Twentieth century literature often portrays the relationship between men and women as deeply problematic. By comparing and contrasting three texts by Katherine Mansfield, Harold Pinter and Carol Ann Duffy, discuss to what extent you agree with this view.

The female characters in my chosen texts are often presented as being either vulnerable to the predatory nature of men, or as being at a loss to men in a way that is usually dictated by society, or as being “consumables”. The latter is especially developed in “Frau Brechenmacher Attends a Wedding” when the bride is wearing a dress which gives her “the appearance of an iced cake all ready to be cut and served in neat little pieces to the bridegroom”. Akin to this grotesque display of patriarchal societies is Duffy’s “Pygmalion’s Bride” (“What he’d do and how”, “clammy hands”). This poem displays Pygmalion as a man frightened by independent or free-willed women who sculpts and gives life to what he envisions to be the ideally pure and virginal woman: perfect, but cold, unhappy and soulless. She is the victim of a sculptor’s selfish passion, a sculptor who wants to mold not as much her body as her identity. Furthermore, Pygmalion’s bride is subjected to male aggression (“I heard him shout”; “Nails were claws”), an aggression similarly witnessed at the ending of “Frau Brechenmacher”, where the protagonist covers her eyes “like a child who expected to be hurt” as Herr Brechenmacher “lurched into the room”. The physical movement suggested by the verb “lurch”, its long vowel sound and its animalistic and predatory qualities altogether point to the helplessness of the female protagonist. In The Homecoming, the way women and men relate is reduced to bestial levels, as viewed in the gendered animal imagery about the fillies (“they’re more unreliable, did you know that?”) or through the repeated use of “bitch” as an insult, usually coming from the supercilious Max.

As the play progresses, Pinter delves more deeply into the theme of emasculation. The inversion of repressive gender roles (or, in non-feminist accounts, of repressive social roles) is captured particularly well in Max’s words: “I gave birth to three grown men”. Max’s statement could easily be dismissed as an effect of erratic speech, but in fact it reveals a “feminine” side of his nature which wishes to bear life, to nurture and to be possessed. In “Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality”, Freud observed that in human beings, pure masculinity or pure femininity are not to be found either in a psychological or biological sense. On the contrary, every individual displays a mixture of the character-traits belonging to both sexes. In Pinter’s play, Max shows no typical female traits, but quite possibly hides them behind his display of violence – both physical and psychological –, heightened manly attitude and behind objectifying the opposite sex. For instance, Lenny’s comment on how Max “used to like tucking up his sons” implies this maternal side of his father and a history less callous than the life as it currently is on their domestic battlefield. “Go and find yourself a mother” further supports the theory that Max resents having a woman’s role, that role being, in 1960’s society, of a housewife bound to the kitchen.

I now wish to shift the focus to Duffy’s intended purpose in writing The World’s Wife. Although “Anne Hathaway” in particular is not a feminist poem, unlike the majority of the others in the anthology, Duffy could be seen as ventriloquizing Anne Hathaway and, by doing so, implying that she did not previously have a voice. Hence, the perspective of the feminist remains ubiquitous as the function of “I”, or the lyrical voice, is to embody the universal feminine. As Virginia Woolf argued, if Shakespeare would have had a sister she would not have been allowed to be heard. It could be that, prior to the feminist waves, the internal fantasy world was richer in women because they were not permitted to act accordingly in the external world. This concept is reflected in “Daughters of the Late Colonel”, namely in Constantia’s reverie towards the end of the story. Her reverie is an insight into the fleeting revelations of a better life; tragically, despite the Colonel’s death which a more optimistic writer might have paralleled to women’s suffrage, Constantia and Josephine remain cursed to live the same life marked by hopeless, incessant longing (“And after that, it seemed to me, they died as surely as Father was dead”). “The Daughters of the Late Colonel” could be viewed in light of Mansfield’s background. The theme of lost opportunities tragically pervades the play, and a reader’s knowledge of Mansfield’s death by consumption further enriches their perspective upon the reading. Furthermore, it has been suggested that Mansfield was sneering at the “old tabbies” in “Daughters of The Late Colonel”, but Mansfield herself denied it: “It’s almost terrifying to be so misunderstood. There was a moment when I first had the idea when I saw the two sisters as amusing; but in the moment I looked deeper, I bowed down to the beauty that was hidden in their lives”. The controlling behaviour of their father has as consequence the women’s excessive conformity, inability to think independently and repression of pleasures or desires. The title itself implies the daughters’ sublimation and lack of autonomy, since they are referred to in relation to the colonel, and not as unique individuals.

