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.

Casual Cruelty and Deep Unhappiness: The Mystery of Love

The Mystery of Love by Andrew Meehan

Head of Zeus

Pp. 247

Subtitled, Constance and Oscar: A Novel, this reads as if Constance has written it (but in omniscient third person) and Oscar has provided footnotes and comments from prison. Her tone is practical and her writing as in a diary, full of capitals and ampersands. His is flamboyant and full of criticism and narcissism, interrupting her story – as he must have done in life – by suddenly introducing his affair with Robbie as an entertaining anecdote rather than as an admission of adultery to his wife. Constance wants to escape from suffocating existence and sees marriage to Oscar as a way to do this; she is hoping for intimacy but is not blinded by his brilliance and comes to see him as two different people. She refers to OW, the performer, who is intense but exhausting, and Oscar, the man behind closed doors, whom she loves with all his frustrating imperfections. “Oh for goodness’ sake, she said. Clever people are such exhausting company. Thankfully you’re only clever in public. & if you’re here to propose marriage, let’s get on with it.”

Oscar’s mother, Lady Jane Wilde (LJW) knows her son is gay and that his relationship with Constance will be purely for show and for progeny. “The week before the wedding, LJW had invited her for dank tea in a darkened room &, if it were possible to be both cryptic & overly direct, had spoken at length about syphilis & the absence of a cure for it.” Later, Constance has occasion to remark about LJW and her unwanted opinions, “It was impossible to ever know if the woman was being helpful or just plain vicious.” Constance may not be swept up in romance, but she does want to change her life. It’s reminiscent of the relationship between Romeo and Juliet where he spouts the romantic poetry and she is keen to get on with the physical aspects. He seems more interested than her dress than her desires; her appearance rather than her appetites, so she tells him, “Sex isn’t everything, Oscar. But it is something.” She is aware that something might be missing from the relationship but does not question it too deeply at the beginning.

The single-minded need to have children and remove herself from her upbringing causes Constance to sacrifice many idealistic notions. “Better not to consider other weddings in the middle of your own. For this was a gathering with all the vivacity of a queue for meat pies.” Oscar doesn’t enjoy the sex, as she learns on her wedding night, “But it delighted her that he would put himself through something he didn’t enjoy just to please her. How could he bring himself to do something he hated? So many delights in one day. This was how she knew he loved her.” This unlikely prose reads like a man writing a woman who has never actually talked to a woman. Oscar’s foot notes describe how he tried to imagine something interesting when with her, in much the same way as he did when he masturbated, which is incredibly offensive considering OW is meant to have and empathy.

Constance and son, Cyril

Once Constance does have children, she discovers they are not the solution to providing happiness, and she doesn’t adore them as some might expect a mother would. “You couldn’t just squirt out child after child in the hope that it would make you feel better about yourself. What were children for? To make the days so very long as well as fraught with danger.”

Committed to the Rational Dress Movement, Constance is critical of restrictive women’s fashion. “Was it such a crime to be able to move your arm in what you wore? What if she would be required to bowl a ball or paint a picture? But her aunt would not be told that a crinoline was a fire hazard. & what if she were to fall under the wheels of a carriage? It was like walking around with a building attached to you.”

Rational Dress Society cartoon

Forgiveness and humility radiate from Constance, as she is persistent and determined to make things work. “Marriages don’t fail. The arrangements just change.” She has no rancour over her position as a woman publicly humiliated by her husband’s homosexual affair and imprisonment, and reflects, “Oscar is not a bad person. In the eyes of the law he behaved wrongly, & for one so clever he was certainly a bit dim to bring all this upon himself.”

The author tries to steer the reader away from pitying Constance her plight by suggesting that isn’t how she feels about herself and that she was never deluded. There is a myth about the wronged woman that he seeks to dispel with a touch too much protestation. Oscar’s final footnote is to comment, “For I have caused you so much pain & given the chance I would cause you more.” Despite trying to re-balance the narrative and claim the outsider knows nothing about the internal workings of a marriage, Meehan hasn’t imagined a particularly credible character and this remains a miserable book full of casual cruelty and deep unhappiness.

Friday Five: Everybody Wants to Rule the World

As part of the highly informative kings and queens of Scotland at Stirling Castle exhibition, there was a section entitled: Dos and Don'ts of Kingship. This was a straightforward checklist for any would-be ruler, which I thought I would share with you here.

