Mourning Becomes Electra by Eugene O'Neill

First produced: 1931; first published, 1931

Type of work: Drama

Type of plot: Tragedy

Time of plot: Late 1860’s

Locale: New England

Principal characters

• Ezra Mannon, a Civil War general
• Christine, his wife
• Orin, his son
• Lavinia, his daughter
• Captain Adam Brant, Christine’s lover
• Hazel Niles and Peter Niles, cousins of the Mannons
• Seth, the Mannons’ caretaker

The Story:

The American Civil War is over, and in their New England home Christine and Lavinia Mannon await the homecoming of Ezra Mannon and his son, Orin. Lavinia, who adores her father, detests Christine because of Ezra’s love for his wife. For her part, Christine is jealous of Orin’s love and hates her husband and daughter. In this house of hidden hatred, Seth, the watchful gardener of the old mansion, sees that Lavinia also despises Captain Brant, a regular caller at the Mannon home.

The Mannons, descended from old New England stock, have their family skeleton. Dave Mannon, Ezra’s brother, had run off with an American Indian woman named Marie Brantome. Seth, seeing the antagonism between Lavinia and her mother, discloses to Lavinia that Captain Brant is the son of Marie and Dave Mannon.

Embittered by her mother’s illicit romance with Brant and jealous of her hold on Ezra, Lavinia forces Christine to send her lover away. Christine is too strong a woman to give in entirely to her daughter’s dominance. She urges Brant to send her some poison. It is common knowledge that Ezra has heart trouble, and Christine plans to rid herself of the husband so that she will be free to marry Brant. Lavinia cruelly reminds her mother that Orin, her favorite child, had been born while Ezra was away during the Mexican War.

When Ezra, a kind and just man, comes home, he realizes that Christine shrinks from him while pretending concern for his health. That night in their bedroom, Ezra and Christine quarrel over their failing marriage. Ezra has a heart attack, and when he gasps for his medicine Christine gives him the poison instead. As he lay dying in Lavinia’s arms, the helpless man feebly but incoherently accuses Christine of his murder. Lavinia has no proof, but she does suspect that her mother had a part in her father’s death.

After Ezra’s death, Peter and Hazel Niles, cousins of the Mannons, visit the mansion. Peter is a rejected suitor of Lavinia, and Hazel is in love with Orin. Lavinia spies on her mother constantly. When Orin comes home, the two women vie for his trust, Lavinia trying to raise suspicion against her mother and Christine attempting to regain her son’s close affection. Uncomfortable under her daughter’s looks of silent, sneering accusation, Christine finally realizes that Lavinia found the box of poison. While Hazel, Peter, and Christine try to make a warm welcome for Orin, Lavinia hovers over the group like a specter of gloom. Able to get Orin alone before Lavinia can speak to him, Christine tells her son about Lavinia’s suspicions concerning Captain Brant and Ezra’s death, and she tries to convince him that Lavinia’s distraction over Ezra’s death has warped her mind.

Orin, whose affection for his mother makes him dislike Ezra, believes Christine, but the returned soldier swears that if he ever discovers that the story about Captain Brant were true, he would kill Brant. Desperate, Christine tells Lavinia that Orin’s trust has been won and that Lavinia need not try to take advantage of his credulity. Lavinia merely stares at her mother in silent defiance, and under her daughter’s cold stare, Christine’s triumphant manner collapses into a pathetic plea that Lavinia not endanger Brant’s life, for Orin has threatened to kill him.

When Lavinia slyly hints the truth to Orin, his childhood trust in her leads him, however unwillingly, to believe her story in part. Lavinia hints that Christine might run to Brant at the first opportunity. Orin agrees to wait for proof, but he repeats that if sufficient proof were offered he would kill Brant. Lavinia instructs Orin to maintain a pretense that he believes her to be mad.

Shortly after Ezra’s funeral, Christine goes to Brant. Orin and Lavinia pretend to be paying a call on a nearby estate, but instead they follow their mother to Brant’s ship, where they overhear the lovers planning to leave together. Although Orin is consumed with jealous hatred of Brant, Lavinia restrains him from impulsive action. When Christine leaves, Orin goes into the cabin and shoots Brant. Then the brother and sister rifle the ship’s cabin and Brant’s pockets to make the death appear to have been a robbery and murder.

Orin and Lavinia return to the Mannon mansion and tell Christine what they had done. Orin sees his mother’s grief and falls to his knees, pleading with her to forgive him and to give him her love. Fearing he has lost his mother’s affection, the bewildered boy rushes from the room, but Lavinia faces her mother victoriously. Christine goes into the house and shoots herself. Orin, in a frenzy of grief, accuses himself of his mother’s murder.

