Trapped Inside Society

or

Eve - An Improved Version Of Adam

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.

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.

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.

Arlene´s regression into her past, initiated by present scenes which confront her over and over again with society and older versions of herself (for example through her mother), is according to Cline hardly more than a breaking out of one of her crypts, thus represents only the beginning of a long process of getting out, a process Arlene might never be allowed to finish by society. Cline concludes with the assumption that Marsha Norman herself was a victim of society and culture and that the idealism she put at the end of her play was a “crypting her way out”. The audience was then allowed go home with a good feeling and without analyzing the truthfulness of her play.

However, I contend with Gretchen Cline´s last assumption that Marsha Norman was herself a victim of society and the culture she is part of, I am not really sure if I agree. I suppose that this assumption goes a little bit too far and can only prove true or false if not only her first play “Getting Out”, which dates back to 1977, is taken into account but also her later plays and her personal life (her childhood, etc.). If her later plays prove to conclude too positively as well one may really say that she is a victim of society. If her plays, chronologically examined, give the impression that there is a tendency towards a more and more negative ending then one may well suspect that, in the course of her career as a writer, Norman has succeeded in breaking out of society and thus has been imprisoned when she wrote “Getting Out” but if her plays´ endings vary rather frequently her ending of “Getting Out” might have a reason which cannot be seen when looking at the play rather superficially. Not having read any of her later works I do not want to take the liberty of judging her. I could imagine, though, that she created this positive ending in relation to the hopeful title to push the reader toward thinking about society by an overdose of positiveness. Since Norman juxtaposed a total negativeness (Arlie and Bennie) and such a great amount of positiveness (Arlene at the end) one could get the impression that such a change of mind could never take place within the 24 hours after Arlene´s release from prison.

I fully agree with Cline´s opinion that Arlene is trapped inside a society which tries to survive by scapegoating women. Cline clearly points out that Arlene has not yet freed herself from this society, that we only witness her first step towards as we realize that she is in fact trapped. She has not yet reached the point where she could really deal with her “crypts” but she realizes that there is a “crypt” she has to face sooner or later. And this is exactly what society tried to keep her away from in the first place. As Arlene puts it:

Outside ? Honey I´ll either be inside this apartment or inside some kitchen sweatin´ over the sink. Outside´s where you get to do what you want, not where you gotta do some shit job jus´ so´s you can eat worse than you did in prison. That ain´t why I quit bein´ so hateful, so I could come back and rot in some slum. (51)

Thinking about Cline´s idea of Arlene being trapped inside society I conclude that not only women but also men are victims of society and that the process of socialization has become autonomous and is out of control. I think that society invented a kind of deliberate blindness men suffer from which makes them not recognize what they are really doing. This is to be discussed later on when I turn to show that men are actually not supposed to be in power because women are stronger than they are by analyzing Bennie´s attempted rape of Arlene.

In order to demonstrate that Arlene would never have ended up in the situation she is in, I will quote passages from the text which deal with Arlene´s relationship to her mother and her relationship to Bennie. He could be seen as a representative of all the men in Arlene´s life. Bennie is Arlene´s constant reminder of the social order who accompanies her during her time in prison and beyond. This will also include some other hints on society Arlene experiences while in prison. Her mother represents society insofar as she has been produced by society herself. By her present appearance she shows how she has treated Arlene during her childhood and thus to what extent she is also responsible for Arlene´s present situation.

Right at the beginning of the play we get an impression of life in prison by listening to the daily announcements:

Loudspeaker Voice: Kitchen workers, all kitchen workers report imme -

diately to the kitchen. Kitchen workers to the kitchen. The library will not be open today. Those scheduled for book checkout should remain in morning work assignments. Kitchen workers to the kitchen. No library hours today. Library hours resume tomorrow as usual. All kitchen workers to the kitchen.

Frances Mills, you have a visitor at the front gate. All residents and staff, all residents and staff .... Do not, repeat, do not, walk on the front lawn today or use the picnic tables on the front lawn during your break after lunch or dinner.

Your attention please. The exercise class for Dorm A residents has been cancelled. Mrs. Fischer should be back at work in another month. She thanks you for your cards and wants all her girls to know she had an eight - pound baby girl.

