The Tragic Effect in Autumn Fire and Desire under the Elms

THE TRAGIC EFFECT IN AUTUMN FIRE AND DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS DURING 'lHE WINTER AND SPRING of 1924, two modem dramatists, both highly regarded in their own countries, turned their minds to the same problem. Each was writing a new tragedy and by chance each decided on basically the same plot: the story of an elderly widower who brings into his farmhouse a young wife only to find within a year that the new bride is more attracted to her new stepson than to her husband. Each finished his play during the summer of that year. Eugene O'Neill offered his, entitled Desire under the Elms, to the Provincetown Players; T. C. Murray sent his, called Autumn Fire, to the nearby Abbey Theatre. Since that day both works have enjoyed steady popularity. John Gassner considers Desire under the Elms to be O'Neill's best play;l the late Una Ellis-Fermor, urging that Murray's work "should be estimated, yet more highly than it at present is," called Autumn Fire his "best work in the three-act form."2 Although each author treated the same themes and used a similar set of characters in a rural setting, the tragic effects of the two plays are so vastly dissimilar as to warrant a comparative study. In O'Neill's drama Ephraim Cabot, a hard-bitten New England farmer whose personal God is "hard an' lonesome," brings into his home his third wife, the young, greedy, attractive and cunning Abbie Putnam. Eben, Ephraim's youngest son, who has just bought out his two brothers' rights to the property with money stolen from his father, sees his new stepmother only as a dangerous obstacle to his heritage. To insure her own rights to the property Abbie convinces Ephraim that he is not too old to have a child by her. Thereupon she coldly seduces Eben and conceives by him. When the child is bom Ephraim calls upon all the neighbors to help him celebrate. That evening in an argument with his son, Ephraim reveals that Abbie had told him that Eben had made advances to her, that she had repelled him and that she wanted Eben cut off as Ephraim's heir. Enraged, Eben faces Abbie with the truth and refuses to believe her protestations that regardless of how she may have felt at first she is now truly in love with him. To reconcile herself to Eben, Abbie smothers the child the next moming. Eben is now satisfied that she is sincere, but he is so horrified at her deed that he leaves to inform the sheriff of it. While he is gone, Abbie tells Ephraim the truth. Later, Abbie and Eben, who has declared himself her accomplice, are taken off to jail arm in arm. Ephraim adjusts himself to his God, then goes out to work on the farm. The triangle of Abbie Putnam, Ephraim and Eben Cabot finds its 1. John Gassner, The Theatre in Our Times (New York, 1954), p. 255. 2. tJna Ellis-Fermor, "Thomas Cornelius Murray," The O%/orrl Componion to the Theatre, ed. Phyllis Hartnoll (London, 1957), p. 550. 228 1959 O'NEIlL AND MUBRAY 229 counterpart in Murray's play in Nance Desmond, Owen and Michael Keegan: Owen Keegan, a handsome Munster widower, is captivated on first sight by the lovely and, by local standards, daring, young Nance Desmond who has newly returned to the village from Dublin. Nance is immediately attracted by his vigor and youthfulness. When young Michael Keegan meets her a few moments later, he, like his father, is overwhelmed by her charm. Owen's daughter Ellen, thoroughly embittered by the one romance of her life, senses disaster but her warnings are disregarded and within a few weeks Nance and Owen are married. Six months later Owen is crippled by an accident and his new wife and his son are brought close together in their administration of his farm. The saturnine Ellen arouses Owen's suspicions of the two when they are delayed one evening on a shopping tour. Realizing herself the danger of their mutual attraction, Nance urges Michael to leave the farm. He agrees to go but forces from...