Comment on the dramatic techniques of Alan Bennett in 'A Cream Cracker Under the Settee', in terms of both its writing and performance.

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Comment on the dramatic techniques of Alan Bennett in ‘A Cream Cracker Under the Settee’, in terms of both its writing and performance.

       ‘A Cream Cracker Under the Settee’ is a monologue, which is a play with a single character. The character is Doris, a seventy five year old widow, who lives on her own. She has home help that visits once a week. In this monologue form, information is gradually revealed by the one character – Doris. We find out she’s had an unhappy life; eventually we find out why.

       Doris looks back nostalgically on her childhood and early marriage, the times in her life when she was truly happy. Something changed her life. At first the reader is unaware and even misled by Bennett. Doris describes Wilfred as “dad”, and thus he misleads the viewer into thinking there was a baby. We later find there was a baby, but it was a stillbirth. Doris didn’t like the midwife’s attitude when she wrapped the baby in newspaper then put it in a shoebox. Doris felt she was treating it like dirt. She says, “He wasn’t dirty, little thing”. This could have been the start of Doris’s hygiene obsession. Also, Wilfred did not help her much. Her husband wanted to get a dog instead. Her marriage wasn’t great, Wilfred was a dreamer and frustrated Doris. Wilfred started little projects like an allotment, but never did anything with them, and then he moved onto something else. Doris still misses him though. We know this because she talks to the wedding photo, which also shows she is lonely.

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       We know Doris has had an unhappy past: she is also having an unhappy present. There is an immediate problem. Doris has been dusting and had an accident, she hurt her leg and it’s getting worse. Part of Doris’s unhappiness is her loneliness, she has no family and no friends: “we were always on our own. Me and Wilfred. We weren’t gregarious”. This is exacerbated because Doris hasn’t moved with the times; she doesn’t like change and new social patterns. Doris’s main cause of unhappiness is her home-helper Zulema. She patronises Doris and keeps threatening her with ...

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