Friday Five: Books Read in February

1. The Deep Blue Sea by Terrence Rattigan (Nick Hern Books) - A very fine play set over the course of a day in a shabby London flat in the 1950s. The play begins with the discovery of Hester by her neighbours and landlady after she has failed in an attempt to take her own life by gassing herself. It soon becomes apparent that the source of her anguish is her relationship with Freddie, a former RAF pilot, who cannot love her as she wishes to be loved. Her husband, Sir William, a respectable judge, is reluctant to grant her a divorce on the grounds that he now cares for her more than ever. But is it enough or is it just because she is "simply a prized possession that has now become more prized for having been stolen."? While others tip-toe around her predicament, it is the straight-talking struck-off doctor, Mr Miller from upstairs, who is able to force her to face reality. The play is a great expose of social mores across ever-widening chasms of class and culture.  
2. The Wife and the Widow by Christian White (Affirm Press) - A well-written, suspensful and engaging novel with plenty of intrigue that examines the consequences of hiding feelings and burying emotions. When Kate's husband, John, dies, part of her grieving process is to return to their holiday home on a fiction island (which seems remarkably like Bruny Island), that "represented a cold exclamation mark at the end of a sentence." As the title suggests, there is another viewpoint from which the story is narrated, that of Abby, the wife, with husband Ray. There is of course the secret life aspect that is no surprise when it surfaces, some aspects of the novel are unoriginal and over-explained, and it’s difficult to tell whether the occasional gender-reductive viewpoint is that of the character or the author, or both. Overall, however, sharp writing, original similes and colloquial appeal make this an intense and compelling thriller which is hugely readable and atmospheric.



Tom Hollander as Henry Carr and Clare Foster as Cecily in Travesties, directed by Patrick Marber in 2016

3. Travesties by Tom Stoppard (Faber) - The characters in this sublime play include Tristan Tzara (Dadaist who wears a monocle), James Joyce, Lenin, and Henry Carr – based on a real character from history who performed in The Importance of Being Ernest, directed by Joyce when they all live in Zurich. Carr then sued and was counter-sued by Joyce over nonpayment of tailor’s bills due to Carr’s insistence on wearing sartorially elegant trousers for the production, and Joyce believing he had not been reimbursed for ticket sales. This is mentioned in a minor footnote in Ulysses, and Stoppard picked it up and turned it into a play. In much the same way as in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, the characters of Gwendolyn and Cecily from Ernest come to the fore, and in similar fashion to Arcadia, time and place overlap – like a derailed toy train that must be set back on its rails – this is also in part due to Henry Carr being old and senile (we see Old and Young Carr, both played by the same actor), and an entirely unreliable narrator – he may not even have been the consulate he believes he was/is. There are so many layers of understanding and allusion – recycling and reappearing like the Dadaist anti-structure which removes meaning, context and cause – that it needs to be read and deserves to be seen.
4. The Good Husband of Zebra Drive by Alexander McCall Smith (Abacus) - As with all the novels in the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series (this is the eighth), the crimes themselves - a person stealing stationary supplies, three suspicious deaths in a hospital at the same time in the same bed - are secondary to the characters, their development (or otherwise) and relationships to each other. Mma Makutsi is greatly looking forward to her future life with her fiancé, and she bridles at her apparent lack of authority with Mma Ramotswe. Meanwhile, Mr J. L. B. Matekoni is bored with his job and asks to take on some detective work. He lands the role of investigating for Mma Botumile, who suspects her husband is having an affair. She is the “rudest woman in the whole of Botswana” so he wouldn’t be surprised, although he tells himself he must not judge. He asks what car her husband drives so he can follow him after work and see where he goes, but she only tells him it is a red car, which horrifies him – how can she not know the make and model? Of course, he follows a different red car and investigates the wrong man. Charlie, the apprentice, buys a Mercedes Benz and leaves Mr J. L. B. Matekoni’s garage to become a taxi driver. He is distracted by dreams of greatness and girls, and his fledgling business fails to launch. And, once again, we return to the comforting bush wisdom of Mma Ramotswe, who believes that women make better detectives because they observe more detail and have natural intuition. “There was room in this world, Mma Ramotswe thought, for things done by men and things done by women; sometimes men could do the things done by women, sometimes not. And vice versa, of course."

One-Sided Passion in Multidimensional Play: The Deep Blue Sea

The Deep Blue Sea by Terence Rattigan

Nick Hern Books

Pp. 90 

F3; M8

 

The play begins as a young woman, Hester Collyer, has attempted to take her own life, although the gas went out because there wasn’t enough money in the meter. In this respect, it almost commences with an element of black comedy. Hester is discovered by the landlady, Mrs Elton, and the couple from upstairs, Anne and Philip Welch. Mr Miller also gets involved, a mysterious resident of the tenement who may or may not be a doctor. It transpires that Hester is in love with Freddie Page and has left her barrister husband, Sir William Collyer, to be with him, but Freddie doesn’t feel quite the same as she does and is, in fact, alarmed by her physical passion. “He walks forward and kisses her. Instantly she responds, with an intensity of emotion that is almost ugly. After a moment he pushes her away and smacks her playfully.”

