Crimes of the Heart by Beth Henley
"Crimes of the Heart" is a Southern gothic comedy by Beth Henley that focuses on the lives of the three MaGrath sisters as they navigate personal and familial challenges. Set in Hazelhurst, Mississippi, the play delves into themes of despair, loneliness, and the quest for identity following the sisters' traumatic past, marked by their father's abandonment and their mother's suicide. The oldest sister, Lenny, grapples with her own sense of worth as a caregiver, while Meg, the self-absorbed middle sister, confronts her failed dreams of stardom in Hollywood. The youngest sister, Babe, becomes the catalyst for their reunion after she shoots her husband, prompting the sisters to face their shared history. Through dark humor and poignant moments, the sisters find ways to redefine themselves as independent women, ultimately seeking happiness amid their struggles. As the narrative unfolds, the characters reflect on their identities as Southern women of diminished means, challenging societal expectations while supporting one another in their journey toward self-acceptance. The play concludes with a moment of shared laughter, suggesting a temporary reprieve from their burdens.
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Subject Terms
Crimes of the Heart by Beth Henley
First produced: 1979, at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky
First published: 1982
The Work
Crimes of the Heart is a character study of three sisters, each attempting to discover her own identity. They collectively deal with family problems and individual challenges. The bizarre yet believable characters in Henley’s Southern gothic comedy struggle to deal with despair, loneliness, and failure. Black humor enables the MaGrath sisters to find meaning and happiness in life, even if it is only momentary.
The sisters were abandoned by their father and then abandoned again when their mother hanged herself, along with her cat. The oldest sister, Lenny, has sacrificed her life to care for the grandfather who raised them. Her loneliness is deepened by her belief that she is undesirable because she cannot conceive. Meg, the totally self-centered middle sister, ran away to Hollywood but has since given up her dream of becoming a star. They are reunited in Hazelhurst, Mississippi, because the youngest sister, Babe, has shot her husband and is facing trial. The sisters confront their pasts in ways that enable them to redefine their own identities as stronger, independent women.
When their grandfather slips into a coma, Lenny finally realizes that she does not have to spend her life as a lonely spinster. Meg is invited out by the lover whom she abandoned in the devastation of Hurricane Camille, a metaphor for the disaster of the sisters’ past lives. When he does not beg her to run away with him, she realizes that she can love unconditionally. Babe brings understanding to the sisters and self-realization to herself. She shot her husband because he discovered her affair with a fifteen-year-old black boy. Considering suicide, she realizes she actually wanted her husband, not herself, to die. She also realizes that her mother did not want to die and that her mother killed the cat not because she hated it but because she was afraid to face death alone. Babe’s lawyer, motivated beyond his natural abilities by a personal vendetta, establishes that Babe was a battered wife and that it is in everyone’s best interest not to charge her with any crime. As the play ends, the three sisters are, for the moment, laughing.
The MaGrath sisters deal with crises as required by their identities as faded Southern gentry. No longer wealthy, the family still values manners, education, and appearances. With the ugly business of the past put more or less to right, the sisters, in their solidarity, uphold, or perhaps demolish, their identities as Southern ladies.
Bibliography
Adler, Thomas P. Mirror on the Stage: The Pulitzer Prize Plays as an Approach to American Drama. West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 1987. A brief discussion of Crimes of the Heart as a play of female solidarity.
Betsko, Kathleen, and Rachel Koenig. “Beth Henley,” in their Interviews with Contemporary Women Playwrights, 1987.
Gagen, Jean. “Most Resembling Unlikeness and Most Unlikely Resemblance: Beth Henley’s Crimes of the Heart and Chekhov’s Three Sisters.” Studies in American Drama: 1945-Present 4 (1989): 119-128. A comparison that finds Crimes of the Heart lacking in the subtlety of the Three Sisters.
Guerra, Jonnie. “Beth Henley: Female Quest and the Family Play Tradition.” In Making a Spectacle: Feminist Essays on Contemporary Women’s Theatre. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1989. A feminist study of Henley’s plays that focuses on women’s breaking away from the patriarchy in Crimes of the Heart.
Gwin, Minrose C. “Sweeping the Kitchen: Revelation and Revolution in Contemporary Southern Women’s Writing.” Southern Quarterly 30 (Winter/Spring, 1992): 54-62. Gwin argues that the play’s narrative dismantles patriarchal power and replaces it with maternal strength. She convincingly shows that the kitchen of the grandfather’s house becomes the space of empowerment for the sisters as they share joy and pain.
Haedicke, Janet V. “A Population (and Theater) at Risk: Battered Women in Henley’s Crimes of the Heart and Shepard’s A Lie of the Mind.” Modern Drama 36 (March, 1993): 83-95. Haedicke rereads Henley as a reactionary, upholding traditional male-female relationships based on a male hierarchy. Argues that Henley trivializes violence against women in the family, hence reaffirming female victimization.
Haller, Scott. “Her First Play, Her First Pulitzer Prize,” in Saturday Review. VIII (November, 1981), pp. 40-44.
Harbin, Billy J. “Familial Bonds in the Plays of Beth Henley.” Southern Quarterly 25 (Spring, 1987): 81-94. Harbin studies Henley’s treatment of family, community, and their disintegration. He concludes that the sisters, through their endurance of pain and suffering, move toward a renewed sense of familial trust and unity.
Hargrove, Nancy D. “The Tragicomic Vision of Beth Henley’s Drama.” Southern Quarterly 22 (Summer, 1984): 54-70. Noting that Henley’s plays are essentially serious though presented in a comic mode, Hargrove discusses the negative themes, such as physical and emotional death, associated with Henley’s bleak view of human life. Hargrove decides, however, that this tragic vision is relieved by the sisters’ affection and solidarity.
Kachur, Barbara. “Women Playwrights on Broadway: Henley, Howe, Norman, and Wasserstein.” In Contemporary American Theatre, edited by Bruce King. London: Macmillan, 1991. Kachur examines how Henley underscores the relationship between death and comedy, generating laughter in the face of existential madness. Kachur argues that the playwright raises women above the domestic sphere, making them models of strength and integrity.
Karpinski, Joanne B. “The Ghosts of Chekhov’s Three Sisters Haunt Beth Henley’s Crimes of the Heart.” In Modern American Drama: The Female Canon, edited by June Schlueter. Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1990. A comparison that finds Crimes of the Heart more accessible to modern audiences than Three Sisters.
Laughlin, Karen L. “Criminality, Desire, and Community: A Feminist Approach to Beth Henley’s Crimes of the Heart.” Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 3 (1986): 35-51. Laughlin examines the play against feminist theories on criminality and desire in order to determine whether the experience of the MaGrath sisters reflects female experience generally. She successfully shows that the sisters are oppressed by a patriarchal structure and that their choices are based on those of their grandfather.
McDonnell, Lisa J. “Diverse Similitude: Beth Henley and Marsha Norman,” in The Southern Quarterly. XXV (Spring, 1987), pp. 95-104.
Shepard, Alan Clarke. “Aborted Rage in Beth Henley’s Women.” Modern Drama 36 (March, 1993): 96-108. Shepard explores how the fantasies of murder in Henley’s plays are strategies for coping with emotional and physical abuse while repressing rage. Shepard concludes that the sisters try to repair and preserve their lives within the seriously flawed, patriarchal system that they have inherited.
Simon, John. “Living Beings, Cardboard Symbols,” in New York. XIV (November 16, 1981), pp. 125-126.