5 Dos and Don'ts of Kingship:

1. Assert Your Authority: As the kingdom became more stable, kings assumed greater power and responsibility. Do confront nobles who have grown too powerful - James II was only six when he inherited the crown. He was a pawn in the hands of the Livingston and Douglas families, who used their control of him to gain power and land. At 18 the king took personal control of his kingdom, swept the Livingston's from power, and had the leading members of the family executed. But don't go too far... At Stirling Castle in 1452 James II, then 21, lashed out and murdered the Eighth Earl of Douglas when he refused to bow to his demands. Such a ruthless, unlawful elimination of his rival was very risky and caused general outcry. But James did some swift damage control. He showered traditional Douglas supporters with land grants and so neutralised the threat of a serious invasion.
2. Build a Power-Base: To ensure support, kings had to involve their nobles in government and reward their loyal service with lands and wealth. Do encourage loyalty through good management - James IV exercised an inclusive style of government, giving the appearance of taking advice from a wide circle of advisors. He was a dynamic ruler, whose attractive personality allowed him to build close personal ties with his nobles. Although James IV held relatively few parliaments during his reign, the nobility had access to him which they believed gave them influence in policy-making. Don't alienate your most powerful nobles. James II was seen as remote and disengaged. He isolated many of the greater nobles, the king's traditional advisors. Instead, his inner circle consisted of a few lower-born favourites. The nobles were rarely consulted by the king, whose pro-English policies were particularly unpopular. Discontent grew. Eventually the nobles launched a rebellion which ended with James's death after the Battle of Sauchieburn in 1488.
3. Wage War: Kings need to be commanding military leaders, in whose service fame, fortune and honour could be won. Do set an example for your followers - Robert the Bruce has the reputation for being Scotland's most successful warrior king. He was the military role-model of medieval kingship and fought, against the odds, for Scotland's freedom. His most famous victory was won at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. Don't flee the field before the battle begins. In 1436 James I led a major - and very expensive - expedition to recapture Roxbugh Castle from English control. What should have been a demonstration of military superiority turned into a fiasco. James abandoned the siege before it began. He left behind his expensive artillery - the visible status symbols of a warrior king. James's failure was seen as poor kingship and was a catalyst for his assassination in Perth the following year.
4. Secure the Dynasty: Royal marriage was a powerful tool used to build alliances and seal agreements. It was also essential for the provision of a legitimate heir. Do make a prestigious marriage - As their dynasty became more secure, the Stewart kings began to look to other European courts for their brides. They made some impressive diplomatic alliances, bringing wealth in the form of the bride's dowry. When James III married Margaret of Denmark in 1469 her dowry ultimately comprised the highly desirable Orkney and Shetland islands. Don't fail to produce an heir. David II, son of Robert the Bruce died childless in 1371 despite two marriages. He never gave up hope of producing an heir, and attempted to divorce his second wife, Margaret Logie, to marry his mistress, Agnes Dunbar. But Margaret successfully appealed to the Pope to obstruct the divorce. Agnes was still queen-in-waiting, living at Stirling Castle, when David died. The king's infertility ended the Bruce dynasty and the crown passed to David's nephew, Robert II, the first Stewart king. 
5. Stage a Spectacle: A successful king knew how to make an impression by ensuring he had a physical presence in the realm, while publicly displaying his wealth and status at every opportunity. Do host elaborate events at the royal court, such as pageants and tournaments - In 1449 James II hosted an international tournament at Stirling Castle. Knights o horseback hoped to unseat their opponent and gain fame for their deeds. This sporting event provided welcome entertainment for the nobility and gave James a chance to parade his importance in front of his influential guests. Don't neglect your public image... James III seems to have avoided chivalric sports and public entertainments. There is no evidence of a tournament being held in Scotland at any point during his reign. Instead he horded his wealth. This failure to provide crowd-pleasing spectacles for the court was part of the reason for the eventual rebellion against him.

On Shifting Sands: Celestial Bodies

Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi

Sandstone Press

Pp. 243

Originally titled Sayyidat al-Qamar (Ladies of the Moon), Celestial Bodies is the third of Alharthi’s novels, but the first novel by an Omani woman to be translated into English and the first novel in Arabic to be awarded the Man Booker International Prize (which Alharthi shared with her translator, the Oxford academic Marilyn Booth in 2019). It spans several generations, from the final decades of the 19^th century to the early years of the new millennium, and captures the changing mores and traditions in society, particularly in how they relate to women.

The family tree at the beginning of the book is crucial, and even with constant reference to it, the timelines can be a little hard to follow. The novel focusses on three sisters and their marriage prospects. Mayya marries Abdallah as she is told to after a heartbreak; Asma marries Khalid out of a sense of duty; Khawla rejects all offers while waiting for her beloved, who has immigrated to Canada. It is narrated by an omniscient narrator (who knows all about the women) and alternate chapters (in a different font) by Abdallah (who doesn’t).

