phoenixswriting

In Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night (1956) and Susan Glaspell’s Trifles (1916), a parallel can be drawn to Simone de Beauvoir’s existential feminist text The Second Sex (1949). In an examination of Beauvoir’s philosophical treatise, Beauvoir takes the position that women have fulfilled the role as the inessential other while men have historically claimed the essential self. Through an analysis of the respective texts—Trifles and Long Day’s Journey Into Night—one finds a shared resonance between the central female figures in O’Neill and Glaspell’s plays with the didactic female form in Beauvoir’s philosophical undertaking. In this vein, Mary, the maternal figure in Long Day’s Journey Into Night, escapes her disillusioned existence within the confines of the domestic realm through the use of morphine. Meanwhile, in Trifles, the female characters—Mrs. Hale, Mrs. Peters, and, though not present on stage, Mrs. Wright—occupy a comparable position of subjugation. As the title suggests, they are associated with the “trifles” of the world—the realm of the household, which the male characters perceive as inconsequential. This essay will argue that in both Long Day’s Journey Into Night and Trifles, the female protagonists embody Simone de Beauvoir’s central hypothesis: that woman is cast as the inessential other in a society that defines her identity solely in subordinacy to man. This essay will first examine and define The Second Sex’s locus as a feminist text and its terminology that will be used for the analysis of the two plays. Next, the essay will survey O’Neill’s meditation on the “otherness” of Mary’s position in the family dynamic—placing an emphasis on her yearning for an identity that is separate from her present one defined by her tumultuous family life. Finally, this essay will examine the female characters of Trifles and their relation to the Beauvoirian notion of immanence, only for it to be transmuted to the transcendent in the respective text. 

In the introduction to Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, Beauvoir begs the question: “what is a woman?” (Beauvoir xiii). To Beauvoir, man “represents both the positive and the neutral, […] whereas woman represents only the negative, defined by limiting criteria” (xv), suggesting that man does not have the confining physiological and psychological traits that a woman has: “man ignores the fact that his anatomy also includes glands, […] and that they secrete hormones” (xv). Thus, man is separated from the woman as he “apprehends [the world] objectively” (xvi)—objectively in the sense that he has none of the “peculiarities” that a woman’s body has. Through this, “man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him” (xvi); man becomes the autonomous being while woman is the nonautonomous being. As a result, Beauvoir uses a reinterpretation of the Hegelian notion that a person defines themself as the “essential subject (the ‘self’)” while all others are the “inessential object (the ‘other’)” (Tolan 321). This reinterpretation of Hegel allowed Beauvoir to establish the idea that women have been historically situated as the inessential other while men have been positioned as the essential self. This terminology—man as the essential self and woman as the inessential other—will be used to excavate the depiction of female existentialism in both Trifles and Long Day’s Journey Into Night. 

Another Beauvorian idea that will be examined in the respective plays is the notion of immanence and transcendence. Immanence refers to a notion of “confinement or restriction to a narrow round of uncreative and repetitious duties” (Beauvoir 65). If immanence is the repetition of duties performed in service of mundanity, then transcendence is the escape from such reiterative life. Transcendence thus refers to the “freedom to engage in projects […] that mark the untrammeled existent” (63)—An existential mode in which one transcends staticity and affirms selfhood by actively asserting oneself in the temporal unfolding of existence.” Through this, man is traditionally, as expressed by Beauvoir, allotted the transcendental qualities while woman is stuck in immanence. However, this is subverted in Trifles through the female characters’ usage of the trifles of everyday “domestic labors […] that imprison [woman] […] in repetition and immanence” (63) such as knitting—subverting its traditional passivity by transforming it into a springboard for the active assertion of their convictions. Such a display of Beauvoirian immanence is less subversively handled in Long Day’s Journey Into Night, as Mary’s marginalisation by her male counterparts—leaving her confined to the repetitive tasks of domestic life—makes her the very embodiment of immanence.

