be convinced of her wickedness and how he’d always protect her. She becomes feverish and begs Lavinia to keep Orin out of this since he is sick and he only thinks about death. If anything happened to him, she declares, she’d kill herself. Lavinia’s eyes light up and she seems to want to say something, but she turns and walks away like a mechanical doll.
Christine watches her in terror and knows she has to warn Adam.
Analysis
The disturbing relationships in Mourning Become Electra continue to build on each other. Here readers get a sustained look at the near-incestuous relationship between Orin and Christine. Orin is clearly obsessed with his mother and is filled with murderous rage when he imagines she has a lover. In true Oedipal fashion, he despises his father but secretly envies him for being his mother’s husband. He dreams of being on an isolated island with only his mother and remembers with fondness the days of his childhood when it was only the two of them. For her part, Christine lavishes him with physical touches and manipulates him by reminding him of her love and their close relationship. Even though she is clearly in love with Brant, she is excessively close to her son and resents Ezra and Lavinia for pushing him to go to war and thus taking him away from her (which perhaps prompted her to seek out Adam in the first place). Both Orin and Christine speak of being “jealous” of the other’s attention to outsiders and cling to each other.
Critic Doris Alexander looks at O’Neill’s use of Freud in the play, noting that while the playwright said that he explicitly did not reference Freud, he did work with a psychologist, G.V. Hamilton, who with Kenneth Macgowan published the study What is Wrong with Marriage? In 1929. O’Neill read the sensational and almost immediately infamous book and its comments on familial relationships certainly play out in Mourning. Marriage discusses the destructiveness of Puritanism on love and marital relationships due to its warped ideas of sexuality, necessity of moral condemnation and punishment, prudishness, strict codes of behavior, etc. Lavinia’s strict Puritanism factors into her condemnation of her mother’s lover and the murder of Brant, which she refers to as “justice.” Orin also possesses a fierce Puritan conscience, which “drives him to suicide and drives his sister, ultimately, to a life of secluded torment.” Puritanism precludes O’Neill’s characters from enjoying sex and/or love.
Marriage also discusses Freud, and many of its passages resonate strongly in Mourning. Hamilton and Macgowan explain, “you get a mother complex, in most cases, because your mother loved your father too little and loved you too much. It was as though she said at your birth: ‘I don’t love my husband, so I’m going to concentrate all my affection on this man-child.’” This is eerily like what Christine tells Lavinia regarding her affection for Orin. Another observation the authors make is that men choose mates who look like their mother; this plays out in the fact that Marie, Christine, and Lavinia all possess the same gorgeous, copper-hued hair. Marie and Christine are both lively and sensuous; after Lavinia’s sexual awakening she looks just like her mother, which is when Orin propositions her. Ezra’s love for Marie as a mother figure may even point to why he loves Christine, who looks like the French nurse. Alexander writes, “thus, through her power as the primal mother image, Marie Brantome determines the loves of all the Mannon men through three generations.” Similarly, the text suggests that women choose men based off their father, and Lavinia admits that Brant reminds her of Ezra (239). She is reluctant to admit she has feelings for Brant, but it is clear she does and equally clear that he is a stand-in for Ezra.
Within these complicated attractions, O’Neill embeds his concept of fate and familial curse. He uses pattern and repetition to drive these ideas home: Orin’s homecoming is similar to that of his father’s; Lavinia has a sexual awakening that makes her like her mother. Indeed, the siblings “are tragic duplicates of their parents” and “Christine and Ezra are as much victims of their family background as are their children.” Ezra loves a woman like Marie but “his family also supplied him with a set of Puritan inhibitions that made it impossible for him to get along with such a woman.” The Mannon doom is “their inability to gain satisfaction in love. The murders and suicides of the play are only incidental expressions of the chief doom of the Mannons, their fated frustration in love.”
The South Sea Islands are intricately tied up in these ideas of sexuality, desire, dreams, and fate. Orin’s evocation of the islands as found in Melville’s Typee builds on Brant’s comments about such places; he tells Christine, “those Islands came to mean everything that wasn’t war, everything that was peace and warmth and security…There was no one there but you and me…The whole island was you” (300). The way Orin describes the islands and their conflation with Christine evoke the womb. There Orin would be warm and safe inside his mother, free from the pressures of the outside world and away from his mother. The islands are symbols of refuge, of a prelapsarian world devoid of crushing Puritans mores. It is no wonder every single main character dreams of going there or actually does make it there.
