Expressionism In the play ‘Mourning Becomes Electra’

M.K.BHAVNAGR UNIVERSITY

Paper : 10 The American Literature

Expressionism In the play

‘Mourning Becomes Electra’

M.A. SEM -3

Enrollment No : PG14101020

Email- ID : bhumivjoshi@gmail.com

Presented By : Bhumi V Joshi

Major points of My Presentation : What is Expressionism?

Historical BackgroundSubject mattersCharacteristics About play – Mourning Becomes ElectraHow Expressionism is applied in this play ?

- Characters- House

- Mask- technique- Example dialogue from the text

- Death Epilogue

What is Expressionism ?

Expressionism was a modernist movement

Initially started in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century.

Expressionism, the post-World War I disillusionment.

One of the symptomatic features of this disillusionment is the protest against the stultifying patriarchal concept of a family.

Historical Background It was the period of just before, during, and after the World War First.

Departed from realistic depictions of life and the world, by incorporating in their art visionary or powerfully emotional states of mind that are expressed and transmitted by means of distorted representations of the outer world.

Expressionism itself was not a concerted or well defined movement.

The arrival of Expressionism announced new a standards in the creation and judgment

of art.

Expressionists reject Naturalism & Realism

Expressionist wanted to project in outer symbols a state of mind, an inner crisis, a

psychological condition.

This also involved expressions of the dream state

Expressionists describe Subjective emotions

The artist accomplishes this aim through distortion, exaggeration, primitivism, and fantasy and through the vivid, jarring, violent, or dynamic application of formal elements. 

Subject Of

Expressionists

Characteristics

Of Expressionism

Anti-Realis

m

Utopia

Exaggeration and

distortion

Individuality

Introduction Of Eugene O'Neill

Eugene O'Neill was the first American dramatist to regard the stage as a literary medium and the first U.S. Born on October 16, 1888, in a New York City hotel room, writer Eugene Gladstone O'Neill was one of the most admired playwrights of all time. His talent for poignant and piercing dramas sprang from a life marked by challenges.

About The Play :

• In Literature, a technique of distorting objects and events in order to represent them as they are perceived by a character in a literary work.

•Expressionism’ was a kind of technique which not becomes vital part in the literature but it existed as experimental technique for literature.

• Analysis of a diseased mind, • A case study for psychiatrist

• Characters are too far removed from the realm of common experience.

“Realism ends where the superconsious begins.”

Character has only to express a desire for something in order the get just to opposite before the end of the act.

“ More sense of unreal behind what

we call reality which is the real

reality.”

House – ‘Tomb’

Characters :Ezra mannon's the image of pride , Puritanism , egotism,

and retribution.

Christine …..“ Has a fine voluptuous figure and she moves with a flowing

animal grace.”

She has physical charms , rich copper hair and fine eyes.

Lavinia is copy of her mother in her attractiveness.

“ Her brown gold hair is arranged as her mother’s has been.”

Mask- TechniqueThe description of the mother and the daughter -Mask like faces and ways of speaking and moving , sometimes with horror of an automation.

“ The effect is more potential than Actual.”

Dialogues :

“I know you, Vinnie! I’hve watched you ever since you were little, trying to do exactly what you are doing now! You’hve tried to become the wife of your father and mother of Orin.’ Yo hve akways Schemed to steal my place.”

Christine says..

Lavinia says..

“My father needs me more . I want to be the wife of my father.”

“Mother! Don’t moan like that! How could you grieve for that servant’s bastard? I knew he was the one who planned Father’s murder! You couldn’t have done that! He got you under his influence to revenge himself!...But you’ll forget him! I’ll make you forget him! I’ll make you happy.”

where Orin rebels against his father and is in love with his mother, with the love-relationship suggesting a Freudian urge.

Orin says to Lavinia….

“I love you now with all the guilt in me-the guilt we share! Perhaps I love you too much, Vinnie……. There are times now when you don’t seem to be my sister, nor Mother, but some stranger with the same beautiful hair-”. 

Orin says..

Death“Life was dying , death was being born”

Death of Ezra Manonn Suicide of Christine

Murder of Adam BrantSuicide of Orin

Disillusionment is the protest against the

stultifying patriarchal concept of a family. The

protest is invariably directed against family

relationships and the way in which these

relationships prevent the youth from developing

their individuality.

Subjective treatment, tap their stream of consciousness if need

be, penetrate into their inner most beings, and lay bare their dreams , their infibulations and

the hidden workings of their minds – reactions and mental

state could not be included in the external observation of the

camera.

“ Eye -of the X-Ray instead of the camera.”