In Part 4, Mary has made the decision to leave Crick. Do you think it's sudden or cumulative, and why or why not? Reflect upon postures of violence that Mary has seen in Crick before Part 4, and what relation they bear to the bat he holds in Scene 6 and his grasping of Mary's neck.
The last stanza in the song at the end of the play could speak to Mary's transformation over the course of this play and also the evolution of Blue. Reflect upon both perspectives and share your thoughts.
"Oh, find me a child
Who grows into a girl
Who rides like a man--
With a mask."
-- Sarah Ruhl
Who grows into a girl
Who rides like a man--
With a mask."
-- Sarah Ruhl
Kudos to Greg and to Samantha for motivating my exploration of our little blog. I think you can now comment directly onto the site because I have added you all as authors. Let me know your thoughts about the play, primarily from the point of view of the characters. What did you learn about Mary, Crick, and Red? What did you think about their journeys? Use my comments as triggers for your own thoughts.
ReplyDeleteI had trouble deciding why Mary did not like holidays. In the structure of the play, events and time seemed to be measured by the passing of holidays. It is possible that Mary felt that with each passing holiday she was losing time to complete her own personal goals. Society's time was not moving at a pace conducive to her seeming desire for freedom at this point in the play. This is also evidenced in the ending, where Mary seems to show relief that on cowboy time she is never late and never has to rush.
ReplyDeleteI think Mary's decision to leave Crick was cumulative. Throughout the play there are several clashes between there personalities. Crick has a strong desire for control of his environment. This is alluded to by the reference to the portrait made at the end of the play, where Crick tries to see the horizon only through the picture frame. He can see and control only a small fraction of his environment. Mary was compared directly to a horse by Crick, and this comparison was referenced initially in the play when Mary asks Red how to break a horse. She had a desire for freedom but continued to return to Crick because of some sense of love or loyalty. Although there were displays of seeming violence from Crick they never seemed to amount to anything, they seemed rather childish. Rather, I think any physical outburst from him results from his need to control his environment, to bend others to his will. That is why I think he grabbed her neck. She would not comply so he would force his will. These things, plus the disagreements over the child contributed to Mary's departure at the end of the play.
When I first read the song, I thought of Blue. I compared the cowboy/cowgirl ideology of Red and Mary to Blue as well as Blue's status as a hermaphrodite. It could apply to Mary and Red's wishes for Blue's future life. It could also be indicative of Mary's new vision of life, and her new path as a cowboy. All in all, I thought it was a strange ending to a strange play.
Mary is a childish character who's undergoing severe psychological growth - or trying to. There were plenty of reasons for her to leave Crick long before she did. She didn't love him. She didn't even like him. He didn't understand her. She was afraid of him. He was possessive. Controlling. Irresponsible. They rushed into marriage. They rushed into parenting. Why DIDN'T she leave him before? Because of their long history? For comfort and familiarity? Because she had no one and nowhere else to go?
ReplyDeleteThis play had a lot of gender confusion. Mary and Crick's gender-roles, Red's cowboyism (as a woman), and a hermaphrodite baby. Generally, the characters (minus Red) were quite confused about all aspects of life - particularly Mary. She was constantly searching for meaning, understanding, common sense, and so on. The trouble is she never seemed to find it. The ending wasn't her settling, or coming to a realization. It was an unsurprising next-step that was long overdue and painfully unsatisfying.
Mary and Crick's relationship was oversimplified and tragic. It was lovely that they had such a beautiful backstory - but why didn't they even like each other? Or know anything about each other? As time went on, Crick became more frustrated, suspicious, and difficult. Mary pulled away, instinctively - partially because Crick's behavior was so unpleasant but also because her eyes had been opened to a different world through Red - where no one is late and time doesn't have to overwhelm you.
The more I have thought about Crick, the more he seems like a redneck-like bum. He doesn't have a job, he gets his girlfriend pregnant, takes her money to buy something that doesn't appreciate in value, then gets violent. I tried thinking about him as an idealist, or someone trapped in a certain way of life, but I can't help but think the bully label fits. He's not as attuned to his wife's desires as he thinks he is, what with his subtle suggestions of "Let's make love," and instead of talking to her about why she keeps seeing Red and understanding what Red is giving her that he isn't, he gets upset and tries to tell her what to do.
ReplyDeleteI think that Mary coped with all this nonsense for a long time, not seeing it for what it was. The moment when she leaves is a moment in which all the things that Crick has done that she doesn't like come suddenly to her mind, making it quite unclear why she has stayed for so long. So perhaps it seemed like a sudden decision, I think that the reason she left was the resurfacing, or sudden remembrance, of a history of problems.
Red is the easiest character to understand in the play, I think, because she knows who she is. She's also a new take on a symbol of the rough and tumble don't fence me in cowboy, and I, at least, often thought of her as both a man and a woman. Her main purpose in the story is to show Mary another way, to be the open sky that looks so good if you've been staring at a ceiling for your whole life. I think Red's singing fits perfectly with her character - it's the clearest and easiest way for her to put her thoughts and feelings into words. I like the song about eating Chinese food because it illustrates a soft side to her in that she has a crush, or something of that nature, on Mary.
