The Trip to Bountiful by Horton Foote

First produced: 1953

First published: 1954

Edition(s) used:The Trip to Bountiful, in Horton Foote’s Three Trips to Bountiful, edited by Barbara Moore and David Yellin. Dallas, Tex.: Southern Methodist University Press, 1993

Genre(s): Drama

Subgenre(s): Literary fiction

Core issue(s): Acceptance; compassion; faith; resignation; suffering

Principal characters

• Mrs. Watts, an elderly widow
• Ludie Watts, Mrs. Watts son, a Houston accountant
• Jessie Mae, Ludie’s wife
• Thelma, a woman Mrs. Watts meets in the bus station
• The sheriff, a lawman of Harrison, Texas

Overview

The Trip to Bountiful opens in the Houston apartment of the Wattses: Ludie, his wife Jessie Mae, and Mrs. Watts, Ludie’s mother. The play tells the story of Mrs. Watts, an elderly widow not without pride, who has left her rural Texas home to live with her hardworking and self-effacing son and his lazy, selfish wife. Jessie Mae likes beauty shops and movie magazines, and she insists on controlling her mother-in-law’s small government check. She also registers irritation at Mrs. Watts’s habits (such as quietly singing hymns), and she considers Mrs. Watts crazy to wish to return to her home, the small town of Bountiful, Texas. Mrs. Watts previously has made several unsuccessful attempts to return home, and when she again privately expresses this need to her son, she is told that he can make a living only in Houston. Awake on a moonlit night as his wife still sleeps, Ludie is comforted by his mother, who sings him a childhood song and tells him of another moonlit night in Bountiful when she relieved his childhood fear of death; he claims not to remember the occasion. Ludie’s wife awakens and quarrels with Mrs. Watts before returning to bed. The next day, chafing under the shrewish supervision of her daughter-in-law, Mrs. Watts hides her government check from Jessie Mae and plans her escape to Bountiful. The next day, she leaves with her bag after Ludie and his wife have left the apartment.

As act 2 opens, Mrs. Watts arrives at a Houston bus station, where she can only purchase a ticket to Harrison, a town near Bountiful. There she meets a friendly and lonely young woman, Thelma, who is going to her parents’ home until her husband returns from overseas. Mrs. Watts, seeing her son and his wife approach the station, hides. Ludie learns that his mother has been there and leaves with Jesse Mae, who asks the police to help them retrieve Mrs. Watts.

In the next scene, Mrs. Watts talks to a sympathetic Thelma on the bus about her problems and plan to stay in Bountiful with her childhood friend, Mrs. Callie Davis. Then she unsuccessfully tries to lift the lonely young woman’s spirits by quoting Psalm 91. When Thelma states her deep love for her husband, Mrs. Watts confesses that she never loved her husband but had loved another man, whom her father prevented her from marrying.

The next scene is the Harrison bus station, where Mrs. Watts learns from the ticket agent that no one has lived in Bountiful since the last resident, Callie Davis, recently died. Shattered by the news, Mrs. Watts resolves to continue her trip and to spend the night in the station until morning. Thelma helps her retrieve a purse and leaves for her bus, bidding an affectionate good-bye to the older lady, who soon falls asleep on a bench. Upon awaking, she encounters the local sheriff, who has been asked by the Houston police to hold her there until her son arrives. She begs the sheriff to let her visit her old home. On the verge of collapse, she tells the lawman that she has endured a loveless marriage, the death of two children, and years of petty bickering, but now she must see her old home again, even if briefly, to help her understand why her life has grown empty. Moved by Mrs. Watts’s desperate plea, the sheriff determines to drive her to Bountiful and wait there for Ludie and Jesse Mae to arrive.

