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
the society in question considers any decent well bred young woman. She is originally a caregiver for her mother’ working at a job that makes her feel suffocated to earn enough to take care of both of them. Next she becomes a companion, decoration (he chose her for her hands) and sexual partner for her husband who “buys her” by providing for her mother and making sure she no longer needs to work at the job she hates and finally she becomes a mother caring for her daughter not because of any sense of love but because society refuses to allow her to abandon the child.
These separate roles give birth to her rage pushing her to outbursts of rage and anti-social behaviour and ironically in their climax lead to a murder based on pity, not for herself but for her husband. Based on the idea that the play was based loosely on Treadwell’s experiences in a man’s world and the infamous murderess .......... it can be assumed that the emotions that Helen (young woman) experiences are echoes, or perhaps rather intensified images of her feelings.
Her mother speaks with the voice of society, having been the one to raise her to be imprisoned in a world where she will never truly experience freedom.
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
hers. This would indicate that within the machine all interpersonal relations are determined by such practical considerations as where the power, especially in monetary terms lies and this is always with the men. What is left to the women is only as much as they can wrest from each other by manipulation and deception. This may be what young woman realises causing her to threaten her mother; that she does not in truth love her and simply uses her in and for the purposes that suit her. This
They inspire the young not particularly educated or intelligent woman to crystallize the comprehension of her condition though it is one that has been forced on her since infancy and is considered normal by the rest of the machine and her objection and opposition of it succinctly in her statement “I will not submit” which she repeats like a mantra. This is a role that truly does not inspire her, that of mother, wife and daughter. Though she must also endure her mother’s nagging. She is controlled even unconsciously by men who like her husband who do not recognise their domination She does not like or love him and resents him because she did not choose to marry him but was forced to by her mother, and through her mother, society’s expectations of her. Also at the time of the marriage she disliked his “fat pressing” hands which to her represented oppression. she viewed it as the lesser of two evils because it would provide the means to provide for her mother and escape her. It would also mean she no longer had to work, being unsuited (or so it seems) to any type of structure. She also marries him despite a strong distaste for him because it is accepted by society that a woman gets married and has children. This is possibly the first major capitulation in her life. The first time she could be said to have had a choice in the direction of her life and in her attempting to find or maintain her (relative) freedom.

Machinal by Sophie Treadwell