Graham becomes very embarrassed when his mother makes an outburst about his magazines. She said, “I know the kind of magazines you read.”
I said “Chess. You’ll catch cold.” She said, “They never are chess. Chess with no clothes on. Chess in their birthday suits. That kind of chess. Chess men.” I said, “Go to bed and turn your blanket off.” Graham doesn’t deny the allegations made by his mother so this makes the reader think that Graham is a homosexual. This does make us think about Graham in a different way. Because we thought that he was just a shy man but now we think that he could be homosexual so maybe people are thinking about him differently because people were sympathising with him because everyone thought he was weak but it may just be that he is gay.
The unique thing about this story is that the genre is very different because it is the actor talking directly to you. Personally it makes it feel like psychotherapy between you and Graham because he seems very disturbed because when he is speaking to us about his mother and Frank he puts on the voices of them to which is a bit abnormal. The whole meaning is for this is to make you feel closer to Graham so that you are socially involved in the story. It is done so that you feel like Graham is your neighbour and that he is confiding in you but you can get a wider view because you do know a bit of background information about Graham. Something that we learnt about Graham was that doctor Chaudry told him that he needed a stable environment. Graham does not feel comfortable about his mental illness at all because he becomes very paranoid. He believes that there is someone watching the house and becomes worse when he is left on his own. They take the camera very close to Grahams face and he looks into it, which gave a good view of his eyes to show the emotion and to show that he is scared. Also the music changes and it becomes a little tenser. They also fade out each scene with music because the setting doesn’t change. This means that we re-visit him and we see him in different stages of emotion. We get involved with the tension of what is going to happen and it is similar to a diary because we don’t know at the end of each scene what is going to happen and this is why it is a different kind of play. It is not like a normal play because it is not split up into acts and it is in scenes. A normal play would have actors and they would not be talking into the camera. There is only one actor in the play and normally he would try and act like he didn’t know the cameras were there.
From Grahams language we can tell that he is well educated because he says things differently. For example “Restored to the perpendicular.” Normally we would say I got her to stand up. Another example of this is “The café we patronise.” Someone with normal teaching and upbringing would say the café we normally go to. This shows that Graham is wasting his life living with his mum.
In Bed Amongst the Lentils it also shows a nervous woman who could be viewed in two lights. It could be seen that she is evil and nasty for cheating on her husband or it could be that she is starved for attention. From the story we learn that she is an alcoholic and that she is very depressed with the life style that she is forced to live. She is very fed up and because her husband is the vicar her home is the parish and her privacy is invaded constantly. She feels that the people in the parish know more about her life than she does. Some people may see Susan as a cheat and a liar. They may say that she has betrayed her husband and his religion because she has now committed adultery, which is against her religion.
Susan is expected to do what her husband wants because she is asked to make the bishop some good food so that Geoffrey can try and further his own career. These are the type of things that are getting Susan down and these are the things that some people would say turned her to drink whereas some would say she decided to choose that life.
When Susan commits adultery she does it with an Asian man and she is happier in his presence but when she gets home she turns to drink again. She also drinks all the communion wine, which upsets Geoffrey a lot, but he does not make any direct accusation towards Susan.
Some may say that Susan slept with Mr Ramesh as a reaction to her rejection within the church, but it turns into an affair and on her account she has feelings for Mr Ramesh, but he does not want to get too involved and when Mr Ramesh disappears she is very upset and turns to drink again. Some will also have different reactions to her behaviour some will say that Geoffrey is a bad husband and that he does not have enough time for her because the church comes first in his life. You could also say that the congregation is uncaring because they do not offer any help with her addiction to drink and all they seem to do is make snide comments and try to make her out as bad. It could also be seen that the jobs and tasks that she is forced to do are unfair and too plentiful. If people are on her side they will say that she has used the drink and the affair as an escape from the church and her husband and they feel that she is not such a bad woman. She feels that she has failed because she is expected to be better than the average and she becomes dissatisfied with her life because of stupid things like she is unable to make jam and arrange flowers. She feels bad and incapable because all the other ladies can do it. She is low on sherry and owes money to the off license and then she meets Mr Ramesh who is a Hindu with many different gods, and Susan says that h is religion is “more fun than Jesus.”
Within the parish there are some very nasty and competitive women. For example Miss Frobisher is very competitive and aggressive towards Susan. And this is why she feels that she has no privacy because people are always talking about her and her husband.
Graham is also not the best of husbands because he does not give much attention to his wife, and he is also very sexist towards her and the ladies within the parish. “The ladies, where would we be without them? Also when she is talking to her husband she avoids answering certain questions particularly when it comes to sex, and Graham automatically assumes that she wants to do things and decides on her behalf. Like when the Bishop asks Susan about the ordination of women and Susan is about to answer but she is interrupted by her husband who says “Susan’s all in favour. She’s keener than I am, aren’t you darling? Graham could of just been helping her out of an embarrassing situation or he maybe just doesn’t trust what she says because Graham is trying to get promoted and he does not want Susan to be herself because she might make a bad impression on the bishop thus damaging Grahams career plans.
Normally in modern society we disapprove of inadequate, the mentally frail, people of uncertain sexuality, alcoholics and adulterers. Here Bennett makes us think again about our views towards them. He challenges our modern views towards the people who are sometimes outcasts in society. Normally we expect a hero but these plays are not performed in the traditional sense. We are given a central character and we have to work out for ourselves how we feel about Graham and Susan. We are the only people who can set the type of characters that they are to be throughout the story. The play is written and performed like this to challenge our established views.
I think that Bennett has presented human frailty to us very well and
has challenged the existing view towards modern outcasts to society. He has made us think who we would side with in certain situations. Like when Frank turns up everyone will originally think that Graham is just jealous but later on we find out the real truth about Frank and Mrs Whittaker reacts badly to the bad news but forgets about it the next day which makes me think about her memory problem, because when she is with Graham she forgets and when she is with Frank she remembers and I think this is because she can be lazy with Graham but when she is with Frank she has to remember things otherwise he might not like her.
My personal views on Susan are that she is a very neglected woman who just wanted attention and after a while she realised she wasn’t going to get it she turned to something that she thought made her happy. The alcahol, and the affair. This is her only relief from the life of the church and the way she is forced to live so that Graham does not look bad in front of friends.
