Alan Bennett uses Doris to voice the views of the older generation. Most of them are isolated away from the community. Doris is very stubborn and she wants help. Yet soon as a policeman comes by she doesn’t want help.
“Doris: No, I’m alright.
Policeman: Are you sure?
Doris: Yes.
Policeman: Your light was off.
Doris: I was having a nap, sorry.”
This shows that she is too stubborn and independent to let the policeman help. She does not want to surrender her independence. This is dramatic as she needs help but won’t let anyone help her. The audience feels sorry for her but possibly angry. Doris had the chance to get help and not be left alone, but was too headstrong to let anyone help her. The audience may be worrying even more about her as anything could happen and no one would know about it. This is quite dramatic for the audience.
Doris is prejudiced towards old people’s homes, “Smelling of pee.” This again is evidence of her obsession with cleanliness. This may stem from her past about the baby. I think this is because her baby was wrapped up in newspaper as if it was “dirty”. This is quite a dramatic part of the monologue, as it talks about someone who has died. The audience feel sorry for Doris as she is talking about her dead baby and the expressions on her face show that she is depressed about this part of her life. Doris doesn’t even get the chance to see her baby and this is very traumatic for the audience.
Doris doesn’t want to go to Stafford house. Doris finds “A Cream Cracker under the Settee.” and she plots to get her own back on Zulema. Doris also has a sense of humour. When she finds the cream cracker under the settee she says, “You’ll be on the carpet, same as the cream cracker.” The picture of Wilfred falls on the floor and she says, “We’re cracked Wilfred.” She may have said this, as there may have been a crack down the middle of the photo and she is referring to her un-loving relationship with her husband, Wilfred. She is basically saying that they are separated and that they are two totally different people now that he is dead. She makes a joke out of this, as she is unsure of her relationship with Wilfred. This is dramatic as Doris does not know about her and Wilfred’s marriage and this is quite sad. Marriage is seen as happy and Doris maybe can’t remember hers and maybe had a bad, un-happy and loveless marriage. The audience again are feeling sorry for Doris.
Throughout the play Doris brings other characters alive by her use of speech. She has to do this as she is the only character in the monologue and she needs to create the effect of other characters. One of Doris’s main characters is Wilfred. We get the impression that Wilfred was Doris’s husband and they had a turbulent relationship. Wilfred comes across as a dreamer. He had crazes which did not last very long. One of the crazes was that he wanted a dog and before that he grew mushrooms in the cellar. Wilfred overcame tragedies quickly and easily. When Doris’s baby died, he thought it would be “better off” with out the baby. Doris talks about him, it is like she does not want to let go of him fully and cannot face the fact that she is all alone and she is an old woman.
Another character Doris has to create a voice for is Zulema. Zulema is different to Doris and this forms a barrier between them because they are both totally different from each other. All Zulema does is stick to rules and regulations. This is dramatic as it shows that Zulema does not really have any feelings for Doris and that she just sees Doris as another person or a statistic. Zulema’s name is foreign and modern to Doris and there is an age gap between them, which does not help the situation. She does not like younger people ordering her about and likes the rule respect your elders, Zulema does not do this.
Doris moves from two different ‘worlds’. One of these ‘worlds’ is her past memory of her child, Wilfred and her own childhood and then she will switch to the present and talk about the boy peeing in her garden and will then talk about a leaflet distributor. The past seems more ‘real’ to Doris than the present. This proves that she has not kept up with the present and that she is isolated away from the modern world. The audience has to try and keep up with Doris’s pace of speech. When she speaks about the past, her sentences are long and more detailed than her present sentences. “Then we’d side the pots and I’d wash up while he read the paper and we’d eat the toffees and listen to the wireless all them years ago when we were first married and I was having the baby.” This sentence is dramatic as it talks about her baby and her married life with Wilfred. With the present she uses short sentences. When she talks about the leaves she uses short sentences as she is talking about the present time, “Not my leaves.” When the three visitors arrive at Doris’s house, it is tense for the audience, as they don’t know what to expect. They do not know how Doris will react to their presence.
The shift from past to present is dramatic as one minute she talks about one subject and then she will move onto another without even finishing the last one. For example, “Not my leaves. Not my leg either.” She switches to totally irrelevant subjects. The audience needs to pay attention, as they will lose trace of what Doris is talking about. Doris seems to be the only person who knows what she is talking about and can make the connection in her head.
Doris’s mood changes throughout the monologue. She can be happy and then sad. When she talks about Wilfred she can be glad or filled with unhappiness. When she does this she adds variety to the monologue, which also adds drama. In the monologue Doris talks about Wilfred wanting a garden. Doris complains, “Where does hygiene come into the agenda?” Again she refers to her baby.
Dramatic pauses are important in the monologue as they give the audience a chance to think about what has happened so far in the play. The pauses are significant to the play as they give the audience a chance to reflect on what is happening. They let the actor get into a rhythm and they give the audience a chance to figure out what stage they are at in the play. The pauses also help the drama in the house as they show inactivity. They show the silence and emptiness of Doris’s house and because nothing is happening we feel how she is feeling.
At the end of the monologue Alan Bennett tries to make out that Doris dies but does not fully do this. This is so the audience can draw their own conclusions as to what happens at the end of the play. Doris gives up the fight, just like she gave up hope just for her independence. This creates drama because they are left in suspense, as they do not fully know what happens to Doris and they want to know more. They feel sympathetic towards Doris by this point.
The cream cracker symbolises Doris as it is old, worn out and lonely underneath the settee. Doris says she will keep the cream cracker as evidence against Zulema so that she can get rid of her. She eats the cream cracker as she forgets the reason for eating it. “Can’t report her now. Destroyed the evidence.” This shows that she is a bit senile as she ate an old cream cracker that she found on the floor and she does not know how long it may have been there but still eats it. This is very hypercritical as she is so obsessive with hygiene and yet she eats the cream cracker.
Bennett uses a lot of dramatic techniques in his monologue. At the end Doris gives up life. The audience have had an insight to her life and feel as though they are a part of her. Doris represents the cream cracker, and this is why the play is called “A Cream Cracker under the Settee.” It is named after Doris’s symbol.
