Machinal as a Play Written in Anger.

Machinal was written by Sophie Treadwell, a woman attempting to make her dirt in a male dominated association and in a male dominated add sphere (as an author and playwright). This was in a time when it was considered a tenet of social life to cause a womans role was to facilitate the life of the man to whom she belongs. To reach above the kitchen ledge and attempt mens work or to enter the mens world was frowned upon and was penalize 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, personal identity or be met by severe criticism and gender found discrimination, her works largely ignored or peremptorily dismissed as inferior. The playwright draws on her experience with and bitterness against the social apparatus (hence the name Machinal, French for machine the like) and tells the tale of an ave ferocity everywoman who spends her entire, short, life seeking freedom from the role partne rship has cast her in.Her role as defined by society is that of what the society in question considers every decent well bred young woman. She is originally a c argiver 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, laurel (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 inevitably to work at the job she hates and finally she becomes a mother caring for her lady friend 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 Treadwells experiences in a mans world and the infamous murderess . it can be put on 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 depart 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 lock unable to conceive a life outside the machine or to offer that freedom to her child. kind of she denies her the slight pleasure she found in marrying a man who appealed to her insisting that she instead take the realistic 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 d aughter is an opportunity to reverberate 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 of all time 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 enlightened 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 an d daughter. Though she must similarly 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 disliked his fat pressing hands which to her delineate 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 accepted by society that a woman gets married and has children. This is maybe 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