Summary
Teddy and Sam are sitting together. Sam asks Teddy what he thought of MacGregor and Teddy replies that he liked him. Sam pauses, and tells Teddy he was always his favorite lad; when he received the letter from America he was touched. He then whispers that Teddy was also his mother’s favorite. He asks Teddy if he might consider staying longer, but Lenny comes in.
Lenny opens the cupboard and asks where his cheese roll is. Teddy promptly replies that he ate it. Lenny is staggered and tells him he has to apologize. Teddy explains that he took it on purpose; he was hungry and he ate it.
Lenny looks at him, bowled over by his brother’s vindictiveness. He comments that they are in no-holds-barred territory. Contemplating Teddy, he says he has grown sulky over the last six years. It is surprising that he became less forthcoming in that lovely environment, not more. The family looks up to him and they were looking forward to his coming home. Sure, their life is less rich than his, but they are all a unit and Teddy is a part of it. They should expect more graciousness from him, more generosity, more of an open mind. He concludes by asking if they have it. Teddy replies yes.
Joey enters the room and Lenny asks how he got on upstairs. Joey awkwardly says not bad. When he says they did not go all the way, Lenny is shocked. He knows that Joey and Ruth were up there for two hours and he wonders if she is a tease. He turns to Teddy and tells him clearly his wife is a tease. Teddy wonders if Joey doesn’t have the right touch. Lenny laughs and says he is irresistible. He urges Joey to tell the story of meeting two girls and having sex with them.
Joey says quietly that sometimes you can be happy even if you don’t go the whole hog. Lenny stares at him.
Max and Sam enter and Max asks if the whore is still in bed. When he hears what she did to Joey, he is angry. He asks Teddy if she does that to him too and he says no. Sam interjects that Ruth is Teddy’s wife.
Max gets a brilliant idea. He says maybe they should have a woman in the house, and believes that maybe they will ask her to stay. Teddy replies that she is not well and they have to get to the children. He continues to passively aver this, even when Max says she can have more children here.
Max muses that they will have to pay her. Lenny wonders where the money will come from and Joey says he will buy her clothes. Max is pleased and says everyone will help out because they have a sense of democracy here. Lenny is wary because it seems like she is the sort of woman who is used to nice things. Max brushes his concerns aside and warns him to focus more on the human considerations than the economic ones. They ought to treat her well because she is family.
Teddy refuses to give any money and Max criticizes him.
Lenny shares an idea: why doesn’t he take her down to Green Street and put her on the game? It can be for short hours because they don’t want her out all night. They won’t wear her out because she will have obligations at home too. There are other flats in the area Lenny could put her in. Joey bursts out that he doesn’t want to share her with yobs and Max asks his Lenny quizzically if his clients are yobs. Lenny assures them he has distinguished clientele.
Max ponders if she is not up to the mark and asks Teddy why she was with Joey for two hours and did not go all the way. Teddy surmises it was just loveplay, but Max is not convinced.
Lenny believes she will be fine, and becomes excited when he suggests that Teddy take cards over with her info to America so they can have clients there too. He could be their representative in the states. Teddy haltingly says she would get old quickly. Max cheerfully and quickly responds that health service is good nowadays and she will have the time of her life.
Ruth comes downstairs, smiles, and sits in front of the silent family. Teddy slowly tells her the family has invited her to stay as a guest of sorts and he does not mind because they can manage until she comes back. She says that is nice but she might be too much trouble. Max eagerly explains they haven't had a woman in the house since Jessie died and they never wanted any other one because she would tarnish Jessie’s image, but Ruth is lovely and is family. Ruth is touched.
Teddy explains she would have to pull her weight. Lenny volunteers that they would get her a flat but she would live at the home with them; she would just pop into the flat for a few hours a night. Ruth informs them she would want it to have at least three rooms and a bathroom. When Lenny tries to tell her she doesn't need that, she remains firm. She then asks if she will have conveniences like a maid and Lenny agrees. When he says they would finance her in the beginning and she would pay them back, she refuses and says it must be considered an investment.
Ruth also asks if they would supply her wardrobe, and suggests she draw up an inventory of what she needs and they sign it; it would be a real contract. Ruth believes this could be a workable arrangement.
Suddenly Sam lunges forward and bursts out that MacGregor had Jessie in the back of his car. He collapses on the floor but does not appear to be dead. Max points at Sam and says he has a diseased imagination.
Ruth states that it is an attractive idea but that they will shake on it later. Teddy looks at Sam and then Ruth, telling her he will leave her case and will go up the road to the Underground. Max gives him tips on the right way to go and tells him it was wonderful to see him. Teddy feels the same. Max gives Teddy a picture of himself for the grandchildren. Teddy bids his brothers farewell. Ruth calls out for him not to be a stranger. Teddy departs.
