A View From The Bridge.

A View From The Bridge

In the opening stage directions Miller sets the play, very precisely, in Red Hook, “the slum that faces the bay on the seaward side of Brooklyn Bridge…the gullet of New York”. The Carbones’ living and dining room is the focus of the action, but the street outside must also be partly represented so that the audience is immediately made aware of both the private and the public contexts in which the action is set: quite literally, we see Eddie and Beatrice’s place in the community. While a high degree of realism is appropriate in the design of the Carbone family home, the street itself need only be suggested.

The precision of the setting is also reflected in the language of the play. While Alfieri, the first character whom the audience meets, speaks a recognisable standard American English, the Carbones (and their cousins) speak in conversational Brooklynese, the patterns and rhythms of which reveal the lack of formal education and the deprivation experienced by the characters (“Listen, I could tell you things about Louis which you wouldn’t wave to him no more”). This is a language, which is direct, vigorous and expressive both of what the characters mean and of what they are unable to communicate directly. This may be, of course, because they lack the language to express themselves fully or because they do not wish to put their ideas into words (as if frequently the case between Eddie, Beatrice and Catherine).

By the end of Alfieri first speech, the audience knows that the events they are watching will be “bloody” in their conclusion. They share Alfieri’s perspective, looking back on the events, which he narrates. This perspective in turn heightens their sympathies for the other characters of the play as their story is told in what is, in effect, a series of flashbacks; it further serves to heighten the sense of tragedy that develops as the play progresses. For despite Alfieri’s best efforts, the events that follow are inevitable and reminiscent of the characters’ homeland, Italy.

It is Eddie ...

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It is Eddie Carbone who is identified by Alfieri as the hero of this particular tragedy. Eddie is fundamentally a simple, straightforward man who “worked on the piers when there was work, he brought home his pay, and he lived”; he is seen to be humorous, kind and generous in anticipating the arrival, illegally, of his wife Beatrice’s cousins. He is also, however, over-protective of his orphaned niece, Catherine, in her increasing maturity. It is this urge to protect Catherine, to keep her from discovering her independence that makes him increasingly sensitive to the presence of Beatrice’s cousins and to Rodolfo in particular, to whom Catherine rapidly becomes attracted.

Eddie’s wife, Beatrice, is aware of a deeper, more disturbing reason for Eddie’s protectiveness towards Catherine. It soon becomes clear that she is unhappy about Eddie’s attitude to his niece and, initially, she is able to persuade him to allow Catherine to start work when the opportunity arises. But the problems between Eddie and Beatrice go deeper: Beatrice has “other worries” about when she is “gonna be a wife again”. The physical, sexual part of the Carbones’ marriage has broken down and, despite challenging Eddie over this, Beatrice is unable to make him face why this might be, let alone make him admit his weakness to himself, and she remains powerless as a result.

For it is Marco and Rodolfo’s arrival at the Carbones’ that is the catalyst for Catherine finally achieving adulthood. Previously she has been supported by the Carbones as she has worked her way through school, doting on Eddie, and has been, in effect, their surrogate daughter. But her finding work and her growing attraction to Rodolfo, which leads to their planned marriage, brings out an increasingly aggressive reaction in Eddie that starts to break the family apart. Catherine becomes more rebellious and independent and Beatrice becomes increasingly frustrated as she realises how events will go. For Beatrice has realised what she says to Eddie as the climax of the tragedy approaches that he wants “somethin’ else, Eddie, and you can never have her!”

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