Abdallah’s chapters are narrated as he is on a flight from Muscat to Frankfurt and he dreams fretfully of women accused of witchcraft and of the source of his father’s wealth back in his hometown of al-Awafi. Now little more than an oasis for nostalgia, it was once a hub for the slave trade, a practice that was not outlawed in Oman until 1970. It is no accident that the named narrator is not grounded as Alharthi inhabits the liminal space between memory and forgetting; the truth and the stories.

Marriage and childbirth are centre stage: customs are followed or disregarded and everyone has an opinion about how to follow them or not. Asma reads all the books and religious texts that she should, including On Matters of Purity although she finds the chapters so boring that she stops, but not before she gently mocks the highly restrictive guidelines on personal matters. Customs which are only followed for form are ridiculed, whereas those that come from logic and reason are upheld. It is still a patriarchal society, but there are social benefits to marriage. “Now she would be one of the women who sat around their coffee in the late mornings and then again at the end of the day. She would be invited to lunch and dinner, and she would issue her own invitations, since she was no longer merely a girl. Marriage was her identity document, her passport to a world wider than home.”

Women must still strive for individual recognition. When Mayya has her first child, it is a girl, which is considered lucky as it means that boys will follow. “The first one’s a girl, and a girl comes to raise her little brothers.” She calls her London, which name the family ridicule, but Mayya wants to give her a future elsewhere in the world.

The changes are occurring slowly, and the generations have different ideas and ideals. The novel is short and contains vignettes of multiple characters, such as Bedouin businesswomen, slave owners, gossips, poets and arms dealers. Celestial Bodies leaves an ethereal impression of vibrant sketches rather a chronological saga, and it provides a new and appealing voice. In a land of shifting sands, Jokha Alharthi is a shaping energy.

Jokha Alharthi and Marilyn Booth share the Man Booker International Prize for writing and translating Celestial Bodies 

Let it Rain: The Wife Drought

The Wife Drought by Annabel Crabb

(Ebury Press)

Pp. 255

Annabel Crabb is a political commentator, an author, journalist and television show host. She examines the position of women in the workforce, the inequality of wages, and the perception of parenting in this book, subtitled, ‘Why women need wives, and men need lives’. While she makes some interesting points, all of her examples are drawn from politicians, TV presenters, writers and journalists. The debate is, therefore, heavily skewed towards middle-class professions, making it not really typical of real life for most people.

There is no question that women earn less than men on average, but the reasons for this are less clear. Often women don’t get the higher-paid jobs because they don’t have the experience – but how will they ever gain the experience if they aren’t given the job? Part of the problem is perception. Because there are currently more men in higher-paid positions, the trend is likely to continue. Another part of the problem is that the emergent workforce doesn’t see it as a problem at all, because it isn’t for them. Yet.

Firstly, there is marriage; secondly (in this model, at least), there are children. Each stage makes a difference to a person’s income and status. Until relatively recently (October 1966), legislation forbad married women from working in the public sector. Although things have changed, they are still fairly regressive in the upper echelons of the pay scales. Of the 1192 senior executives (half male; half female) who responded to a ‘Leaders in a Global Economy’ survey, three-quarters of the men had a wife or spouse who didn’t work. Three-quarters of the women had a husband who worked full-time. “The men got wives, in other words. And the women didn’t.”

Having a wife is considered an asset for a worker. Employers tend to see men with wives as more reliable, and remunerate them accordingly. “Marriage, for men, means being paid more money. The phenomenon known as ‘the marriage premium’ is recorded in many countries, and in Australia married men earn on average about 15 per cent more than unmarried ones.”

Stage two: children. “What proportion of nuclear families has a dad who works full-time, and a mum who doesn’t? Sixty per cent. What proportion has a mum who works full-time, with a male ‘wife’? Three per cent.” On the whole, due to earning capacity and public perception, it is the man who goes to work and the woman who remains at home. After all, “A mother who works is a ‘working mother’. A father who works is just a normal guy.” Crabb argues that this situation must change so that men leaving work to look after children has to become considered as normal as women doing it.

Part of the alpha-male culture which needs to change is that currently the man has to be seen to be the major breadwinner. In this corporate world, men are expected to get to the office early and leave late, and are told that weekends are for families. This isn’t the point of this book, but what about people who work in retail/hospitality – any job that isn’t a Monday-Friday; when are they meant to spend time with their family?

The book is well-argued with many statistics, but it is pretty narrow in its focus. Early on, Crabb states that she is going to boil all the arguments down into two simple and broad categories – ‘Men are awful’ and ‘Women are hopeless’ – and then address them. She proceeds to do so, but only those in a particular demographic, which (while pertinent to anyone working in politics), lessens the general nature of the argument.