In a World Characterized by Transience and Doomed to Extinction Some Old Women Still Need Love -Mrs Rooney from Samuel Beckett’s All That Fall

• Authors: Jadwiga Uchman
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The article analyzes the world of transience, deterioration and death characteristic of Boghill, the place of action of Samuel Beckett’s short radio play-All That Fall. In a broadcast drama, existence is equivalent to being heard, the idea skilfully employed and commented upon by the playwright. The characters actually heard in the play are in most cases elderly or quite old and even the two young ones appear in the context of death. Numerous off-the-air individuals are dead, sterile or suffering from different illnesses. The two main characters’ situation is not different-Mr Rooney is blind, and his wife, Maddy, complains of many ailments. She is a woman in her seventies, overweight and having different kinds of health problems and thus, several times in the course of the play she expresses a wish to die. At the same time, however, in encounters with men on her way to the station she speaks in a manner characterized by numerous sexual innuendos. Furthermore, she expresses a strong yearning for love and hopes her unloving husband would show her some warm feelings. Thus she becomes a convincing illustration of Georges Bataille’s argument: “Eroticism, it may be said, is assenting to life up to the point of death” (11).

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Łódzki. Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
• Journal: Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture
• Year: 2013
• Volume: 3
• Pages: 105-120

Dates

published

2013-11-01

online

2013-11-01

Contributors

author

Jadwiga Uchman

• University of Łódź

References

• Bair, Deirdre. Samuel Beckett. A Biography. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980. Print.
• Bataille, Georges. Eroticism. Death and Sensuality. Trans. Mary Dalwood. San Francisco: City Lights, 1986. Print.
• Beckett, Samuel. “All That Fall.” Collected Shorter Plays. London: Faber, 1984. 9-39. Print. ---. Endgame. New York: Grove, 1978. Print.
• ---. “Footfalls.” Collected Shorter Plays. London: Faber, 1984. 237-43. Print.
• ---. Happy Days. New York: Grove, 1961. Print.
• ---. The Letters 1929-1940. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009. Print.
• ---. “Proust.” Proust and Three Dialogues with George Duthuit. London: Calder, 1987. 7-93. Print.
• Ben-Zvi, Linda. “Samuel Beckett’s Media Plays.” Modern Drama 28.1 (1985): 22-37. Print.
• Ben-Zvi, Linda, ed. Women in Beckett. Performance and Critical Perspectives. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1992.
• Bryden, Mary. “Beckett and the Sound of Silence.” Samuel Beckett and Music. Ed. Mary Bryden. Oxford: Clarendon, 1998. 21-46. Print.
• Calderón de la Barca, Pedro. “Pedro Calderon de la Barca Quotes.” ThinkExist.com. ThinkExist. Web. 13 Mar. 2010.
• Claudius, Matthias. “Death and the Maiden.” Trans. P. Jurgenson. Wikipedia,The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Web. 26 Aug. 2011.
• Cohn, Ruby. “The Female Femme Fatale on Beckett’s Stage.” Ben-Zvi, Women in Beckett 162-71. Print.
• Davies, Paul. Beckett and Eros. London: MacMillan, 2000. Print.
• Frost, Everett C. “A ‘Fresh Go’ for the Scull: Directing All That Fall, Samuel Beckett’s Play for Radio.” Directing Beckett. Ed. Lois Oppenheim. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1994. 187-219. Print.
• Graver, Lawrence. “Homage to the Dark Lady. Ill Seen Ill Said.” Ben-Zvi, Women in Beckett 142-49. Print.
• Kenner, Hugh. Samuel Beckett: A Critical Study. Berkeley: U of California P, 1968. Print.
• Knowlson, James. Damned to Fame. The Life of Samuel Beckett. New York: Simon, 1996. Print.
• Libera, Antoni. “Jak przetłumaczyć ‘wyrażenie bezpośrednie’? Wokół jednego zdania Samuela Becketta.” Kwartalnik Artystyczny 4.36 (2002): 24-29. Print.
• McDonald, Rónán. The Cambridge Introduction to Samuel Beckett. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006. Print.
• Sartre, Jean Paul. Being and Nothingness. New York: Citadel, 1965. Print.
• Steward, Paul. Sex and the Aesthetics in Samuel Beckett’s Work. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2011. Print.
• Whitelaw, Billie. . . . Who? He? An Autobiography. London: Sceptre, 1995. Print.
• Worth, Katharine. “Women in Beckett’s Radio and Television Plays.” Ben- Zvi, Women in Beckett 236-42. Print.
• Zilliacus, Clas. Beckett and Broadcasting; A Study of the Works of SamuelBeckett for and in Radio and Television. Abo: Abo Academy, 1976. Print.

Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/texmat-2013-0029