Mary is confusing for me. I want to pigeon hole her and say that she didn't really know what she wanted when she was younger and because Crick seemed to like her so much she went along with him. However I'd like to believe that she is a stronger character than that and made her own decision to be with Crick, or at least that Crick changed in some way to make him less desirable to her. I really like that she ultimately does what she wants and goes off with Red.
I do not understand the choice for Blue to be a hermaphrodite. Perhaps it's a way for Mary to pass on what she's learned about it being acceptable to love someone of the same gender and also to be confused about what you want. Perhaps Blue is that way so that the audience has the expectation that her life will be easier because her mother has learned from her own experiences.
Okay, I hope I'm doing this right...
ReplyDelete"Late" sparked for me a lot of thoughts both about the characters and about other aspects of the play. I'll start with my thoughts on the characters since that's what we're focusing on, but I'll probably end up off on some sort of non character-related tangent (just a warning).
To start, I appreciated the creative character descriptions. So much can be said about a person in one sentence and I guess I think it would be nice to be able to sum up myself in the same one-sentence kind of way. However, I didn't think the character descriptions were practical. What if I were attempting to put on the play? I definitely would want to start out with more information than "she keeps her diary locked." An age, maybe? I mean, it is a feat for Mary and Crick to have been together since they were eight, but it's a different kind of feat if they are now seventeen than if they are now in their late (no pun intended) thirties. As the playwright, wouldn't Ruhl want to be as specific as possible so that she has the best possible chance of a potential director developing a production that actually resembles her vision? I definitely would.
One thing I really enjoyed about the characters was how different Mary and Crick were. It definitely fits the "opposites attract" idea. I'm not sure where Ruhl was going with all the hints at Crick being abusive, though. It didn't make me distrust Crick, it actually made me distrust Mary, since every suggestion of abuse was accompanied by a clarification that he was not ever actually abusive to her. Overall, I really didn't like Mary. I couldn't understand why she ran, to either Red or to her mother, at every snag in her relationship. She may have been afraid of Crick but there didn't seem to be any evidence that would support her feeling that way. I sympathized more with Crick, which is unusual for me because I generally relate better to female characters. I guess it makes sense though, because, Crick was needier, more emotional, and had more traditional values than Mary, which are qualities usually associated with women. So perhaps I actually was associating with the woman of the relationship... since the play plays so much on gender and non-conformity to one's biological sex, I guess it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to say that Crick is more of a female than Mary.
The character of Red was interesting, to say the least. The impression I got was that Crick felt threatened by her because he sensed that her relationship with Mary was more than platonic. My thoughts on this go under the same category as my thoughts on Crick's “abusiveness.” That is, the idea is fine, but it needs to be better supported. Otherwise, the characters just come across as paranoid, weak and insecure.
Overall, my impression of “Late” was that it tried too hard to incorporate too many themes and ideas into one play. Difficult relationships, non-conformist lifestyles, the trials and tribulations of starting a family, hermaphroditism and gender confusion, spousal abuse, infidelity, and love were just a few of the themes Ruhl touched on. Plus, throw in Mary's hatred of holidays and Mary and Crick's inability to agree on the name for their baby, and “Late” begins to border on soap-opera dramatic. I wish that the playwright had chosen to focus on just a few themes and developed them more fully, rather than tried to take on as many themes as she did and then not resolved any of them.
My strongest reaction to “Late” had to do with its dialogue. Perhaps I would feel differently if I saw it produced where the lines were read by actors, not by my brain, but I felt that there was something lacking the dialogue. There didn't seem to be any passion or personality in the words. I almost felt (especially in the beginning) that I was reading an outline of a play to come, not a finished product. The same went for the stage directions. I'm all for casual stage directions, but these directions felt as though the playwright was still trying to develop her vision and hadn't made strong choices about how she felt the play should be performed.
One last thought... I am not really sure the significance of Mary's hatred of holidays, but I liked it. I definitely feel the same way about the holidays most of the time so it was nice to see that attitude portrayed. For me, the distaste of holidays is because I hate seeing things so hyped up that they can't possibly live up to expectations. I don't think that is why Mary hates holidays though. I think Mary's problem has more to do with the fact that she would rather celebrate things for what they are than for what society wants them to be. That is, celebrate your love for your mother because she helped you through a tough time, not because the calendar says it's Mothers' Day. That mentality would go along well with her regret about letting Jill/Blue become physically female. I also think it fits well with Mary's fascination with Red's life and her desire to leave Crick--she wants something more than just the ordinary. And, now that I think about it, who can't relate to that?
