The fact that the new film is being filmed for release in Germany and other smaller European countries shows that it is not a major production and we can therefore expect that the actors will all be quite low paid and not very popular, as all major productions tend to be released in English. Slowly, the fact that Lesley is actually quite a poor actress begins to unravel as new information slowly crops up in the monologue to show that she is really less and less important, despite her attempts to cheerfully cover it up.
The director of the film, a German man named Gunther, does not communicate directly with Lesley at first and instead uses his assistant to pass messages between them, showing that Lesley probably isn’t regarded as important as she likes to believe. It is only later that Gunther finally speaks directly with Lesley, and that is when he is sleeping with her after they have finished the movie. Taking advantage of Lesley sexually appears to be very much the production staff’s main intention throughout the monologue, as they seem to spend a lot of time on roles where she is either walking around the scene in a swimsuit or getting undressed. This makes us wonder whether Lesley is really being taken seriously at all, or whether the production staff are just getting a bit of a laugh out of her by making her do things that do not fit the part that she thinks she is playing. Lesley however, takes it very seriously and often makes comments to Gunther suggesting that she does not think Travis would be the sort of person to do such things (“Is Travis the type to go topless?”)
Throughout the monologue Lesley quite excessively mentions her different ‘abilities’ that she can put to use for whatever character she is playing. These do not impress Nigel, Gunther’s assistant, though, as Lesley never seems to have the skills that they are looking for. For example “I’m about to commit suicide. I’ve just been told. You don’t water-ski”. Lesley offers to try to learn to water-ski but Nigel does not seem to think it is worth their time and effort. In the end they get a woman from a nearby aqua club to come and do the scene.
This far over-rated opinion that Lesley has of herself is similar to that of Irene in A Lady of Letters, but at the end of the monologue when the play is over we see her very lonely and even begin to feel some pity for her for the first time. This loneliness could also be compared a lot to Irene, who, towards the end of her monologue, begins to accept that she was has been quite a lonely person, and that has lead her to write some of those extreme letters. She does, however, end up being happy with new friends in prison whereas Lesley ends the monologue where she started, with no improvement. She is still a failed actress who has deceived herself into believing she is quite successful. This could be compared to Susan in Bed Among the Lentils who, at the end, finds herself in a different, yet equally depressing situation as she began.
Susan is the vicar’s wife at a small community church somewhere near Leeds. She finds herself trapped between trying to live a life that she is proud of and enjoys, and taking up the responsibilities that are expected of the wife of a vicar.
Susan spends much of the monologue feeling sorry for herself as she reminisces over things that have happened which have particularly made her think about the situation her life is currently in.
We almost immediately begin to feel sorry for Susan as she describes how her husband does not help the situation and how she is particularly angered by what she describes as the ‘fan club’ – a group of members of the church community who often stick their noses into the vicar’s personal lives further than they perhaps should. They become an enemy to both us and Susan as the monologue develops by escalating many of the problems, such as the time in church where Susan becomes particularly stressed due to one of the ‘fan club’ placing what she describes as the ‘HAZFLOR’ arrangement in a position where Geoffrey, the vicar, could hurt himself during the mass. This incident results in Susan, under the influence of alcohol, falling over and hitting her head on the ground. This is seemingly to the fan club’s delight as they begin to have a large discussion over her treatment, rush the vicar back home to his wounded wife, and ‘invade’ the vicarage pretending to be caring for Susan, when in fact they seem more bothered about having a good snoop around the house to see how they live.
Susan begins to turn to dark comforts in an attempt to add some fun to her life and make herself feel a bit better. We start to realise that Susan is heavily dependant on alcohol, particularly when Geoffrey is panicking because the communion wine has being drunk, and it is quite obvious who the culprit is.
Perhaps even worse than the alcohol, we later learn that Susan has been making visits into Leeds and sleeping with an Asian grocer.
Whilst we still feel somewhat sorry for Susan, we realise that she is in the wrong with her alcohol abuse and cheating on her husband. Susan herself also seems to know that what she is doing is wrong, as she talks about it mainly with a lot of regret but does not seem to be in total control of the situation.
Towards the end of the monologue we learn that Susan is going to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, which clearly shows that she is trying to get help for her situation, however we feel sorry for the fact that she is only there because Ramesh Ramesh, the grocer, has persuaded her to go and her husband is simply exploiting her problems in public to improve his own personal appeal and career prospects in the Church.
Many people described in the monologue simply see Susan as a pitiful vicar’s wife who has no life and has been pushed to the edge, resulting in alcohol addictions and depression. Many of those people exploit that though, and this simply leaves Susan in even more of a sorry state.
Our image of Susan contrasts a lot to our image of Lesley, as Lesley mainly annoys the reader as she obviously believes she is more important than she really is, and very rarely accepts herself for what she really is. This is far different to Susan who is very depressed and spends most of the day getting herself down. Her life has degraded into such a sorry state that the reader cannot help but feel sorry for her, despite some of the problems being her own fault for not talking to people and simply trying to conceal it with drink.
