Machinal as a Play Written in Anger.

Machinal was written by Sophie Treadwell, a fair sex attempting to make her mark in a manlike dominated comp whatsoever and in a male dominated lay down sphere (as an designer and dramatist). This was in a time when it was considered a tenet of social flavour to accept a fair sexs intent was to facilitate the lifespan of the man to whom she belongs. To reach above the kitchen shelf and attempt mens work or to enter the mens mankind was frowned upon and was penalise by the social system.A woman in the wrong scene of action 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 workings 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 ave surprise everywoman who spends her entire, short, life see king freedom from the role orderliness has cast her in.Her role as defined by society is that of what the society in question considers any decent well bred small woman. She is originally a caregiver for her mother working at a job that makes her feel suffocated to earn enough to put in care of both of them. Next she becomes a companion, decoration (he chose her for her hands) and sexual partner for her hubby 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 female child not because of any sense of hit the hay but because society refuses to accept 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 wrap up based on pity, not for herself but for her husband. Based on the composition that the play was based loosely on Treadwells experiences in a mans world an d the infamous murderess . it can be presume that the emotions that Helen (young woman) experiences are echoes, or perhaps rather intensified images of her feelings. Her mother speaks with the piece of society, having been the one to raise her to be imprisoned in a world where she pass on never truly experience freedom.Her mother is a attribute 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 extracurricular the machine or to offer that freedom to her child. Instead she denies her the slight diversion 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 give up life. It is questionable if she in fact loves her daughter or simply nags her because it is her mode of keeping her in line.It begins to seem as though she simply ensur es 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 prove that within the machine all interpersonal relations are indomitable by such practical considerations as where the power, especially in pecuniary 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 whitethorn 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 prompt 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 opponent of it succinctly in her statement I will not fork out which she repeats like a mantra.This i s a role that truly does not inspire her, that of mother, wife and daughter. Though she must to a fault endure her mothers 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, societys expectations of her. Also at the time of the marriage she dislike his fat pressing hands which to her represented oppression. he 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 reliable by society that a woman gets married and has children. This is possibly the prototypical major capitulation in her life. The first time she could be tell 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