A Literary Psychoanalysis of

Sophie Treadwell's Machinal: Another Face of an American Woman

By/ Prof. Hamid Hammad Abed (PhD)

University of Anbar/ College of Education for Women

Sophie Treadwell (1885-1970) a twentieth century playwright, novelist, and journalist, was born in Stockton, California. Treadwell's childhood was permanently marked by her family relations, that one might argue that almost all of her works as a writer consisted of an attempt to settle conflicting impressions and emotional experiences of these early years. Though Treadwell never achieved the fame of many of her male colleagues, today she is considered one of the most accomplished writers and dramatists of the early twentieth century. Treadwell was a competent war correspondent during World War I, one of the first American women to serve in such risky work. However, this type of dangerous job has shaped her personality to be familiar with life in all its aspects. The  decade of the 1930s proved a troubling one for Treadwell on both personal and professional fronts. After the war, Treadwell focused her talents on writing and acting to produce numerous well-received plays. Consequently, she became the first woman dramatist who both directed and produced her own plays.

This article  aims at exploring the woman's chaotic  psychology that leads to disastrous end. Treadwell's Machinal reflects the insufferable status of a woman in a time which is greatly affected by unemployment, low production, and poverty that create intensively sensitive psychology. In this play, Sophie Treadwell looks great not simply in her employment of expressionistic technique, but in allowing audience to pinpoint the troubled psyche of  her protagonist.  Treadwell , as an American playwright, has dealt with the family as a type of her own society. Then, through the psychoanalysis of Machinal, one can discern that it is not always the case where society is responsible for one's depression but a person might victimize himself via his unbalanced  psychology. Treadwell builds her play on a well-known story to attain the audience's appreciation.

As a modern playwright, Treadwell disregards the traditional structure of writing plays. Thus, Machinal is told in nine episodes through an expressionistic style, dramatized consistently from the viewpoint of the Young Woman. Each episode portrays a part in the Young Woman’s life, usually a situation in which a woman is supposed to be fulfilled. Like many modernist dramatists, Treadwell  tries to unveil the real individuality of the American families throughout her marvelous use of theatre to mirror the defects of her society. The play opens in a business office where typical office employees work to the ceaseless noise of their adding machines and typewriters. To make the  emergence of her main character so exciting, Treadwell  invents  the gossip device. Throughout this device, the audience learns that the Young Woman lives with her mother and has no social life but that the Boss is sweet and kind with her.

Machinal is mostly viewed from an expressionistic perspective whereas the psychoanalysis of its main character is not approached.   Socially and psychologically speaking, woman at that time was motivated by the idea of marriage to ensure her future in a time of economic depression. Thus, the manner of choosing a proper husband is complicated, especially if it is encircled by economic and financial security. Because the Young Woman (Helen) has no fulfillment in work or in her parental home, she tries to find a way for salvation. Her unsatisfying relationship with her mother, who is a dependent widow whose chief entertainment is the daily garbage collection, is revealed to display the Young Woman's terrible difficulty. The Young Woman is skeptical over the convention that women must marry. She tells her mother of her disgust for the boss and about her longing for love, but the two women failed to get in touch with compatibility :

YOUNG WOMAN: Ma! Listen! Listen!- There's a man wants to marry  me.

MOTHER: ( Stops clattering-sits) What man?

YOUNG WOMAN: He says he fell in love with my hands.

MOTHER: In Love! Is that beginning again! I thought you over that!(15).

In fact,  hunting an  appropriate husband is the happiest moment for the mother to get rid of the heavy burden. However, her mother uses various questions to know the real personality of that man.

Despite the disputable dialogue between the mother and her daughter, eventually the Young Woman (Helen) marries the Boss. Certainly, such experience of marriage is a failure since it is built on a mother's illusion in which she believes that it will finance her daughter's future. Although her new husband is not cruel, he is vulgar. He is insensitive to her silence about undressing but is prudish about keeping the curtains closed when his bride is trying to get a breath of fresh air. The first problem is established when the bride feels that she is cornered and caged. The Young Woman does not find accomplishment neither in her marriage nor in her workplace, therefore she instantaneously names her mother as a supporter to protect. In this regard, the young girl who has not successfully and sufficiently moved away from parental ties may have difficulty in both interpersonal relationships and a career.

Treadwell's complicated feelings of marriage were shaped by her parents' troubled life and the financial hardships that caused incompatibility. As a result of the wrong choice of a husband, Helen's psychology becomes most terrible. Thus, she informs her mother that her marriage is a failure, " I don't love him". In this situation, the mother mocks her daughter by saying " Love!... what does that amount to! Will it clothe you? Will it feed you? Will it pay the bills?(17). In Machinal, everyone from the young woman's co-workers to her dependent mother urge Helen to escape the stresses of the urban workplace by accepting an offer of leisurely marriage from her boss. Helen realizes that her acceptance of this undesired marriage and the subsequent birth of a daughter has resulted not in liberation but an even more stifling form of domestic entrapment. The role of mother is effectively shown when she marries off her daughter to the man without counting the unexpected consequences.