Irene Ruddock, in A Lady of Letters could perhaps be seen as a combination of the situations that the two other characters are in. While she is a woman who is having her problems in life and is quite lonely (similar to Susan), she tries to tell herself that the situation is better than it really is and writes letters pretending to be of some importance in society; comparable to Lesley who also believes she is quite an important figure.
Irene is a middle-aged woman living on her own in what appears to be a typical sub-urban area. The monologue starts off by telling us how she likes to write letters. We here Irene describe, with a lot of pride, some of the recent letters she has written to various people to complain about something she has seen or something she wants improving. The letters start off being quite silly and make Irene out to be a typical nosey resident who will complain to people about the smallest of matters, however they soon develop into far more serious and evil matters, ending with the malicious letter she sends to her neighbours thinking they are mistreating the ‘kiddy’ when, in fact, he has died from leukaemia.
Irene seems to believe that people take her seriously and that her letters will have some sort of effect, when in reality we know that the replies she gets are probably pre-written messages and nothing will really be done about her complaints, such as the one to the owners of the cemetery because she caught the burial staff smoking behind a hedge, and her letter to the queen about the dog excrement outside of Buckingham Palace on her trip down to London.
The people who she writes to probably see her as an overly-nosey woman who just wants to try and stir up trouble by complaining about the smallest of matters.
We begin to see the letter writing as her way of keeping in communication with people, and this perhaps makes her feel less lonely as she tries to tell herself that she is not a depressed woman living on her own, when we realise that she is.
She seems to live with memories of her late mother, and we discover that a reason for her letter writing could be that her mother bought the pen that she uses (“Mother bought it me the last time she was able to get over to Harrogate. It’s been a real friend”).
Up to this point, the reader feels sorry for Irene, but that soon changes as she begins to talk about her neighbours who have just moved in across the road. At first it seems that they are quite bad parents, going by Irene’s description of them, and we feel that she has a right to complain. Later, however, Irene starts to describe her visit from the police and we start to realise that she has been writing far worse letters than we originally believed. Following the letter to the neighbours she is given a warning from the police that she will be put in prison if she sends any more letters but she defies this warning when she writes a letter about the policeman in her street who she believes has been having an affair whilst on duty.
She describes how she was put in prison, and at this point the reader, whose image of Irene has significantly changed direction, does not feel much sympathy for her as the letters she has recently written are well deserving of a prison sentence. We begin to realise, though, that Irene is actually enjoying her time in prison as she starts to be able to socialise with people, try out new things and generally enjoy her life again. She describes how some of the other women have been teaching her to get back in line with modern society, for example when they are teaching her how to swear (“Only you got it wrong. It’s not ‘fuck-up’….It’s fuck off”).
This newfound enjoyment in prison is testament to just how lonely Irene really was at home. For someone to actually enjoy life in prison more than they did outside of it, shows that their life must have been in quite a bad state and we therefore once again begin to feel sorry for Irene’s position, but relieved and happy for her now that she is finally getting some happiness into her life.
Irene’s story is unique out of the three that I have discussed from Talking Heads, as it is the only one with a happy ending. Both Susan and Lesley find themselves in the same situation at the end of the monologue as they did at the beginning. Lesley is still a failed actress and Susan still feels that her life has been wasted, whereas Irene has found happiness in her life and made new friends, changing her entire personality from what it was at the beginning.
All of the monologues in Talking Heads share some of the same emotions, such as loneliness and depression and through the majority of the monologues all of the characters are in similar situations. Our perception of these people is very different however, mainly because they all see themselves in different ways and go about their lives in different ways.
Susan finds herself suffering from deep depression all of the way through the monologue and therefore leads us to feel sorry for her, but a little disgusted when she tries to combat that depression by having an affair and making her life even worse by becoming an alcoholic.
Lesley has a very over-rated opinion of herself and we therefore see her in a much different light for most of the way through the monologue as she appears stuck up and self-obsessed, however there are times where she gives away the fact that she is a lonely woman and a failure in her career and we occasionally do feel sorry for her situation.
Irene is similar to Lesley in that she believes she is an important figure in society, and her petty letters lead us to think that she is just a nosey woman who gets enjoyment out of annoying other people and complaining about stupid things. However later in the monologue we realise that she is in much the same situation as Susan; lonely and depressed, so at the end we are left feeling almost guilty for our early perceptions of her and glad that she has managed to turn her life around.
In conclusion, through Talking Heads, Alan Bennett has explored people’s use of perception to show how the way one person thinks of themselves can be far different from what other people see, and how both opinions can be wrong.
Many of the characters deceive themselves at some point, and quite often the reader is left with a strong negative opinion of that character because of what they have done, despite this being linked with their poor living situation and therefore not really their entire fault. Many of the monologues leave the reader feeling some guilt for the early perceptions of the characters, as we see towards the end of the monologue that they can be good people inside, but just need a chance to have fun, happiness and success in their lives.