In the next scene the sheriff and Mrs. Watts stand before her now dilapidated home. Ludie arrives and thanks the sheriff, who leaves. Mrs. Watts apologizes to Ludie for causing him trouble. As they reminisce, he tells his mother that it does no good to remember the past. When he refuses her final plea to remain, she realizes the pain she is causing and determines to accept what must be. Like her son, she must accept the inexorability of change. Jessie Mae enters and presents a list of rules to control her mother-in-law’s behavior. Mrs. Watts consents to return quietly and acquiesce to Jessie Mae’s demands. When Jessie Mae demands the pension check, Ludie asserts himself and reminds his wife that she has promised to live in peace with his mother. After Mrs. Watts hands her the check, Jessie Mae uncharacteristically returns it to Mrs. Watts. As her son and his wife leave to go back to their borrowed car, Mrs. Watts falls behind, kneeling to feel the earth in her fingers and gain the sense of the strength and dignity that will allow her to survive. Secure in the knowledge that her remaining existence will be sustained because of her last contact with Bountiful, she bids it good-bye.

Christian Themes

Christian faith implies a belief in the scriptural narrative and the acceptance of God’s favor extended to humanity through Christ. It accepts the immutable truth, goodness, and power of God. Also it can encompass a dependence on the truthfulness of another. That the protagonist knows by heart Psalm 91, which proclaims that God is a refuge of strength and protection, suggests that she is a woman of faith. Suffering, as a Christian theme, is something to be endured patiently, in the realization that present travail cannot be compared with the life and glory that will be later revealed. Jesus and Job are lucid examples. Both endure great suffering, accept it as God’s will but question it, and ultimately are rewarded by God, who ends their suffering.

To Mrs. Watts, like Job, the Lord has given and taken away. She has lost a comfortable rural livelihood, marital love, independence, and much more, and she questions her current plight. Although she does not achieve Job’s salvation, she does reach a state of acceptance. The hymn “There’s Not a Friend Like the Lowly Jesus,” recurs throughout the play, underscoring Mrs. Watts’s faith and ultimate acceptance.

Themes of acceptance and resignation are intertwined. Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr in “The Serenity Prayer” (1934) clearly defines the former concept: “God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.” Foote’s central character does not serenely accept her conditions, until she recognizes the intensity of her son’s suffering and his need not to look back when he begins to develop a new inner strength. Resignation, from a strict Christian perspective, accepts that conditions are determined by God’s will. Both Jesus and Job proclaim that the Lord’s will, not their own, be done. Like suffering, it is to be endured patiently with the hope of a better tomorrow. Mrs. Watts, revitalized by her trip to Bountiful, accepts resignation but has gained self-knowledge.

The Christian theme of compassion implies empathy—suffering with, and having pity for, another—and also assumes that God is compassionate and forgiving. The Bible offers the example of the Good Samaritan. In The Trip to Bountiful, Mrs. Watts practices compassion, as do other characters, such as Ludie, Thelma, and the sheriff. When Mrs. Watts compassionately understands her son’s unhappiness, her recognition brings her greater wisdom. Horton Foote, a Christian humanist who saw the world with a clear eye, believed in the healing power of loving connection.

Sources for Further Study

Briley, Rebecca. You Can Go Home Again: The Focus on Family in the Works of Horton Foote. New York: Peter Lang, 1993. Places special attention on family dynamics and values and Foote’s work.

Foote, Horton. Beginnings: A Memoir. New York: Scribner, 2004. The playwright’s informative narrative of his professional life, from young actor to award-winning writer.

Foote, Horton. Genesis of an American Playwright. Edited by Marian Castleberry. Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press, 2004. Insightful chapters on the author’s experiences as a writer for stage and screen. Includes a chronology and a bibliography of published and produced work.

Moore, Barbara, and David G. Yellin, eds. Horton Foote’s Three Trips to Bountiful. Dallas, Tex.: Southern Methodist University Press, 1993. In-depth study of the play’s evolution, from teleplay to stage to film. Includes texts of the three versions with production and interpretative information, illustrations, artist interviews, and bibliography.

Porter, Laurin R. “An Interview with Horton Foote.” Studies in American Drama, 1945-Present 6, no. 2 (1991): 177-194.

Wood, Gerald C., ed. Horton Foote; A Casebook. New York: Garland, 1998. Essays by twelve writers address significant aspects of Foote’s life and work. Contains a chronology and a valuable annotated bibliography of both the author’s works and critical works about him.

Wood, Gerald C. Horton Foote and the Theater of Intimacy. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1999.