It is silent and the men stand while Ruth continues to sit. Joey walks over, leans his head in her lap, and she touches his head. Max, becoming disturbed, walks around them. He turns to Lenny and stammers that Ruth thinks he is too old. He becomes agitated and comments that Ruth thinks she will just have Joey all the time but she has to work. He wonders if she knows what they are getting at, if she has it clear. Suddenly he wonders if she is using them, that she won’t be adaptable. He falls to his knees and moans and sobs. He crawls to her and looks up and whimpers that he is not an old man. He tells her to kiss him. She touches Joey’s head and Lenny watches.
Analysis
The end of The Homecoming can be somewhat of a shock. Teddy departs for America, leaving his wife with his father and brothers, who plan to whore her out. And Ruth seems to be absolutely fine with this, sending her husband off with a quotidian request not to be a stranger and fully settling into her Mother-Whore role. Certainly this is strange and repulsive, but as with all of Pinter’s work, there is more than meets the eye.
The first thing to discuss is gender roles. This is, of course, a very male play. Max is the patriarch with a brother and three sons, nearly all of whom possess traditionally masculine characteristics such as anger, violent tendencies, the desire for dominance and power, arrogance, ambition, and more. Of the two female characters, one is only a memory controlled by the males. The other will be discussed momentarily, but clearly Pinter created an environment characterized by an excess of testosterone and its concomitants of rivalry and barely-concealed aggression. However, within that environment the male characters find themselves frustrated. Max is relegated to cooking and other domestic tasks, for example, and laments this over and over again. He criticizes Jessie and constantly talks about his sacrifices for the family, claiming he suffered the birth pangs of three sons. Critic Mireia Aragay sees this comment as “banishing the mother figure from the scene in the ultimate homosocial fantasy in which males beget males.”
As for Teddy, a younger patriarch who has three sons just like his father, he may generally want to impress his working-class family, but ultimately he seeks his father’s approval. Lenny complicates things, though, because he has assumed the mantle of preserving the dynamics of the family. He sternly tells his brother, “we do make up a unit, Teddy, and you’re an integral part of it. When we all sit round the backyard having a quiet gander at the night sky, there’s always an empty chair standing in the circle, which is in fact yours…we do expect a bit of grace…Have we got it? is that what you’ve given us?” (65). Teddy assents without an argument. And then there is the undeniable fact that Teddy gives up without a fight when the family wants to keep Ruth. He will return home to his own completely male household, leaving his wife to minister to the needs of the family. Teddy’s masculinity is less outwardly aggressive but is still manifest.
So what about Ruth, then? Is Pinter a misogynist? While it wouldn't be right to call this a feminist play, Ruth is not exactly a victim. She is in fact a complex character who is not content to be an object; the final scene, when she sits in a place of dominance, says a great deal. Earlier in the play Ruth kept Lenny on his toes, did not allow the family’s criticisms of her to ruffle her, and chose to engage in sexual behavior with Joey and Lenny of her own volition. Here at the end of the play, rather than be horrified at the proposition put before her, she becomes an active participant. She negotiates, and as critic Thomas Postelwait writes, “Ruth enters the all-male home, left womanless since Jessie’s death, and takes over the male domain. She collaborates with the ghost, a specter in the minds of the men…she is in full control of her own inner space as well as the empty-headed images that the men project onto her.” John Warner agrees, noting that her sexual effect on the men “is also debilitating. Rather than expanding into full manhood, they exhibit alarmingly regressive tendencies.” At the close of the play Ruth seems to have her flat, a maid, clothes, and a good deal of control.
Despite all of this, Ruth is still bound to the Mother-Whore dichotomy. The men in the play see both Jessie and Ruth as one or the other, either lauding their role as mother or referring to them as a slut, bitch, tart, etc. Ruth is clearly going to be both, taking care of the men at home but working as a prostitute for a few hours a day. Aragay explains, “Although at the end of the play Ruth sits in the centre, with Max and Joey kneeling and Lenny standing by her side, it is a position that continues to facilitate rather than subvert the operation of male homosocial desire.” As with all Pinter plays, there is a great deal of ambiguity and complexity, and we never quite know what did and will happen. Indeed, there is even the question of whether or not Ruth is actually going to become a whore and stay with the family. Pinter himself commented, “She does not become a harlot” and “She can do what she wants, and it is not at all certain that she will go off to Greek Street.” Critic Penelope Prentice states succinctly, “the best textual evidence indicates that Ruth will neither remain nor agree to their proposal.” She talks in conditional terms, using terms like “would want” “would have to;” puts off the signing of an actual contract, and “smells” funny according to Max, who perceives that she is using them and is not going to stay.