Lavinia takes her brother on a long sea trip to help him overcome his guilt. When they return, Orin is completely under Lavinia’s control, reciting in toneless speech that Christine had been an adulterer and a murderer, and that Orin had saved his mother from public hanging. He is changed in appearance and spirit; it is plain that strange thoughts of grief and guilt prey on his mind. During the trip Lavinia had grown to look and behave like Christine.

Lavinia now accepts Peter’s love. When Orin sees his sister in Peter’s embrace, he becomes angry for a brief moment before he congratulates them. When Orin becomes engaged to Hazel, Lavinia is afraid to leave Orin alone with the girl for fear he will say too much about the past.

Orin begins to write a family history, urged by a remorseful desire to leave a record of the family crimes. Jealous of Lavinia’s engagement to Peter, he threatens to expose her if she marries him. Orin keeps hinting to Lavinia that, like Christine, she is planning to poison him as Christine had poisoned the man who held her in bondage. Finally, driven to distraction by Orin’s morbid possessive attitude toward her and by his incessantly recurring to their guilt, Lavinia suggests to the crazed Orin that he kill himself. As Peter holds Lavinia in his arms, Orin goes to the library to clean his pistol. His death is assumed to have been an accident.

Hazel suspects something vile and sinister behind Orin’s accidental death. She goes to Lavinia and pleads with her not to ruin Peter by marrying him, but Lavinia denies that there is any reason to put off the marriage. While she speaks, however, Lavinia realizes that the dead Mannons will always rule her life. The others had been cowards, and had died. She will live. She sends Peter away. Then she orders Seth the gardener to board up the windows of the mansion. Alone, the last surviving Mannon, Lavinia enters the old house to spend the rest of her life with the dead.

Bibliography

Berlin, Normand, ed. Eugene O’Neill, Three Plays: “Mourning Becomes Electra,” “The Iceman Cometh,” “Long Day’s Journey into Night”: A Casebook. Basingstoke, England: Macmillan, 1989. A good introduction. Includes excerpts from O’Neill’s working diary, tracing the play’s development from inception to second galleys. Contains four reviews of the original production and seven critical studies dealing with character, theme, and style.

Bloom, Harold, ed. Eugene O’Neill. Updated ed. New York: Bloom’s Literary Criticism, 2007. Collection of critical essays, including Doris Alexander’s analysis of Mourning Becomes Electra.

Bogard, Travis. Contour in Time. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Provides a detailed comparison of Mourning Becomes Electra and plays by Euripides and Aeschylus, noting the shift in emphasis from the theological to the psychological. Discusses the play’s importance as historical drama, focusing on Calvinist tradition and Puritan repression in New England.

Floyd, Virginia. The Plays of Eugene O’Neill. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1985. An excellent introduction. Includes a brief biography and interpretive analysis of each play, identifying themes, key words, and ideas. Relates Mourning Becomes Electra to its Greek source and to O’Neill’s life.

Gelb, Arthur, and Barbara Gelb. O’Neill. New York: Harper & Row, 1962. Comprehensive study of O’Neill’s life and work based on his writings and more than four hundred interviews with family members, friends, and critics. Traces his personal growth and his growth as an artist. Follows the development of Mourning Becomes Electra from idea to production.

Moorton, Richard F., ed. Eugene O’Neill’s Century: Centennial Views on America’s Foremost Tragic Dramatist. New York: Greenwood Press, 1991. Presents essays from a variety of perspectives, including theatrical arts, psychology, philosophy, and classics, which analyze and psychoanalyze character and theme in O’Neill’s work.

Shaughnessy, Edward L. Down the Nights and Down the Days: Eugene O’Neill’s Catholic Sensibility. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996. Although O’Neill renounced Catholicism when he was a teenager, Shaughnessy finds evidence that he retained some of his Catholic upbringing and brought this moral sensibility to his plays, including Mourning Becomes Electra.

Törnqvist, Egil. Eugene O’Neill: A Playwright’s Theatre. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2004. Demonstrates how O’Neill was a controlling personality in the texts and performances of his plays. Describes his working conditions and the multiple audiences for his works. Examines the titles, settings in time and place, names and addresses, language, and allusions to other works in his dramas.

Voglino, Barbara. “Success at Last: Closure in Mourning Becomes Electra.” In “Perverse Mind”: Eugene O’Neill’s Struggle with Closure. Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1999. Focuses on nine plays written at different periods of O’Neill’s career to demonstrate how the failed endings of the early works developed into the successful closures of his later plays.