Doris Creech, see Mrs. Adams at the library before lunch. Frances Mills, you have a visitor at the front gate. The Women´s Associates´ picnic for the beauty school class has been postponed until Friday. As picnic lunches have already been prepared, any beauty school member who wishes, may pick up a picnic lunch and eat it at her assigned lunch table during the regular lunch period.

Frances Mills, you have a visitor at the front gate. Doris Creech to see Mrs. Adams at the library before lunch. I´m sorry, that´s Frankie Hill, you have a visitor at the front gate. Repeat, Frankie Hill, not Frances Mills, you have a visitor at the front gate. (5, emphasis added)

During this announcement we learn a lot about life in a prison: there are prohibitions and orders the convicts have to obey which parallel the prohibitions and regulations in society. The convicts are not supposed to walk on the front lawn or use the picnic tables, the library hours have been cancelled and so on. Mrs. Fischer who “wants all her girls to know she had an eight - pound baby girl” seems to consider the convicts merely as children implying that women in general are regarded as no more than children who have to be told what to do. The one reading the announcements, confusing two convicts, also shows that as soon as you lost your freedom you are no longer an individual but rather similar to anybody else and thus can be mistaken for no matter who.

Moreover we learn a lot about male/societal attitude towards people who do not correspond to the norm:

Guard (Evans): Most of these girls are mostly nice people, go along with

things. She needs a cage.

[...]

Bennie: [...] And you git ol´ Arlie girl to behave herself with a stick of gum.

Gotta have her brand, though. (37)

So people, especially women, who do not correspond to the norms are simply locked away so that they cannot influence other people and in order to get them adapt to the norm you can bribe them with such a simple thing as chewing gum. Besides, in society there are always people who tell other people what to do:

Guard (Caldwell): You gotta eat, Arlie.

Arlie: Says who ?

Guard (Caldwell): Says me. Says the warden. Says the Department of

Corrections.[...] (14)

Bennie´s remarks after Arlene´s release also draw a clear picture of society´s attitude and demonstrate that you cannot escape society, it will always be with you - in Arlene´s case in the form of Bennie who accompanies her when she is released.

Bennie: Oh, now, let me bring it in for you. You ain´t as strong as you once

was. (7)

Bennie: Nobody to take care of you.

Arlene: I kin take care of myself. I been doin´ it long enough.

Bennie: Sure you have, and you landed yourself in prison doin´ it, Arlie girl.

Arlene: Arlie girl landed herself in prison. Arlene is out, okay ? (8)

Bennie: You´ll feel better soon´s you git somethin´ on your stomach. Like I

always said, “Can´t plow less´n you feed the mule.” (12)

So Bennie says that as soon as Arlene has adapted to society she got weaker and he makes explicit that women have to internalize that they are weaker because men think them to be.

Moreover Bennie tells Arlene that she will get in trouble unless there is no man to take care of her which means that he makes her in fact dependent on him. Although Arlene tells Bennie over and over again that she has changed Bennie continues acting caring and shows that kind of deliberate blindness characteristic to men in order not to realize that she really does not need him. Finally, he expresses freely that women are worth no more than animals and thus can be dominated by men.

But not only Bennie makes Arlene face the generally accepted “insight” that she is helpless without a man at her side. During her short appearance on stage Arlene´s mother confronts her daughter with society´s attitude towards women and towards how women act. She constantly remembers and brings up older versions of Arlene´s self implying that women´s situation has always been the same and will forever stay that way, that there is no chance for them to change. She does this on the one hand by calling her by her childhood name although her daughter insists several times on being called by her proper name. On the other hand, she remembers her daughter the way she used to be when she was a child and implies Arlene´s being stuck within her past, a state which gets worse and worse.

Mother: You forgot already what you was like as a kid. At Waverly, tellin´

them lies about that campin´ trip we took, sayin´ your daddy made you

watch while he and me ... you know. I´d have killed you then if them

social workers hadn´t been watchin´.

Arlene: [...]

Mother: [...] Each time you´d get out of one of them places, you´d be actin´

worse than ever. Go right back to that junkie, pimp, Carl, sellin´ the stuff

he steals, savin´ his ass from the police. He follow you home this time,

too? (21)

Arlene: I ain´t like that no more.