A tribute to both Shakespeare’s use of language and his love-making, “Anne Hathaway” is a celebration of language as much as it is a celebration of the sexual act. Shakespeare himself was not oppressive towards women, quite the contrary, in his works the woman is generally depicted in an elevated, loving manner; this saves him from being a target of Duffy’s incisive lines. The poem uses a sensual treatment of language which emphasizes the similarity of the sensual delight found in the construction of a poem and the sexual act alike. It doesn’t slavishly follow the traditional sonnet form or even the sonnet argument form comprised of the counterparts of the octet and sextet. It uses a mixture of half-rhymes, full rhymes and blank verse, whilst the masculine, monosyllabic last line creates a sense of finality. From this poem we get the sense that Anne Hathaway and Shakespeare have worked in parallel, just as the language does here; they don’t seem to dominate one another, and so power does not constitute an issue as it does, for instance, in Teddy’s relationship with Ruth in The Homecoming. This is most in evidence in the first act, when their characters are introduced; Teddy and Ruth’s mirroring conversation exposes the ease with which Ruth causes Teddy to vacillate by utilizing her words as weapons. As Esslin observed, “the main action of the piece shows her taking possession of territory while Teddy is being dispossessed.” 

The theme of marriage is handled in Duffy’s “Mrs. Aesop” in a contrasting manner, in that the open, vulnerable quality of “Frau Brechenmacher Attends a Wedding” or of “Bliss” is replaced herein by bitter sarcasm. Duffy confirmed that this poem is an exploration of the “quiet desperation” in which married couples find themselves, a theme which comes to light in the simile “slow as marriage.” Through Mrs. Aesop’s strong character, Duffy depicts the implications of living with an old-fashioned moralist and communicates a darkly humorous impression of relationships. References to Aesop’s fables are scattered throughout the poem, but inversed and ironically adapted in order to suit the poem’s ridiculing tone. It depicts Mrs. Aesop’s ennui and contempt caused by her husband’s pedantic (“he stopped and made a note”) and moralistic nature, and possibly by his impotence (as suggested in the sexual euphemism “cock that wouldn’t crow”). The poem uses internal rhyme (“prepossess, impress”), a modern technique which retains the structure of the poem without having to employ the overt, stilted end rhyme of traditional poetry. The enjambment in “the sex/ was diabolical” has the effect of emphasizing the two words, whilst the slang, colloquial language and extra clauses altogether contribute to the comic effect. Moreover, the caesurae and the one word sentences act as throw-away lines, unexpected and shocking in their force. The end of the poem symbolizes the revenge of the woman, as expressed in a triumphal tone through the use of alliteration: “Cock that wouldn’t crow”; “I laughed last, longest”.

As established, the humour Duffy uses is merely a façade veiling a more disturbing subtext. However, this technique is not unique to Duffy, as Katherine Mansfield notably used humour to depict serious issues. In “Daughters of The Late Colonel”, the colonel’s character is authoritarian, oppressive and callous. These traits emerge through observing the daughters’ behaviour, rather than the colonel’s himself, although the two flashbacks Mansfield makes use of reveal the malevolent aspects of the colonel’s character. Section three describes the death of the colonel. His two daughters are watching him as he is laying on his deathbed, “purple, a dark, angry purple in the face” and he suddenly opens “one eye only”, which “glares at them” for a moment, and then he immediately dies. The deliberately comic effect of this moment, together with the word “rule” used in the sixth section remove any doubt about the fundamentally cold nature of their father-daughter relationship. There exists a pervasive sense of patriarchal control, this sense not being dependent on the presence of the colonel; the man inspires fear even after his death, as we note in the priest’s sudden reaction upon realizing that he was about to sit in the chair which belonged to the colonel. Similarly, in The Homecoming, Jessie’s maternal absence and her personality pervade the play, as seen in Max’s poor cooking skills (which call for a woman’s hand) and in the analogy of the “three sons”, which Martin Esslin believes to be no coincidence. Additionally, he affirmed that Ruth is a reincarnation of Jessie, and that “Max’s violent reaction on first meeting Ruth could be seen as the outcome of his sudden confrontation with the image of his dead wife.” 