Oh, the gender studies you'll undertake! I really loved how the question of identity in numerous different relationships (Mary & Crick, Mary & Red, Mary and Blue) comes into play. Several different shades of Mary surface, such as the Mary of Inner Turmoil, as we see Mary and Crick's childhood love for each other dwindle. This makes me agree with Chris, that Mary's decision to leave Crick was cumulative. Although, in the moment, you could make the psychological case for the actual decision being revelatory (she needed some sort of impetus, some reason, some real chance to escape a life she considers false and unfulfilled, and she realizes suddenly Crick is holding her back, or not fulfilling her). But I truly think it was a well-crafted series of pitfalls that lined up this inevitable conflict. It wasn't just Mary's being late, or Mary's grappling with herself, or Mary coming home after being with Red. It was also Crick being fickle, Crick being jealous, and as Cara touched on, crick being "needier, more emotional... qualities usually associated with women."
ReplyDeleteSo we have a lot of social reversals, that while not outwardly pleasant to the observer, engage us in questions relating to our evolving social climate and how our different worlds collide.
This play actually reminded me of a reversal of "Jude the Obscure." Mary is very similar to Jude in that she is seeking education as well, only hers is not to be learned in an unobtainable ivory tower; Mary has to find out who she is and we find out with her. When Mary is pregnant, it was similar to Jude's wife becoming pregnant, which prevented him from working and studying and caused them to become engaged. Many of the relationship-flattening dimensions to do with money and goals are similar. Crick "invests" in artwork and takes his job at the museum. Mary sees this as maintaining the status quo, not really trying to change or get ahead or improve or seek out the self. And Mary is that deep. Mary can go there because we see her actions go there. Just little comparisons to Jude there.
As for gestures of violence, I know I've seen this "grabbing of the neck" in other plays and works of literature, and I remember having a discussion on what exactly this meant. As Chris said, the abuse seems childish and representative of his lack of control over the relationship (to him, the makeup would be infuriating because he can't be around her to uncover her motivation). To some, the grabbing of the neck is to take away her voice, to others it is a pseudo-psycho-sexual momentary urge, to others it is merely taking advantage of a sensitive and vulnerable part of someone to see how they react, but to everyone, it is a symbol of power and repression.
Would be very interested to see this staged per the NYTimes/Variety review. It did sound simple and literal. But I think the review was harsh, perhaps rightly so, but it ignored the provocative factor: Doesn't the writing of the play really seem to provoke larger questions? And not just questions, any play can ask questions, aren't these huge, undefinable, new questions that we don't really know the answer to? As someone who seems to be late just as frequently as mary, I really see this resonating with a new culture. We see a generational aspect of the human hybrid with the birth of Blue at the end, which perpetuates the issue and places it in front of us, whereas actual cases and stories are usually hidden away.
Oh, the gender studies you'll undertake! I really loved how the question of identity in numerous different relationships (Mary & Crick, Mary & Red, Mary and Blue) comes into play. Several different shades of Mary surface, such as the Mary of Inner Turmoil, as we see Mary and Crick's childhood love for each other dwindle. This makes me agree with Chris, that Mary's decision to leave Crick was cumulative. Although, in the moment, you could make the psychological case for the actual decision being revelatory (she needed some sort of impetus, some reason, some real chance to escape a life she considers false and unfulfilled, and she realizes suddenly Crick is holding her back, or not fulfilling her). But I truly think it was a well-crafted series of pitfalls that lined up this inevitable conflict. It wasn't just Mary's being late, or Mary's grappling with herself, or Mary coming home after being with Red. It was also Crick being fickle, Crick being jealous, and as Cara touched on, crick being "needier, more emotional... qualities usually associated with women."
ReplyDeleteSo we have a lot of social reversals, that while not outwardly pleasant to the observer, engage us in questions relating to our evolving social climate and how our different worlds collide.
This play actually reminded me of a reversal of "Jude the Obscure." Mary is very similar to Jude in that she is seeking education as well, only hers is not to be learned in an unobtainable ivory tower; Mary has to find out who she is and we find out with her. When Mary is pregnant, it was similar to Jude's wife becoming pregnant, which prevented him from working and studying and caused them to become engaged. Many of the relationship-flattening dimensions to do with money and goals are similar. Crick "invests" in artwork and takes his job at the museum. Mary sees this as maintaining the status quo, not really trying to change or get ahead or improve or seek out the self. And Mary is that deep. Mary can go there because we see her actions go there. Just little comparisons to Jude there.
As for gestures of violence, I know I've seen this "grabbing of the neck" in other plays and works of literature, and I remember having a discussion on what exactly this meant. As Chris said, the abuse seems childish and representative of his lack of control over the relationship (to him, the makeup would be infuriating because he can't be around her to uncover her motivation). To some, the grabbing of the neck is to take away her voice, to others it is a pseudo-psycho-sexual momentary urge, to others it is merely taking advantage of a sensitive and vulnerable part of someone to see how they react, but to everyone, it is a symbol of power and repression.
Would be very interested to see this staged per the NYTimes/Variety review. It did sound simple and literal. But I think the review was harsh, perhaps rightly so, but it ignored the provocative factor: Doesn't the writing of the play really seem to provoke larger questions? And not just questions, any play can ask questions, aren't these huge, undefinable, new questions that we don't really know the answer to? As someone who seems to be late just as frequently as mary, I really see this resonating with a new culture.