Long Day’s Journey Into Night explores female-to-male familial dynamics through the relationships between Mary and her male counterparts: Tyrone the father, James the eldest son, and Edmund the sick and youngest son. Throughout the play, Mary is alienated from the men of the family as they leave her deserted in the family home, to pursue their social ends more publically: “All […] Tyrone likes is to hobnob with men at the Club or in a barroom” (O’Neill 42). Even her sons “are the same way” (43), and—as a result of her desertion there—Mary has “never felt it was […] [her] home” (42). As Beauvoir notes, a woman “delights in the display of her ‘interior’” (Beauvoir 528), the curated self that becomes “a well defined process of identification” (629). This is reflected in Mary’s incessant worry about her appearance as well as her household’s decor—the former relating most strongly to her lamenting her aging figure and the latter denoting her home’s apparent simplicity. Mary, when Tyrone and James are clipping the hedge, states: “There go the Chatfields in their new Mercedes. It’s a beautiful car, isn’t it? Not like our secondhand Packard” (41), suggesting that Mary is aware of “the expression of […] [a familys] standard of life, its financial status, its taste, and […] [its] view to other people” (528). This is shown further when Mary, noticing Tyrone’s “filthy old suit” that she’s “tried to make him throw away,” suggests that “he ought to have more pride than to make such a show of himself” (41). Thus, Mary is positioned “looking out the window […] with an undercurrent of lonely yearning” (42), wishing to “make a good showing, combin[ing] […] her pleasure of being seen” in a way that reflects her interior—the narcissistic ego (528). Mary is unable to define herself in the workplace due to—what can be presumed—her rehabilitation, as well as being unable to find solace in the homely life, as is shown by her continual statements as the home not feeling like a home. As a result, Mary turns towards her addiction to morphine as a means of escaping the confines of not fitting in the domestic sphere or workplace. Mary is unable to find a notion of identification separate from her past self—a self that is temporally dislocated, which morphine grants access to. 

Beauvoir, in the chapter titled “The Narcissist,” suggests that the “reality of man is in the houses he builds, […] but woman, not being able to fulfill herself through projects and objectives, is forced to find reality in the immanence of her person” (Beauvoir 630). In Long Day’s Journey Into Night, the male figures—Tyrone, James, and Edmund—are situated in opposition to Mary’s “immanence” as transcendental (630). This immanence in Mary’s character is found in her repetitive temporal longing for the past, rejecting the present for the fragmented memories in an opiate haze. In a scene that reflects her rejection of the present through her abuse of morphine, Mary reminisces on her wedding dress in contrast with her present position within the Tyrone household. Mary does not regard the practical implications of marriage, but is obsessed—shown in “how [she] […] fussed and worried” (O’Neill 97)—with the adornment of the dress. Rather than “fulfill[ing] herself through projects and objectives” in the present—creating a kinetic future —Mary turns to the immanence of her past that is static, forcing her to live in a repetitive mode of existence. In a Beauvoirian sense, Mary has a double-self: the shy [and] […] gay convent girl” who reflects an innocence prior to the marriage of an “actor” (97), and the present self who is shackled to this interior history—”she seeks to find the dead child within herself, even to revive it” (633). Furthermore, O’Neill depicts a simulacra of immanence, wherein Mary “creates a twin through inward dialogue” (633) that “examines [herself] […] in the mirror” (97). The inward self of Mary becomes a labyrinthine of narcissistic tendencies to remove herself from the confining patriarchal structures of marriage, reflecting the Beauvoirian idea that because “masculine activities are forbidden from her” (629), Mary finds refuge in the “immanence of her person” (630). However, this immanence ultimately leads to her being “Ineffective […] [and] isolated, […] because no object of importance [in the present] is accessible to her” (630). 

In comparing Susan Glaspell’s Trifles to Long Day’s Journey Into Night, one finds that the same Beauvoirian notions examined in O’Neill’s play become subverted in Glaspell’s play. The play opens on “a gloomy kitchen […] left without having been put in order[,] […] [showing] signs of incompleted work” (Glaspell 141). Glaspell, through the metaphorical imagery of a disrupted kitchen showing “signs of incompleted work” (141), suggests that Mrs. Wright has removed herself from the shackles of immanence, or the repetitive work Beauvoir notes in domestic work—assuming the transcendental mode typically allotted to men. This poses an ironic foreshadowing of the plays ultimate subversion of Beauvoir’s hypothesis: woman as the inessential other and man as the essential self. However, Glaspell—in order to execute the ironic reversal of Beauvoir’s position—first establishes an emphasis on the male characters’ supposed importance by introducing them by their economic role, as well as placing a visual hierarchy and spatial power difference through staging. As Beauvoir notes: “A man is socially an independent and complete individual; he is regarded first of all as a producer whose existence is justified by the group he does for the group” (Beauvoir 426). In this sense, by Glaspell having the sheriff and court attorney “followed by the two women” (141), there is an indivisible distinction between the two women, as if they were simply trifles to the crime scene. Glaspell reinforces a metaphorical and visual subordinacy in having the women “stand close together near the door” while the men separate—shown through the sheriff “stepping away from the stove as if to mark the beginning of official business” (141). Thus, the spatio-temporal dynamic of the staging presents a clear distinction between the supposed “official business” of the men, by their division in economic role, and the—as the title ironically suggests—trifles of the women’s role in the crime scene. Through this, the play’s opening suggests that the men are subjective individuals that are made distinct by their transcendence in their economic role as well as spatio-temporal distinctiveness.

