The Skin of Our Teeth by Thornton Wilder

First produced: 1942; first published, 1942

Type of work: Drama

Type of plot: Phantasmagoric

Time of plot: All human history

Locale: Excelsior and the boardwalk at Atlantic City, New Jersey

Principal characters

• Mr. Antrobus, a citizen of the world
• Mrs. Antrobus, his wife
• Gladys, their daughter
• Henry, their son
• Sabina, their maid

The Story:

A great wall of ice is moving southward over the land, bringing with it an unprecedented cold spell in August. In Hartford they are burning pianos, and it is impossible to reach Boston by telegraph. The people do nothing but talk about the looming catastrophe. So far, only the extreme cold reaches Excelsior, New Jersey, where Mr. and Mrs. George Antrobus live in an attractive suburban residence. Their rather commonplace lives are to be greatly changed by the extreme form that the weather takes.

Mr. Antrobus is a fine man, a sterling example for his community. He invented the wheel, the alphabet, and the multiplication table. Mrs. Antrobus is the picture of the middle-class mother, with the best interests of her children at heart. Their daughter Gladys is much like her mother, but their son is atypical. His name was Cain until an unfortunate accident occurred in which he hit his brother with a stone and killed him. As the result of that thoughtless action, his name was changed to Henry, and Mrs. Antrobus goes to some pains to keep his past history a secret. Members of the Antrobus household also include Sabina, the maid, a baby dinosaur, and a mammoth.

On this particular day in August, everyone is freezing and the dogs’ paws are sticking to the sidewalk because it is so cold. Sabina is in an agitated state because nothing seems to be going properly. She milks the mammoth, but she let the only fire in the house go out. Her plight is doubly humiliating because her career in the Antrobus house began when Mr. Antrobus brought her back from the Sabine rape. He gave her a life of luxury until he tired of her; now she is relegated to the kitchen. She, however, is a canny and observant individual, an apex to an age-old triangle.

She is waiting nervously for the return of Mr. Antrobus when a domestic altercation with Mrs. Antrobus prompts her to give a two-week notice. Later a telegram announcing the arrival of Mr. Antrobus and some salvation from the cold causes her to change her mind for the time being. When he arrives, Mr. Antrobus brings news that most of the outside world is freezing and that there is probably nothing they can do to escape the same fate. When some tramps and refugees from the ice come to the house for warmth and food, Mrs. Antrobus is not in favor of admitting them, but Mr. Antrobus insists. Mrs. Antrobus agrees, but only after the dinosaur and the mammoth are evicted. The refugees include a judge, named Moses; a blind beggar with a guitar, named Homer; and the Misses E., T., and M. Muse. The Antrobus family attempts to keep up some semblance of hope as they gather around their small fire. When Henry, in another fit of hate, murders a neighbor with a stone, Mr. Antrobus stamps out the fire. However, he is cajoled into having faith in humanity again, and all, including the audience, are asked to burn their chairs in order to keep the fire going and save the human race from extinction.

That crisis over, Mr. and Mrs. Antrobus go to the Atlantic City convention of the Ancient and Honorable Order of Mammals, Subdivision Humans. Mr. Antrobus, just elected president of the society for the coming year, makes a speech of acceptance, which is followed by a few words from Mrs. Antrobus. During an interview immediately afterward, it is learned that Mr. and Mrs. Antrobus will soon celebrate their five thousandth wedding anniversary. Mr. Antrobus judges a beauty contest in which the winner is the former maid Sabina, now Miss Lily-Sabina Fairweather from the Boardwalk Bingo Parlor. She decides, as a result of her victory, to take Mr. Antrobus away from his wife. As soon as she can easily do so, she lures him into her beach cabana. During her father’s sojourn in the cabana, Gladys buys herself a pair of red stockings and Henry becomes involved in an altercation with a boy, whom he hits with a stone. Mr. Antrobus is finally located, and he decides to leave his wife. Told of his intentions, she handles the situation very calmly and maneuvers him into staying with her. She is aided somewhat by a coming storm, which makes it necessary for the family and a large collection of animals to retreat to a boat in order to survive. Under the directions of a mysterious fortune teller, Mr. Antrobus takes them all, including Sabina, off to make a new world.