Mother: Oh, you ain´t. I´m your mother. I know what you´ll do. (24)

So this is one of society´s many ways to keep Arlene from facing her past. Moreover

Arlene´s mother sounds like she thinks that being beaten corresponds to nature.

Mother: You always was too skinny. Shoulda beat you like your daddy said.

Make you eat

Arlie: [...]

Mother: He weren´t a mean man though, your daddy.

Arlie: [...]

Mother: You remember that black chewing gum he got you when you was

sick?

Arlene: I remember he beat up on you.

Mother: Yeah, (Proudly) and he was really sorry a coupla times. (15)

Thus Bennie bribing Arlie with chewing gum reminds her of her father and of her father´s abuse. Her mother further holds the opinion that if a woman is beaten by a man it is only her own fault.

Arlene: He beat me good.

Mother: Well, now, Arlie, you gotta admit you had it comin´ to you. (19)

Finally Arlene is confronted with the general view that women are expected to do a man sexual favors in order to obtain his help and be well treated.

Arlene: Guy drove me home from Pine Ridge. A guard.

Mother: I knew it. You been screwin´ a goddamn guard.

Arlene: He jus´ drove me up here, that´s all.

Mother: Sure.

Arlene: [...]

Mother: You expect me to believe that ?

Arlene: [...]

Mother: No man alive gonna drive a girl five hundred miles for nuthin´. (23)

And her rejection of Arlene, or better Arlie, as a bad influence for her sisters and brothers equals the act of scapegoating her as a product of society.

Mother: I hear things. Girls callin´ each other “mommy” an bringin´ things

back from the canteen for their “husbands.” Makes me sick. You got

family, Arlie, hat you want with that playin´ ? Don´t want nobody like

that in my house.

Arlene: You don´t know what you´re talkin´ about.

Mother: I still got two kids at home. Don´t want no bad example. (21)

For Arlene this not only signifies a rejection by her family but also by all moral institutions that make up society. It also implies how much influence her mother had on her childhood experiences. She was to a great extent responsible for what Arlene had to

endure just because she raised her daughter the way society imposes. However, nobody can really be blamed for this because, as suggested before, socialization has become autonomous. Her mother cannot be blamed for she is herself a victim of society, having been raised exactly the same way and before her her mother and grandmother and the generations before far back to the beginning of time. This kind of bringing up was passed on from generation to generation. The same procedure applies to men as well because they inherited the earlier mentioned concept of deliberate blindness from their fathers who themselves got it from their forefathers.

To come to an end with the first part of my thesis I claim to have proved that everybody is trapped inside society, society being a cyclical process nobody can control. This cycle is reproduced by every generation with the passing on of social values and norms.

To prove now that society would be better off if women were in power I have to consult once more one of the theses mentioned in Gretchen Cline´s essay. She argues that if one tries to “crypt” something he or she does not want to be aware of this will ultimately lead to a confrontation with the “crypted” event and not to actually forgetting it. This is so, according to Cline, because the longer one suppresses this event the more frustrated one gets about its very existence and so one finally gets aware of it and has to face it.

Since Arlene is determined to forget about her past sexual abuse by her father, the subsequent neglection by her mother and also about the familial and social background of what happened she gets more and more aware of it. The more often she gets confronted with the social order (through Bennie, her mother, Carl,...) which is in fact the basis of her abuse trying to hide behind itself she finally reaches a point where she cannot help but confront her “crypt.” Thus the social order takes part in revealing what it originally wanted to hide. Arlene´s present encounters with her mother, Carl, Bennie, etc. cause anxiety regarding her inner struggle to face the past but by this anxiety she gets aware of her inner struggle and when she is able to face her attempted suicide, what she can do after Bennie´s attempted rape, she can also start to reveal the reasons why she tried to put herself to death. So she is able to overcome at least one of her “crypts”. By creating Arlene, society initiated her breaking out, also called “decrypting”. Ruby´s remark that

“You can still love people that´s gone.” (54)

is maybe society´s last effort to stop the beginning of the long process of “decrypting” at this point, a process which removes Bennie as a regulating factor from Arlene´s life so that he cannot be the reason for any further attempts to analyze her innermost. Ruby then would be a regulator sent by society to prevent Arlene from facing her past.

