Mourning Becomes Electra by Eugene O’Neill

Author:Eugene O’Neill
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781446484463
Publisher: Jonathan Cape

CHRISTINE (springs to her feet). Vinnie! (As Lavinia turns to face her—sharply.) Come here—please. I don’t want to shout across the room. (Lavinia comes slowly forward until she is at arm’s length. Her eyes grow bleak and her mouth tightens to a thin line. The resemblance between mother and daughter as they stand confronting each other is strikingly brought out. Christine begins to speak in a low voice, coolly defiant, almost triumphant.) Well, you can go ahead now and tell Orin anything you wish! I’ve already told him—so you might as well save yourself the trouble. He said you must be insane! I told him how you lied about my trips to New York—for revenge!—because you loved Adam yourself! (Lavinia makes a movement like a faint shudder but is immediately stiff and frozen again. Christine smiles tauntingly.) So hadn’t you better leave Orin out of it? You can’t get him to go to the police for you. Even if you convinced him I poisoned your father, you couldn’t! He doesn’t want—any more than you do, or your father, or any of the Mannon dead—such a public disgrace as a murder trial would be! For it would all come out! Everything! Who Adam is and my adultery and your knowledge of it—and your love for Adam! Oh, believe me, I’ll see to it that comes out if anything ever gets to a trial! I’ll show you to the world as a daughter who desired her mother’s lover and then tried to get her mother hanged out of hatred and jealousy! (She laughs tauntingly. Lavinia is trembling but her face remains hard and emotionless. Her lips open as if to speak but she closes them again. Christine seems drunk with her own defiant recklessness.) Go on! Try and convince Orin of my wickedness! He loves me! He hated his father! He’s glad he’s dead! Even if he knew I had killed him, he’d protect me! (Then all her defiant attitude collapses and she pleads, seized by an hysterical terror, by some fear she has kept hidden.) For God’s sake, keep Orin out of this! He’s still ill! He’s changed! He’s grown hard and cruel! All he thinks of is death! Don’t tell him about Adam! He would kill him! I couldn’t live then! I would kill myself! (Lavinia starts and her eyes light up with a cruel hatred. Again her pale lips part as if she were about to say something, but she controls the impulse and turns away abruptly and walks with jerky steps from the room like some tragic mechanical doll. Christine stares after her—then as she disappears, collapses, catching at the table for support—in terror.) I’ve got to see Adam! I’ve got to warn him! (She sinks in the chair at right of table.)

(Curtain.)

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