 

Freddie was an RAF fighter pilot until an accident curtailed his career, and he has turned to drink, although he still maintains the lingo and bravado. “Funny things about gongs, when you think what a lottery they were. They don’t mean a damn thing in war – except as a line-shoot, but in peacetime they’re quite useful.” When Jackie reminds Freddie that he was “the tops… as a test pilot”, he replies, “I was – a year ago. Since then things have changed a bit. (He points to his glass.) This stuff isn’t exactly what the doctor ordered for nerve and judgment. Besides I’m too ruddy old. You’re finished in that racket at twenty-five. I wouldn’t last a week. I want something chairborne – not airborne. I’ve had flying for life.” His staccato speech is in sharp contrast to Hester’s stillness, and when he first enters, her simple responses which are made without her once turning to meet Freddie’s eye, creates a cruelly ironic effect distancing Freddie from the audience’s sympathy.

 

The play takes place in one room, over the course of one day, follows one narrative, and as noted by Dan Rebellato in the introduction, “almost no violent action occurs on stage. This unshowy preservation of the Aristotelian unities perhaps subtly encourages an audience to expect a tragic ending.” Instead, there is a final glimmer of hope, and many contemporary critics felt cheated. Miller thinks Hester may some talent in her painting which might become a little flame. “Not a great fire, which could have illumined the world – oh no – I’m not saying that. But the world is a dark enough place for even a little flicker to be welcome.” Rebellato champions the play: “The story of Hester Collyer, trapped in a relationship with a man incapable of returning her love, and her transition from attempted suicide to groping, uncertain self-determination is handled with extraordinary economy, precision and power. The depths of despair and desire that Rattigan plumbs have made The Deep Blue Sea one of his most popular and moving pieces.” Other reviewers feel it is a brutally bleak meditation on the cruel consequences of one skirmish between sexual desire and social repression.

 

Rattigan was known for putting character ahead of ideas, and for themes of sexual longing and humiliation. Hester knows that Freddie loves her as much as he ever did, which means that he doesn’t. He’s not a bad man, but she is passionate about him and that is not socially acceptable for women in this era. In this respect, the play in similar to Look Back in Anger to which it is often compared, usually unfavourably. When asked what he thought about Osborne’s Look Back in Anger, Rattigan replied that it should have been retitled, ‘Look how unlike Terence Rattigan I’m being.’ Hester is a tough character to play without being mawkish, maudlin or melodramatic. She could also be self-pitying and dull or hard and matter of fact. It’s a fine balance. Hester explains, “When you’re between any kind of devil and the deep blue sea, the deep blue sea sometimes looks very inviting.”

 

Freddie tells his mate, Jackie Jackson, “A clergyman’s daughter, living in Oxford, marries the first man who asks her and falls in love with the first man who gives her an eye. (After a slight pause.) Hell, it’s not that I’m not in love with her too, of course I am. Always have been and always will. But – well – moderation in all things – that’s always been my motto. (At the table.) Have another?” Another touch of black humour in that he is immoderate in drink, while glibly discussing his lover’s broken heart. Freddie thinks only of himself, while accusing others of being selfish. “Supposing she’d pulled it off last night, do you realise what everyone would have said? That I’d bust up a happy marriage, and then driven Hes to suicide. I’d have been looked on as a ruddy murderer. Did she think of that, I wonder? Who the hell would have believed what I’ve just told you?” He is the conventional one, while Hester risks being a social outcast through her honesty. When having a disagreement with her husband, she says, “There are polite words and impolite words. They all add up to the same emotion.”

 

Collyer tells Hester that he would happily take her back and that he is even more in love with her than he was “on our wedding day.” He tells her that Freddie is reprehensible, with which the audience agrees. “This man you say you love is morally and intellectually a mile your inferior and has absolutely nothing in common with you whatever; what you’re suffering from is no more than an ordinary and rather common infatuation; and it’s your plain and simple duty to exert every effort of will you’re capable of in order to return to sanity at once.” She despairs that her husband cannot understand how she feels. “In sober truth neither you nor I nor anyone else can explain what I feel for Freddie. It’s all far too big and confusing to be tied up in such a neat little parcel and labelled lust. Lust isn’t the whole of life – and Freddie is, you see, to me. The whole of life – and of death, too, it seems. Put a label on that, if you can.” She will not return to Collyer, as she tells him, “I’m simply a prized possession that has now become more prized for having been stolen.”