Disregarded in the combative discourse between the male characters of the play (who account for all but one character) are all four Gricean maxims of the cooperative principle. The quality, quantity, manner and relation aspects of the play’s dialogue are either awkwardly disjointed or entirely absent. Max and Lenny in particular are disputatious individuals who prefer the unilateral adversarial method when arguing; this method is merely an attempt to aggressively destroy the other’s position in attempt to promote their own. The fallacy of attacking the person holding the argument and not the argument itself is indeed alienating in the sense that it doesn’t allow for discussion or compromise, but it also has a comic thespian purpose. Janice Moulton, an analytic feminist, argued that “the adversary method doesn’t give women a fair chance because they are both less aggressive and less allowed to be aggressive.” Thus, in seeing Ruth acting so domineeringly, we feel uncomfortable because we want her to befit the stereotypical female roles which we are acclimated with, namely that the woman be less assertive, aggressive or rational. As soon as Ruth is introduced in the play, she becomes the catalyst of the action. The critic Bill Naismith observes: “The rhythm of the play is determined by the way Ruth, in particular, speaks and moves”. As such, she is the play’s pivot. Ruth’s small utterances and her eerie monologues, punctuated by dramatic, lascivious pauses, have a hypnotically seductive appeal to them. On the other hand, the collapse of her speech has been interpreted by some as a mental breakdown. The character of Ruth can be interpreted on a number of levels; in a mythological sense, she is a fertility goddess; psychologically, she represents the fulfillment of the men’s Oedipal dreams; sociologically, she is a dominant figure territorially, and in a dramatic sense, she is integral to the Pinteresque universe by being the character who achieves dominance through her silence.

Alternatively, one might get the impression that Ruth is a male projection rather than a character in her own right, and that Pinter has her character emerge purely from the collective male consciousness. To put it in Simone De Beauvoir’s existential terms, Ruth is the “Other”, an idealized, stereotypical character with no individuality of her own. The play indeed does reflect various overused myths about women in the treatment of Ruth’s character. For instance, it reflects men’s beliefs that women are cold, frivolous and incapable of deep feeling or true commitment (seen in Ruth’s lack of concern or even acknowledgement of her husband); that in fact, women deserve to be humiliated and treated brutally as they inwardly desire it. “If the play is seen like a dreamlike myth […] Ruth is a passive character, she is the object of male desires and, being an image in a dream, yields to these desires without putting up any resistance”.

The Homecoming, as an exemplar of the Absurdist Theatre, employs paralinguistic devices which possess the quality of being exceptionally powerful when performed. John Lahr wrote: "The Homecoming changed my life. Before the play, I thought words were just vessels of meaning; after it, I saw them as weapons of defense. Before, I thought theatre was about the spoken; after, I understood the eloquence of the unspoken. The position of a chair, the length of a pause, the choice of a gesture, I realized, could convey volumes." The chair, for instance, is used as a territorial symbol of power; its function is rather like that of a throne, and as a result it comes into play in each of the characters’ attempts to dominate and assert their status. Likewise, Ruth asserts her control over the physical space of the stage through walking with confidence and familiarity. The way she “walks around the room” is contrasted with the special dynamics in “Teddy walks about”, which reveal Teddy’s uncertainty.  Harold Pinter’s play thus challenges the traditional views of language and communication, and provides a striking insight into the relationship between speech and silence, presence and absence, and the role of each antithetical part in the struggle for power and dominance, all taking place predominantly in the context of gender.

In my essay I have primarily discussed the nature of the male-female relationships in the works of the three very distinguished authors Katherine Mansfield, Harold Pinter and Carol Ann Duffy. I aimed to focus chiefly on the intricacies of character, on the arguably flexible quality that describes most of the selected texts and which might allow for a large scope of different interpretations, and additionally on the influence of the context on the authors’ work, along the road touching upon the techniques these skilled writers had employed in order to augment their artistic depictions.

Word count (including quotes, footnotes and bibliography): 3569                                                                    Word count (excluding quotes, footnotes and bibliography): 2776

Bibliography

Baddy, G. (1988) Katherine Mansfield, The Woman and The Writer, Penguin

Duffy, C. (1999) The World’s Wife, Picador

Eliot, T.S (1998), The Waste Land, Prufrock and Other Poems, Courier Dover Publication

Esslin, M. (2004), The Theater of the Absurd, Vintage

Esslin, M. (1992) “A Case for The Homecoming” in Naismith B.’s “Harold Pinter: The Birthday Party, The Caretaker & The Homecoming”, McMillan Co. London

Freud, S. (1905) Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, International Alliance Pro-Publishing

Lahr, J. (December 24, 2007) Demolition Man, The New Yorker

Mansfield, K. (2002) Collected Short Stories, Oxford World’s Classics

Mansfield, K. (1987) The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume II, OUP Oxford

Moulton, J. (1993) “A Paradigm of Philosophy: The Adversary Method”, Discovering Reality, S. Harding and M. B. Hintikka

Naismith, B. (2000) Harold Pinter: The Birthday Party, the Caretaker, The Homecoming, Faber and Faber

Pinter, H. (1991) The Homecoming, Faber and Faber Limited

Wood, B. (2005) Interview with Carol Ann Duffy, Manchester

Woolf, V. (1979) The Diary of Virginia Woolf Volume 1: 1915-1919, Harcourt Brace Janovich

Woolf, V. (1980) The Diary, Vol. 2: 1920-1924, Harcourt Brace Janovich

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