The Homecoming

           The battle between the sexes is a universal topic, and because of this mot plays will find themselves being thrown in this category. The Homecoming and The Cherry Orchard are no different in that they have strong female characters and strong male character who continue to clash throughout the plot. First, in The Cherry Orchard: Liubov, Anya, and Dunyasha all act like helpless women throughout the play and let men basically control them. Liubov does nothing to help save her home and Lopakhin takes it away from her. Anya is just out of it for most of the play, waiting for Trofimov to come and sweep her off her feet. Dunyasha is just being the servant, not trying to have a say in anything, she doesn’t have any guts. All of these women don’t take life very seriously and they don’t try to get in control of their lives until everything comes crashing down around them and that’s when they want to do something.

            In The Homecoming things are a little different. While Ruth is the only character, she holds more of a presence than any of the men combined. When she first gets to Teddy’s home she acts extremely shy and lady like, like she was going to turn out like the usual woman character, ready to give in to whatever the man tells her to do. But then things turn suddenly, and the next thing the reader knows Teddy is telling Ruth that she will have to “pull [her] weight a little, if you say. Financially” (Pinter 76). Her husband is basically asking her to go out and become a prostitute for the family’s sake.  At this point I figured that she would freak out in denial, but she does the opposite, she listens, and even asks about a “flat” that she would be living in. Lenny, Teddy’s brother, then reassures her by saying “you’d just pop up to the flat a couple of hours at night, that’s all” (Pinter 76). At this point the whole family is trying to get her to stay so that she can work the streets and she is defending herself as if she is proud to be a part of this. This isn’t some simple and gullible woman like in The Cherry Orchard, this is a female character who takes what comes at her and does what she wants, not directly what the guy wants. Ruth is a three dimensional character, even if I don’t quite understand her intentions or emotions at all. 

The Cherry Orchard

“You can’t ever go back to the past” is one of the most important quotes in Chekhov’s play The Cherry Orchard because it summarizes what most of the characters are dealing with throughout the four acts. The main character, Liubov Ranyevskaya, comes home after being away for years and she is astounded by how similar it looks from when she remembers it. Memories rush back immediately and throughout the whole play all she can talk about is how everything has been left the same, and how she remember all of the good times her family used to have. As a mother, she is supposed to be nostalgic about her family, but Liubov is overly reminiscent towards the house and she doesn’t really act too reminiscent about her family who she hadn’t seen in forever. I don’t have too much sympathy for Liubov for most of the play because she doesn’t do anything to help save her orchard, but I have even less sympathy for her seeing her care more about her house than her family. The past appeals to Liubov because it was when life wasn’t complicated and everything seemed to make sense. Before she lost her husband, her child, and before she began the destructive relationship with the guy from Paris.

           

            Another character that is reminiscent of the past is the family’s butler Firs. At first, Firs seems like just one of the many comedic character because it is described as being blind and all he does is spout out nonsensical comments. But once the play starts rolling you realize that he keeps talking about the old days when slavery was legal and how much he respected his master and how he wants to go back. Firs wants to go back to the days of slavery because that is all her knows. Everyone is nostalgic about the past and Firs is not exception. The last scene where everyone forgets about Firs and he spends his last moment’s alive sitting alone wondering where everyone is. That is why he wants to go back to the past, because in the past he was needed, he was possibly respected, and he knew what he was supposed to do.

            The need to go back to the past may seem the most important to the readers who read these themes and connect them to their own lives. That is what separates classic works from an every day story, something that connects with readers for generations after it is written. Chekhov must have known that the theme of remembering the past would be universal because that was probably just as huge of a theme in his day then it is in today’s drama. 

Hedda Gabler

Hedda Gabler

            Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen can most definitely be seen as a modern work of drama, if not because of the setting or the plot, then because of the dynamic characters that help to deliver the themes with simple clarity. Hedda Gabler (preferably Hedda Tesman) is the title character and her qualities match up to the likes of a Hamlet or a Macbeth. Right from the beginning Ibsen write Hedda to be as unlikeable as possible, to get the audience to distain her immediately. This is to counter act the feelings that you will grow to have for Hedda as the reader starts to understand her position and why she might be unhappy. First things are first though, and in the first scene the first impression we get of Hedda is that she’s a control freak who can’t be satisfied. Hedda complains about there not being enough sunlight, she complains that her husband’s (George Tesman) aunt has left her hat on the table and even goes far enough to say it looked like it belonged to the maid. Add in Hedda’s gossiping and her fondness of getting other men besides her husband alone and she must be looking like a pretty sleazy character. Then the reader starts to find out why Hedda might be lashing out: she’s pregnant and in denial about it, she doesn’t actually like her new house, and as a matter of face she doesn’t even want to be married to George in the first place. When these facts come to light it is almost easy to sympathize with Hedda, even though she is still the same cynical woman that we met in the beginning of the play. We just know more about her situation and the context behind her life and that is why she can be seen as a sympathetic character, one that could be easily identified with any woman in our modern era.  I don’t think there is anything I would change from this play to make it more contemporary, mostly because readers need to realize that themes and lessons that stories bring us are universal and heed to no era in time.

            Hedda’s main problem is that she feels as if she has no control over her life and she desperately needs to have control or her sanity starts to slip. One main reason why the maid, Berta, feels as if she can never please Hedda is because Hedda is purposefully changing what she wants Berta to do so that she can have control over their relationship. No matter what Berta does she is going to be wrong because Hedda is being stubborn on purpose. Another event where Hedda realizes that she has no control over her life is when Eilert Lovborg, a friend and former lover of Hedda’s, gets extremely drunk and forgets about her friend Mrs. Elvsted. Hedda was trying to manipulate these two people into getting together and when her plan backfires she goes inward to herself and tries to understand why she isn’t happy with her life. The final straw is when Judge Brack blackmails her into doing his will for keeping fatal information about Hedda quiet. With this last action Hedda decides that there is no way she can fix the mess that is her life and she decides to end it with a “beautiful” death to the head, presumably. Why did Hedda kill herself? She ws heavily depressed throughout most of the play and that is another huge reason why she lashed out multiple times at innocent people. Hedda wanted to be lonely, by herself so that she could have some control, but she is cursed with being the center of attention and that just brings her more out of control.