How does Alan Bennett make 'A Cream Cracker under the Settee' Such a moving and successful piece of drama, given the limitations its form imposes?

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How does Alan Bennett make ‘A Cream Cracker under the Settee’ Such a moving and successful piece of drama, given the limitations its form imposes?

Doris, the 75 year old house-proud woman is the main character, the only character in fact in Alan Bennett’s dramatic monologue ‘A Cream Cracker Under the Settee’. This play is divided into four scenes, each of which are demarcated by blackout. These four scenes show the passage of time throughout one day in the life of Doris, and changes of room and position.

Given the limitations its form imposes the play is a successful piece of drama. One of the limitations is that there is only one character, so there cannot be any character conflicts e.g. a fight or an argument. This could however, be used as a way of showing that Doris is lonely. This is one of the ways in which the writer manipulates our feelings about Doris. As she is in her 70’s it would not be practical to have her doing her own stunts (probably the reason why we don’t see the accident,) although they could have got a stunt-woman or used sound effects. I think that the main reason why we don’t see the accident is because it would have given too much away and the writer wants us to keep guessing. As the play is quite short: there are only four scenes. If it were longer we might have seen what happened after Doris’ death. Again I think this is done to keep you guessing. The final limitation I know of is that there are only two locations in which the play is set. I think that this is linked to Doris’ injury because if you think about it, it wouldn’t be right to have a 75 year old woman with a leg injury running around the house.

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In the first scene of the play, Doris is sat in her arm-chair. We begin to get hints about Doris’ injury. We find out that Doris has a cleaner called Zulema. As Doris is house-proud we find out that Zulema isn’t up to Doris’ standards, she comments that ‘Zulema doesn’t dust she half dusts’. We also find out a bit about Doris’ fear of going into Stafford House. We know that Doris was married to a man named Wilfred from her looking at her wedding photo. Doris is very organised but Wilfred wasn’t because he never did anything he said ...

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