Analysis Of Sophie Treadwell's 'Machinal'
Machinal was written by Sophie Treadwell, a woman attempting to make her mark in a male dominated society and in a male dominated work sphere (as an author and playwright). This was in a time when it was considered a tenet of social life to accept a woman’s role was to facilitate the life of the man to whom she belongs. To reach above the kitchen shelf and attempt men’s work or to enter the men’s world was frowned upon and was punished by the social system. A woman in the wrong field or operating socially as equal to a male would either have to work under a different, male, identity or be met by severe criticism and gender based discrimination, her works largely ignored or peremptorily dismissed as inferior. The playwright draws on her experience with and bitterness against the social machine (hence the name Machinal, French for machine like) and tells the tale of an average everywoman who spends her entire, short, life seeking freedom from the role society has cast her in. Her role as defined by society is that of what
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Her mother is a symbol of how entrenched the rules of the machine are. Having in her time experienced, surely, the same suppression as her daughter she was still unable to conceive a life outside the machine or to offer that freedom to her child. Instead she denies her the slight pleasure she found in marrying a man who appealed to her insisting that she instead take the practical course of marrying the man with the highest income though what she is offered is a pampered but empty life. It is questionable if she in fact loves her daughter or simply nags her because it is her method of keeping her in line. It begins to seem as though she simply ensures that she herself will be taken care of, so that a rich husband her daughter is an opportunity to jump at, not for Helens benefit but for
Her mother is a symbol of how entrenched the rules of the machine are. Having in her time experienced, surely, the same suppression as her daughter she was still unable to conceive a life outside the machine or to offer that freedom to her child. Instead she denies her the slight pleasure she found in marrying a man who appealed to her insisting that she instead take the practical course of marrying the man with the highest income though what she is offered is a pampered but empty life. It is questionable if she in fact loves her daughter or simply nags her because it is her method of keeping her in line. It begins to seem as though she simply ensures that she herself will be taken care of, so that a rich husband her daughter is an opportunity to jump at, not for Helens benefit but for