To compensate her swiftly failed marriage, Helen decides to  pursue daily pleasures regardless of the dangerous cost.  And also to prove that she is unbeaten, she says" I'll not submit any more- I'll not submit any more- I'll not submit any more"(31).Actually, Helen is a real representative of Treadwell herself who enthusiastically believes  in the progressive advances in sexual equality and woman's independence. With her decision to be free, Helen has ended the terrible phase of marriage. More importantly, and to conquer all hardships, Helen should appear with a new face to verify her competence in creating the life she is fighting for.

Under the psychological pressure, Helen attempts to please her whims and desires. Her pursuit of pleasure as an outlet of the unsuccessful marriage stimulates her to accompany the First Man who talks about his love of travel and freedom. He describes escaping some outlaws in Mexico after filling a bottle with small stones and beating his captors to death with it. This type of nonsense encourages Helen to think of killing her husband. He seduces Helen by describing her as an angel, that is why she agrees to go with him to his apartment. Figuratively speaking, he waters her withered passions:

FIRST MAN: You're different from girls like that other one –any guy'll do her. You're different.

YOUNG WOMAN: I guess I am. …

FIRST MAN: Don't you like me?

YOUNG WOMAN: Yes.

FIRST MAN: Then what's the matter?

YOUNG WOMAN: Do- You- like me?

FIRST MAN: Like yuh? You don't know the half of it- listen- you know what you seem like to me?

YOUNG WOMAN: What?

FIRST MAN: An angel. Just like an angel.

YOUNG WOMAN: I do? (43).

Though Helen is  married and an experienced woman, she never hears such admiring comments, thus, she is easily tempted by that man's sweet words. For the first time, someone, concerned with her feelings, asks her “You like me — don’t you, kid?”(44). Accordingly, she goes with him to his apartment  and she feels happy and free. For a moment, frees from submission to the duties of life, she gives herself without any opposition. A part of his devilish purpose,  this man gives her a lily in a pot of pebbles and this will be undeniable evidence which indicates her crime. The only time the young woman experiences a sense of freedom in Machinal is during her gathering with that strange man. Though written in 1928, Machinal is still relevant to be exhibited in present time. No doubt, a young woman is viewed as an individual who seeks independence and freedom in a male-dominated society. She is so repressed by the mechanized lives of the people that frame the world of this play in which she is driven to unsafe action. This play marvelously attributes a woman's decline into a troubled psychology to her subjugation and powerlessness. To create a sense of suspense, Treadwell suddenly shifts from the moments of the Young Woman's happiness to the courtroom episode. Neither the spectator nor the reader is told about how the act of killing her husband is achieved. The major event of each episode in the life of the Young Woman happens offstage. For instance, the proposal, the achievement of marriage, the birth of daughter and the murder of her husband are not shown. Indeed, The  scenes on stage reflect the troubled consciousness of Helen especially while she is cross-examined about her husband’s death.

As Helen goes to execution, she begs for more time to know her own daughter and to teach her about life: "Wait! Mother, my child; my little strange child! I never knew her! She'll never know me! Let her live, Mother, Let her live! Live ! Tell her-"(81). Simultaneously, she refuses to submit even to the barbers who must forcibly shave patches of her hair to place electrodes. Her last words “Somebody! Somebody”(83) leave the audience wondering whether  the words are  a cry of self-pity or a cry for someone to teach her child. Her desire for freedom is a failure which only leads to her tragic end. Helen dies as she has lived; isolated, but her cry for somebody and her dying wish for somebody to tell her own daughter to live and enjoy life, speak to a generation of younger women who have the potential to free themselves and perhaps their society.

The viewers look at Helen  as an individual struggling for rebirth to force herself as an independent woman  despite her tremendous mistakes. It is an individual who has been suppressed, oppressed, and subjugated by a patronizing, patriarchal society. The economic hardships accompanied by social problems have the deadly impact on any individual's psychology. Consequently, the literary writings which   dominated that era overvalued the female characters to present them as pivotal figures. It seems that Helen's personality is one of the voices that strongly wants to express her feminine protest against the oppressive society.

To conclude, Machinal stands for early modern women protest against patriarchal dominance. This is justly considered as one of the most delightful and informative of Treadwell’s plays. The time is an opportunity of women's rights and their revolt to achieve liberation and independence ,realizing that the pressure to be successful becomes crushing in an era whereby hard work no longer guarantees any reward. Eventually, Treadwell's play reflects the climatic situation of a woman in a time which is greatly affected by unemployment, low production, and poverty that collectively create a disordered psychology.  Necessarily to realize that through the events of the play, the personality of a successful woman must be fortified by sufficient education, culture, and intelligence in order  not to fall as an easy prey in a ruthless society. The only cure for the sickly in the mind is reality. Something real has to be felt or experienced. Life that is over-delicate and remote through something unstable in the mind is not life but decline and decay.