When Bennie tries to rape Arlene, it is evident that society is able to prevent Bennie from realizing the significance of what he was just about to do.

Bennie: You don´t want me to go. You´re just beginning to git interested.

Your ol´ girlie temper´s flarin´ up. I like that in a woman.

[...]

Arlene: This how you got your Dorrie, rapin´?

Bennie: (Unbuttoning his shirt) That´s what you think this is, rape ?

[...]

Bennie: Don´t you call me no rapist. No, I ain´t no rapist, Arlie. (Gets up,

begins to tuck his shirt back in and zip up his pants)

Arlene: And I ain´t Arlie. (32)

So this is a demonstration of society´s most evil crimes: trying to rape a woman men scapegoat her in order not to realize what they are about to do. Society tells them that if a woman says “no” she actually means “yes” and this is society´s way of keeping women within “reasonable” limits. That is why women who have been raped often wonder if it was not actually their own fault that this could have happened. In Bennie´s case he thinks it to be okay to rape a “bad girl”; This is also the reason for him calling her Arlie. But then Arlene mentions his wife Dorrie, who he considers to have been a “good girl”, and she finally calls him a rapist. This is the worst term you can attribute to a man and the only way of getting him to realize for at least one second what he is about to do. Society´s influence is here proven once more because he does not want to be considered a rapist and thus stops. But then society intervenes again and prevents Bennie from realizing the very dimensions of his deed and makes him believe he could undo everything by buying her plants to hide the bars at her window and bringing her some chewing gum.

Bennie: I jus´ thought, after what I done last night ... I jus´ wanted to do

somethin´ nice.

[...]

Bennie: I´m real fond of this little girl. I ain´t goin´ till I´m sure she´s gonna

do okay. Thought I might help some.

Ruby: Arlene´s had about all the help she can stand.

Bennie: I got a car, Arlene. An money. An ... I brung you some gum. (54)

From this probably arises that whenever a man has done something wrong or thinks to

have done something wrong he shows up with flowers and candy.

But Arlene has at this moment faced so much of the truth about society real nature already and therefore cannot go back. She finally rids herself of Carl and Bennie by burning their telephone numbers in order to continue her way towards a deeper insight. She wants to get a job and turn away from men also by accepting Ruby as a friend. I doubt that she is going to make it to real insight though because her accepting of Ruby as a friend together with Ruby´s remark (meant to chase off Bennie), “Arlene´s had about all the help she can stand,” (55) suggests that Ruby will have a great influence on Arlene and that she will be society´s regulating force in preventing Arlene from exploring the long - hidden truth.

Nevertheless Arlene has proved that she is stronger than a man. Society, in the form of Bennie could not stop her from breaking out of the Arlie - “crypt” while Bennie, on the

other hand, was, by the deliberate blindness mentioned, prevented from overcoming the

“crypt” society created to cover its own weaknesses. This should be proof enough to back up my thesis that Eve was created as an improved model of his earlier created, more imperfect version called Adam. I would like to put a particular emphasis on the comparative form I used in the last sentence. I do not mean to claim that women are totally perfect and infallibly. They are rather less imperfect than men but they are still human. Quoting a famous Latin saying I would like to finish my line of reasoning with

“errare humanum est”

or more contemporarily put

“nobody is perfect”

The question that still remains is whether or not Arlene will be allowed to make the next step in a rather long process of “decrypting”, what I personally, as mentioned before, doubt, or if society will manage somehow to stop her on her way, stop her soon enough not to sustain too much harm. Besides my approach to this play there is an unexplored potential including the production of the play on stage. As described by Norman in the stage directions the stage has to resemble a prison cell surrounded by a whole prison complex. So it would be interesting to investigate to what extent the stage mirrors

Arlene´s situation, her being imprisoned by society. Another interesting aspect, which I

mentioned earlier in the text, is to deal with the question if, and if so, to what extent, Norman herself was a victim of society and thus forced to put a positive closure at the end of the play. If it proved right that she in fact was a victim of society this discovery would further imply that her writing of the play was her step towards facing her crypt imposed by society but that then society intervened and stopped her from further investigations.

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