A View From the Bridge

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A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE

ESSAY PREPARATION

Overlooking the docks area of Brooklyn is the massive Brooklyn Bridge, which spans New

York's East River and which joins the boroughs of Brooklyn and Manhattan.

In the title, Miller suggests he is giving the audience a view of the community which lies below

the bridge.

The title also suggests that the audience is given a panoramic view of the scene, much as a

captain of a ship has an all-round view from the vessel's bridge.

The action of the play takes place largely in an apartment in a tenement block in the Red Hook area

of Brooklyn.

In the play, Alfieri, the lawyer, describes the area as:

"the slum that faces the bay on the seaward side of Brooklyn Bridge"

and as

"the gullet of New York swallowing the tonnage of the world."

It was a socially deprived area, where succeeding generations of immigrants from Europe, both legal

and illegal, found a home and work.

There was a long-established Italian community in the area.

The Culture and Society of Red Hook.

Given the rather traditional values of Italian-American society in the middle of the twentieth century and the

fact that most of the men earned their living from hard physical labour in the dockyards and elsewhere, it is

not surprising that Red Hook was quite a raw, masculine and even macho society. Manhood, which

involved strength and aggression (and proving it) was very important. Women were expected to conform to

an image of purity and domestic virtue and, as Beatrice does, gain most of their satisfaction from cooking

and maintaining the household.

The men expected to be respected and obeyed as of right and the women had to submit to them in decision-

making. The influence of the Roman Catholic Church was strong and most people had traditional moral

views.

The family and the extended family were of major importance as was the community. Many of the families

were recent immigrants from Southern Italy, the original home of the Mafia, and family and blood ties were

often demonstrated through the practice of vendetta, that is the obligation on the rest of the family to take

revenge on anyone who insulted or harmed any of its members.

It was, therefore, a culture in which a man's reputation (for strength and honesty, for example) was crucial to

him and where any affront to a person's honour had to be avenged.

This may help you to understand the pressure that Eddie and Marco are under at the end of the play.

The Legal Background.

In the first 20 years of the Twentieth Century, over three million Italians emigrated to the U.S.A. to escape

from the poverty of their homeland and in the hope of a better life in America.

These were legal immigrants to America, but the local population grew increasingly hostile to the Italian

community. In the early 1920s the American government passed laws to restrict immigration and afterwards

only four thousand Italians were allowed to enter the U.S.A. legally each year.

Far more than this number were desperate to escape the poverty of their own country. Two such were the

'submarines', Marco and Rodolpho, cousins of Beatrice, who enter America illegally on the evening the play

opens.

One of the few ways an illegal immigrant could gain the right to remain in America legitimately was to marry

an American citizen. This sometimes meant that illegal immigrants married not for love, but simply to remain

in the country.

We can perhaps better understand Eddie's fears about Rodolpho when we know this

7. The Carbone Family's Background.

A playwright, unlike a novelist, cannot describe characters and situations to an audience. Details about

characters and their relationships have to be revealed gradually and subtly.

What, then, do we know about the Carbone family and the relationships within it?

The Carbones live in an apartment in a tenement building, at 441 Saxon Street, Brooklyn, which Miller

describes as a 'worker's flat, clean, sparse, homely.'

Eddie, aged 40, is a large, strong man who enjoys male pursuits and going bowling with his friends. He is a

longshoreman (i.e. he works in the docks).

Beatrice is a traditional 1950s housewife. She keeps the flat looking immaculate, cooks and, at least in the

early part of the play, dutifully defers to Eddie in everything. She stands up to Eddie much more as the
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action unfolds, and objects to his overprotective attitude to Catherine.

Catherine, Beatrice's attractive 17-year-old niece, had been adopted by Eddie and Beatrice when her parents

died. Catherine is very fond of Eddie but there is growing tension between them because of Catherine's wish

to start work and Eddie's desire to protect her from, as he sees them, the dangers of the adult world.

The Eddie - Beatrice - Catherine Triangle.

The relationship between these three is the fOcus of Act I. Eddie and Beatrice have obviously had a warm, ...

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