Eberhard - Karls - Universität Tübingen

WS 1998/99

Trapped Inside Society
or
Eve - An Improved Version Of Adam

by

Stephanie Wössner

Semester: O1

This term paper will show to what a great extent society is influenced by men. I suggest that in Marsha Norman´s play "Getting Out"¹ her protagonist Arlene would never have faced so many problems in life, let alone would have become criminal, if men did not possess such a great power over society. Men being in power throughout the world was certainly the worst thing that could ever have happened in human history, Arlene being a representative of all the women living and having lived on earth, even if a very extreme one. But in favor of men, I claim that men are not really guilty either because society has become autonomous and cannot be controlled anymore.

The basis for my thesis is Gretchen Cline´s essay entitled "The Impossibility of Getting Out - The Psychopolitics of the family in Marsha Norman´s Getting Out"² which contains feminist, psychoanalytic and existential frameworks to show Arlene Holsclaw´s oppression within a family that parallels the institutions that bind her. Cline herself uses Walter Davis´ theory of the "crypt"³ to analyze Arlene´s familial and the subsequent social scapegoating in order to show how women are shaped by a society in which the most moral institutions, such as family and religion, justify violation and oppression.
The theory of the "crypt" suggests ways in which core family issues are bracketed by families or individuals. When a human being reaches the stage of the "ego", he or she has to suppress certain deep desires. According to Davis that is the very moment the psyche is born. What sets off this change is first of all humiliation inflicted by an Other. The human being who has been humiliated starts to envy the Other´s superiority and this envy (often identified with male domination) creates as a byproduct shame (often identified with female passivity) and later on a change which produces the psyche. This experience of humiliation as well as the process of bracketing core issues is lived through again and again until the individual is considered normal by society. In Cline´s opinion, the twofold character of Arlie/Arlene must be seen as two different dramatic moments in the process of feminization and these two contrasting moments reveal the price Arlene (and generally every single woman) has to pay for being a woman.

In her early childhood Arlie has suffered from sexual abuse by her father and subsequently she was neglected by her mother. This caused her first “crypt“: in order to compensate her humiliation she felt envy and tried to rebel against the humiliation by acting criminally herself. On the other hand, she felt ashamed and needed her delinquency for self – assurance though. But behind the humiliation she suffered from there was also a deeper familial background which had also been shaped by society. Not to be forced to realize that Arlene´s delinquent behavior went in fact back to the social order, society created Arlene by institutions aimed at denying desire. When Arlene tried to adapt to society society scapegoated her to cover its bracketing of its own weaknesses. To cut a long story short Arlene, seeking recognition, tried to get rid of her humiliation by delinquency but in prison she could only gain the priest´s recognition and “love” by accepting humiliation again, humiliation imposed on her by the social institution “religion” through its representative in order to conceal the origin of her first experience of humiliation. After being released from prison Arlene thinks that everything would be different from what she had experienced until then. But she still cannot rid herself of her “crypts” because ,on the one hand, she is constantly confronted with abusing fatherfigures (for instance Bennie who wants to care for her but who expects something in return) and ,on the other hand, she lives in a male dominated world which encourages suppression of undesired issues and oppression of women by men (the ultimate manifestation being rape). Thus, Cline argues, Arlene is actually used as a scapegoat twice: she is the scapegoat for her family which is not supposed to recognize her abuse and manifests itself in aggression, as such, and she is a social scapegoat because society is not meant to realize that the moral institution of the family is responsible for Arlene´s behavior. Generally speaking society uses women as scapegoats in order to deny collective shame and to preserve gender polarities. By learning to hate herself Arlene in fact allows society to use her as a scapegoat. In this light Arlene is trapped inside society. And despite the hopeful title we must realize that getting out is impossible, as Cline points out, and that it is rather a getting on in life.

[...]

1 Norman, Marsha. Getting Out in Four Plays: Marsha Norman. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1988. 3 – 56.

2 Cline, Gretchen. The Impossibility of Getting Out: The Psychopolitics of the Family in Marsha Norman´s Getting Out in Ginter Brown, Linda, ed. Marsha Norman: A Casebook. New York & London: Garland Publishing Inc., 1996. xi – xiv, 3 – 25.

3 See Davis, Walter. Get the Guests: The Play of Aggression in Modern American Drama. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1994.