 However, while the women are spatio-temporally subjugated as an indivisible pair in the play’s opening—shown through the staging—the women are granted a descriptive authority in terms of their distinct characteristics. While the men are casted together as “in middle life” or simply being “a young man” (141), Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peter are both psychologically and characteristically specified, foreshadowing their importance in the text of the play as acute interpreters. Mrs. Peter is a “slight wiry woman, [with] a thin nervous face,” while Mrs. Hale “is larger and would ordinarily be called more comfortable looking, but she is disturbed […] and looks fearfully” around the room (141). The notion that Mrs. Hale “looks fearfully” around the room suggests a subjective self that the men are not granted. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peter are granted an authoritative interpretation of the room by their described emotions—being disturbed or nervous. Glaspell, by specifying their characteristics as separate from the men who remain without description, prefigures their eventual narrative centrality. 

As Beauvoir states in the chapter “The Married Woman,” “the husband is the productive worker, he is the one who goes beyond the family interest to that of society, […] he incarnates transcendence” while “Woman is doomed to […] the care of the home—that is to say, to immanence” (429-8). Through this, Glaspell—by establishing the male characters as the productive worker separate from the domestic household—subverts this by having the evidence excavated by the immanence of the female characters. The “trifles” (144), or the domestic arrangements that the male characters ironically view as unimportant, become the mode through which truth is uncovered. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters find a quilt and “wonder if [Mrs. Wright] was going to quilt it or knot it,” to which the male characters laugh, suggesting that the quilt is of no importance, a mere trifle. However, Mrs. Hale notes that it appears to have one part “nice and even” while the other part “all over the place” (148). Through this, Glaspell depicts the intuitiveness lacking in the male figures, as they look in all the wrong places, Mrs. Hale is able to confer that she must have been “nervous about” something. This moment shows that the female characters are granted deeper insights through their position—as Beauvoir would note—in the repetitive immanence of the household. As the scene progresses, Mrs. Peters comes across a bird cage in a cupboard. The symbolic representation of the birdcage becomes an essential piece of evidence to Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, as they recognize the battered birdcage as emblematic of Mrs. Wright’s psychological state, comparing Mrs. Wright to a bird: “she was kind of like a bird herself—real sweet” (150). As they continue to look around the house for “trifles,” as the men would call it, they come across a red box with a bird in it and its neck broken. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters immediately piece together the symbolic configuration of the bird—a songbird silenced by presumably Mr. Wright, as Mrs. Hale suggests: “No, Wright wouldn’t like the bird—a thing that sang. She used to sing. He killed that, too” (151). Mrs. Hale makes the connection that the silencing of Mrs. Wright is an attack on her self-expression, her voice, ultimately embodied by the songbird who no longer sings. The patriarchal household silences Mrs. Wright from achieving self-hood separate from the domestic role—her subjectivity becomes nullified. In granting Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peter’s interpretative authority, the characters become distant to the usual immanence of their position, ultimately transcending the household, ironically, through their reading of household items as evidence for the truth of the crime. In a moment of reclamation of autonomy, the women hide the evidence of the bird and allow Mrs. Wright the freedom of transcendence. Through a Beauvoirian critical framework, one finds that Trifles and Long Day’s Journey Into Night share a congruence in their depictions of the respective female characters. In Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Mary is represented as alienated from the male characters of the play, causing her to seek a removal from the present failures of the household through morphine. As a result, Mary is confined to the immanence of her person, ultimately being stuck in the past without the remedy for becoming a transcendent figure. On the other hand, the female characters in Trifles are shown to be figures stuck in the immanence of the household rather than the self. However, Glaspell subverts the notion of immanence by using it as the essential tool in which Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peter are able to excavate for the truth of the crime scene. As a result, the female characters of Trifles become essential for the narrative’s overarching resolution of truth. Beauvoir’s existential feminist text The Second Sex, becomes a unique tool in interpreting the treatment of the female characters of either text.