When the great war comes, much of the population of the world and most of Excelsior, New Jersey, are wiped out. The Antrobus household, including Sabina, manages to survive but not without considerable damage. Mrs. Antrobus and Gladys and Gladys’s new baby hide in the basement. When the war ends, they come out into the world, which in a very short time begins to function very much as it did before the war occurred.

Sabina, dressed now as a Napoleonic camp follower, enjoys the war. She feels that everyone is at his or her best in wartime. Henry, following up his stone-throwing activities, progresses from a corporal’s rank to the rank of a general; he becomes the picture of hate, the enemy of humankind. Mr. Antrobus orders that he never come into the house again or he will kill him. When Henry returns, he wants to kill his father, whom he hated all these years, and he brings a gun with which to shoot Mr. Antrobus. When Henry finally falls asleep from exhaustion, Mrs. Antrobus takes the revolver from him. Mr. Antrobus and Henry have an argument during which all the evil in the young man is revealed. Mr. Antrobus, in a fit of self-condemnation, admits that he would rather fight Henry than try to build a peace with him. His will to survive returns once again, however, and he asks Henry to try to live in peace. Henry agrees, provided he is given a freedom of his own will.

Mr. Antrobus, striving to regain his confidence in humanity, recalls the three things that always kept him going: the people, his home, and his books. In addition, he remembers the philosophies that he knew and through which he regains his hope for the future.

Bibliography

Blank, Martin, Dalma Hunyadi Brunauer, and David Garrett Izzo, eds. Thornton Wilder: New Essays. West Cornwall, Conn.: Locust Hill Press, 1999. Collection of essays that discuss both the novels and the plays. Some of the essays examine Wilder’s legacy and achievement, Wilder and the critics, his use of myth, and American Puritanism in his early plays and novels. Two of the essays focus on The Skin of Our Teeth: “The Skin of Our Teeth: A Psychoanalytic Perspective” by Jill Savege Scharff and “’Troubling the Waters’: Visions of Apocalypse in Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth and [Tony] Kushner’s Angels in America” by James Fisher.

Bloom, Harold, ed. Thornton Wilder. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2003. Collection of critical essays by literary critic Edmund Wilson, director Tyrone Guthrie, and others who assess Wilder’s contributions to American theater, the unique qualities of his work, the tragic features of his vision, and other elements of his plays. Contains a plot summary and list of characters for The Skin of Our Teeth and essays interpreting the play, including discussions of theatrical convention and nostalgia, Wilder as an actor in his own plays, a comparison of the play with Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children, and a summary of critical reaction to the drama.

Bryer, Jackson R., ed. Conversations with Thornton Wilder. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1992. A collection of interviews with Wilder, providing interesting perspectives on the man and his literary works. Includes index.

Burbank, Rex J. Thornton Wilder. New York: Twayne, 1961. An excellent introduction to Wilder that emphasizes the humanism of his writings. Asserts that The Skin of Our Teeth succeeds in communicating its message about human survival, but that “the mixture of comedy and seriousness does not always come off successfully.”

Castronovo, David. Thornton Wilder. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1986. An effective brief introduction to Wilder and his works. The section on The Skin of Our Teeth distills information about the play’s writing and staging, interprets its themes, and evaluates its strengths and weaknesses.

Haberman, Donald. The Plays of Thornton Wilder: A Critical Study. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1967. Explores the philosophical, religious, and mythmaking dimensions of Wilder’s dramas. Carefully defends Wilder against the plagiarism issues surrounding The Skin of Our Teeth.

Harrison, Gilbert A. The Enthusiast: A Life of Thornton Wilder. New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1983. A highly readable source, providing contextual details regarding Wilder’s composition of The Skin of Our Teeth as well as information about the play’s staging and reception.

Konkle, Lincoln. Thornton Wilder and the Puritan Narrative Tradition. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2006. Wilder was the descendent of Puritans, and Konkle argues that the writer inherited the Puritans’ worldview, particularly the Calvinist aesthetic, and drew upon it to create his novels and plays. Includes chronology, bibliography, and index.

Lifton, Paul. “Vast Encyclopedia”: The Theatre of Thornton Wilder. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1995. A critical overview of Wilder’s drama.