EDDIE “…. (calls) Hey B, what’re you doin’ there?”
This gives the impression that Beatrice and Eddie aren’t getting along. There are a lot of differences between the first meeting between Eddie and Catherine and the meeting between Eddie and Beatrice. In the meeting between Eddie and Catherine he compliments her on her looks but he does not compliment Beatrice on her looks in their meeting. This suggests that Eddie doesn’t find Beatrice as attractive as Catherine.
We also get the suggestion that Eddie and Beatrice are having problems in bed. Eddie says to Catherine about the arrival of her cousins ‘.... I’ll end up on the floor with you, and they’ll be in our bed.’ This also suggests that Eddie is unconsciously afraid that Marco and Rodolpho will find out that they have not had sex for a long time. There are also a few clues the Beatrice suspects all is not well between Eddie and Catherine. Beatrice knows that Eddie’s attraction for Catherine is too strong, this is why she tries to encourage Catherine to be more independent she says to Eddie “I don’t understand you, she’s seventeen years old, you gonna keep her in the house all her life”. We as the audience can see that Beatrice knows that Eddie and Catherine’s relationship is too strong for a relationship between an uncle and his neice.
There is a strong contrast in the way that Eddie greets both Catherine and Beatrice. When he comes in, the first person he talks to is Catherine. The first thing he says is “Where you goin’ all dressed up?”, when he says that the audience think that Catherine is going out somewhere and Eddie is the overprotective fatherly figure. However, Catherine starts to flirt with Eddie, she runs her hand over her skirt and says ‘you like it?’. She is trying to impress Eddie. The flirting suggests that their relationship is more of a boyfriend and girlfriend type relationship than a relationship between an uncle and his niece. Eddie continues to compliment Catherine and she tries to impress him further. Eddie then hears about Catherine’s new job. Immediately he disapproves even before hearing what sort of job it is:
BEATRICE She’s got a job
Pause EDDIE looks at CATHERINE then back to BEATRICE
EDDIE What job she’s gonna finish school
This again shows that Eddie is overprotective like a father, however he is too overprotective, this is because he doesn’t want her to leave shool, he wants her to remain a child. Eventually Eddie tells her she can have the job but he says it reluctantly, he says she ‘will leave’ home then visit ‘once a month, than Christmas and new years finally’. Even though Catherine has got Eddie’s approval she is distraught that she hasn’t pleased him:
CATHERINE (grasping his arm to reassure him and to erase the accusation)
No, please!
Catherine sees Eddie as a father and that is the reason she is always trying to please him. We know that Eddie is angry with the fact that Catherine has got a job however, he takes his anger out on Beatrice not Catherine:
EDDIE (To Beatrice – strangely and quickly resentful) You lived in a house
all your life, what do you know about it? You never worked in your
life.
In the first scene we can see that Eddie would much rather upset Beatrice then Catherine. That isn’t good for Eddie and Beatrice’s marriage and we can see that their marriage is getting weaker. However, the relationship of Eddie and Catherine is getting stronger. Catherine sees Eddie as a father and is always trying to impress and please him. Eddie sees his and Catherine’s relationship as more than just an uncle and niece relationship. The audience can see all this in the first scene.
Eddie is the head of a Sicilian household in New York. The area is full of Sicilian immigrants. We know that Eddie is proud of his Sicilian heritage. He is a hardworking man who is generous and proud. He is the man of the house. We know that he is the most important member of the household because Catherine had to get his permission before she accepted the job. Also his community follow the Sicilian code of honour. These rules are considered more important than the rules of the country. Eddie goes on to explain about what happens if the code of honour is broken. He says a boy snitched on his uncle to the immigration office. The boy was beaten up by his father and brothers and treated as an outcast by the whole of his family. This is Arthur Miller showing the consequence of breaking the Sicilian code of honour. When this is said I suspected that the Sicilian code of honour would be broken during the course of the story. Although we don’t see it in the first scene, near the end of the story, Eddie breaks the Sicilian code of honour because of his jealousy of Rodolpho and Catherine’s love. Eddie could have prevented all of this if he had just admitted his feelings to himself, but he didn’t.
Eddie sees Catherine as a child even though she is nearly an adult. He wants her to remain in school so that their relationship remains close. Eddies relationship with Catherine is fine when she is a child as she belongs to him and nobody else can get in the way of their closeness. However, he cannot have that sort of closeness with a grown woman, which Catherine is, unless he is in a sexual relationship with her. That is the reason that he wants her to remain a child, so that he doesn’t have to accept the fact that he has sexual feelings for her. In the first scene Miller shows that Eddie still thinks of Catherine being a baby and in this first the audience also realise that Eddie and Catherine’s relationship will start to disintegrate as Catherine grows into a mature young woman.
The play would have ended in tragedy with or without the arrival of Marco and Rodolpho as there were no other possible endings to the story. It couldn’t end with Eddie and Catherine getting together as it would be morally unjust. In the story Eddie’s feelings for Catherine were too strong. The tragedy could have if Eddie had just admitted his feelings for Catherine to himself, but the influence of his culture and personality didn’t allow him to. Also if he did admit his feelings there would have been no point to the story. The arrival of Marco and Rodolpho just speeded things up a notch or two. But really even if they didn’t turn up the story would have ended in tragedy with the inevitable death of Eddie.