The Family and Society in the Plays of Ionesco

The Family and Society in the Plays of Ionesco DAVID EDNEY lonesco is not in the fIrst instance a social or political playwright, and he has expressed scorn for those who claim that the theatre must be political.1 Nevertheless, some of his plays, such as Rhinoceros and Machett, have obvious political implications, and his work as a whole does express a view of society and politics. His vision of society, however, is not based on a realistic sociological, economic or political analysis. He sees society in an abstract, absolute way stemming from the nature of man and the basic human reactions which originate largely in the family. The author's ideas on the family, then, and his particular experience of family life, some of which he has described in his autobiographical writings, are an important source for his social thought and shape the way he sees the world. At first glance, one is struck by an apparent opposition between family and society in lonesco's plays. Social forces are destructive: policemen, politicians andjudges threaten the individual with physical and psychological aggression, vague functionaries of the administration demand total submission to the rules, and wars and riots produce death and destruction with bombs, grenades and machine-guns. Many of the characters look upon home and family as a refuge from this menace, and they seek protection and comfort there. They idealize . parents, wife and children as a shield against the cruelties of life in a hostile world. After many years in another country, the First Man in L'Homme aux valises journeys back to his homeland in search of his parents. The desire for reunion with the family is presented in this playas a profound spirimal quest. In many cases the wife takes over the maternal role, and the protagonist transfers to her his need for love and protection. Glowing expressions of the power and beauty of conjugal love occur in many of the plays. Children also have a humanizing effect on their parents. Choubert's father in Victimes du devoir recounts how the birth of his son enabled him to overcome his despair and his hatred ofhumanity: "Tu naquis, man fIls, juste au moment au j'allais dynamiter 378 DAVID EDNEY la planete. C'est ta naissance qui la saliva. Tu m'empechas, du mains, de tuer le monde dans mon coeur. Tu me n,concilias avec l'humanite."2 There is frequently in Ionesco's plays a sharp division between the hearth and the outside world. In Amedee ou Comment s'en debarrasser, the Buccinionis have not set foot outside their apartment for fifteen years. Madeleine works at a telephone switchboard in a comer of the living-room, and Amedee does the shopping by lowering a basket out the window into the street below. They view the world beyond their door with fear and suspicion, and shrink from it in horror. Many of Ionesco's characters see the family as a haven in the midst of a terrifying world, and they believe in the opposition between family and society as a hope for survival. In actual practice, however, the family does not fulfil its role ofprotector and comforter. The plays show that family life is in fact as violent and destructive as life in the outside world. In Jacques ou La soumission, the family is an oppressive force, stifling the main character's freedom and demanding submission to the family rules. This play onthe family, which ends in the total defeat of the protagonist, Jacques, easily matches the violence that goes on in society at large, and almost every other play shows a similar picture ofviolence within the family unit. The opposition between family and society, which some of the characters try to sustain, is only an illusion; they are really similar institutions operating along the same lines. The family, then, reacts on the protagonist in two opposed ways: as a promise of love and protection it attracts him; as a source of violence it repels him. This duality in the influence of the family corresponds to the two original family figures: mother and father. The view of the family as a source of love comes from contact...