 

Michael Billington wrote of The Deep Blue Sea, that it is “as timelessly true as Phèdre in its portrait of the inequality of passion.” Dan Rebellato considers that “Rattigan has placed Hester between her father the clergyman, her husband the judge, and her lover, the ex-airman; Hester’s sexuality is policed by a repressive triad of church, law and the army.” Philip attempts to take charge of the situation by telling Hester, “Without trying to be preachy or anything, it is really the spiritual values that count in this life, isn’t it? I mean the physical side is really awfully unimportant – objectively thinking, don’t you think?” A lot of the humour is at Philip’s expense, and he is so uptight and pompous that he doesn’t notice. When he lectures Hester by recounting his own experience – “I went away for a fortnight all by myself – and of course I had hell, but gradually things sort of got clearer in my mind, and when I got back I was out of the wood.” – she replies, “I’m so glad. Where was it you went?” His answer, Lyme Regis, deflates him and his specious argument.

 

Meanwhile, Miller appears to be the only one who can relate, as he counsels Hester, “To see yourself as the world sees you may be very brave, but it can also be very foolish. Why should you accept the world’s view of you as a weak-willed neurotic – better dead than alive? What right have they to judge? To judge you they must have the capacity to feel as you feel. And who has? One in a thousand. You alone know how you have felt. And you alone know how unequal the battle has always been that your will has had to fight.” This is also a caution to the audience. Miller is amused that Ann should concern herself about Hester’s mental state, when she is physically unharmed. “You make that distinction? Her mind is perfectly sound. There is no trace whatever of any psychotic symptoms which might justify a certificate of insanity.” When Ann asks what made her try to kill herself, Miller answers “(after a slight pause) She wanted to die, I suppose.” Again, this hints at black comedy, although he suspects she “probably will try again, and try again very soon.”

There has been considerable criticism levelled at Rattigan (as there is to E.M. Forster in The Inheritance) that he wasn’t open enough about his sexuality – it was illegal to be homosexual – and that he writes coded characters, such as Mr Miller. Many people at the time (and me) thought that the reason Miller couldn’t practice as a doctor was because he had performed an abortion (also illegal), but modern interpretation believes it is because he was discovered to be gay. Attempted suicide was also illegal in the 1950s. Miller insists he is not a doctor although he has all the credentials, and he mocks Collyer with his understanding of patient confidentiality. “Yes, I’ve heard of it. It’s much the same as the English schoolboy’s code, isn’t it? No sneaking.”

 

Rattigan had a relationship with a man who tried to end his life through gassing himself and failed – but this doesn’t mean that he has made Hester a male stand-in and written in code about homosexuality. It is a lot deeper and more complex than that, as Rebellato explains, “Homosexuality, then, was explored and experienced through a series of semi-hidden, semi-open codes of behaviour; the image of the iceberg, with the greater part of its bulk submerged beneath the surface, was frequently employed. And this image is, of course, one of the metaphors often used to describe Rattigan’s own playwriting.” He is criticised for smuggling furtively homosexual themes into his plays and for lacking the courage to confess to his sexuality both in his plays and his writing – the devil and the deep blue sea, indeed.

 

The fear and repression in palpable. In his obituary of Rattigan, Michael Billington wrote, “His whole work is a sustained assault on English middle class values; fear of emotional commitment, terror in the face of passion, apprehension about sex.” Rebellato argues, “There are traces of gay experience running through The Deep Blue Sea. The set itself strongly captures the continual fear of exposure felt by so many homosexual men and women. The room with a communal stairwell right outside the door is positioned to encourage a constant awareness of surveillance, with characters perusing each other’s letters, exchanging gossip, and overhearing one another’s conversations.”

 

The letter Hester writes to Freddie is passed around and becomes a plot device, typical of the ‘well-made play’. Rebellato feels, “There is a fluidity and subtlety in the way that Rattigan has the suicide note pass from the mantlepiece to the Welches, then into the pocket of Hester’s dressing gown, and finally into the hands of Freddie. Rattigan expertly misdirects us, so that we have forgotten about the letter, until Freddie’s desire for a cigarette leads him to stumble across it... The same confidence and theatrical economy marks Rattigan’s use of the shilling which Freddie cruelly offers Hester, ‘Just in case I’m late for dinner’, and which lies on the table until Hester picks it up in preparation for her second suicide attempt. Through these devices… Rattigan not only creates a satisfyingly taut theatrical unity, but reminds us of the dangerous atmosphere in which these characters live, in which everything is charged with meaning, and where objects and actions are constantly scrutinised, judged and battled over.” If we can stop comparing this to Osborne (as if they were both trying to write the same play) and appreciate it for its own merit, we must conclude that this is a very fine play indeed.