by Will Dunne
The playwright fuels the conflict between Aloysius and Flynn by emphasizing the generational gap between them. Flynn is a young priest inspired by the modern views of the Second Ecumenical Council. This character choice impels him to challenge Aloysius’s rigid and old-fashioned beliefs on many levels, especially those that affect her approach to students.
Sister James
Personal description. Like Aloysius, Sister James is a Sister of Charity and named after a male saint, a choice that reflects the male-dominated system in which the nuns operate. Her low status in the world of St. Nicholas is suggested by the fact that she is the only character without a surname. In her twenties, James is the youngest, most innocent onstage character, far less experienced than Aloysius as a teacher, as a nun, and as a woman. James is new to St. Nicholas. She loves teaching, especially history, but feels insecure about managing forty-eight eighth graders. She also feels intimidated by her new boss, Aloysius. To describe James, the stage directions state: “There’s a bit of sunshine in her heart, though she’s reserved as well.”
Burning desire. What James wants most is to restore the peace of mind she lost when she entered Aloysius’s domain. James states this explicitly in scene 4 when she tells Aloysius, “I want to be guided by you and responsible to the children, but I want my peace of mind.”
Dramatic function. James is the opposite of Aloysius in almost every way, and this distinction makes her important to the play. It is through the contrast James provides that we get to know Aloysius, just as the young nun’s weaknesses help us see the older nun’s strengths. James starts out a confidant of Aloysius and ends up as a confidant of Flynn. In both roles, she enables the other character to share thoughts and feelings that we might not otherwise have known. Due to her lack of confidence, she also creates the opportunity for Aloysius to preach the principles by which she runs her school and her life. This enables the playwright to integrate exposition about Aloysius that is critical to our understanding of her and the quest she launches.
In thematic terms, James is an embodiment of doubt. “Everything seems uncertain to me,” she tells Aloysius near the end of the play. Even when James first reports her suspicions about Flynn, she feels unsure of what she is reporting: “But maybe it’s nothing.” Because she has no certainty to balance her doubt, James gains not a powerful and sustaining bond with others, as promised by Flynn in his sermon, but rather a loss of joy and sleep plagued by nightmares.
Mrs. Muller
Personal description. While eighth grader Donald Muller is at the center of the plot, it is not Donald but his mother whom we meet onstage. A black woman of about thirty-eight, Mrs. Muller is a complex but pragmatic person who comes from a “hard place” and has learned to work with how things are. She moved her son to St. Nicholas because she feared for his safety at the public school due to his race and his sexual orientation. Donald is gay. Mrs. Muller appears only in scene 8, when she arrives at the principal’s office to discuss Aloysius’s concerns about her son and Flynn. She proves to be a strong and surprising challenger to the principal’s campaign against the priest. That she keeps a guarded distance from Aloysius is reflected in her character name: Mrs. Muller. Her first name is never revealed.
Burning desire. What Mrs. Muller wants most is to make sure her son graduates from St. Nicholas so he can get into a good high school. She is willing to put up with almost anything to make this happen because, as she says more than once in the scene, “it’s just till June.”
Dramatic function. Mrs. Muller is the only character who lives outside the walls of St. Nicholas. She brings in a set of beliefs that is foreign to Aloysius and that challenges her rigid worldview in a way no other character can. Regardless of Flynn’s actions, Mrs. Muller believes he has been good to her son by giving him attention and time. Because of her pragmatism and rejection of moral absolutes (“Sometimes things aren’t black and white”), she is a key contributor to the breakdown of Aloysius’s certainty about how things should be.
■ TOPDOG/UNDERDOG
Parks’s play explores the dynamics of a dysfunctional family in a dysfunctional society, but presents only two onstage characters: Lincoln (a.k.a. Link), described in the front matter as “the topdog,” and Booth (a.k.a. 3-Card), described as “the underdog.” They are brothers who were named by their father “as a joke” after Abraham Lincoln and his assassin, John Wilkes Booth. Their last name is not revealed, an omission that underscores their alienation from their parents.
Booth (a.k.a. 3-Card)
Personal description. A black man in his early thirties, Booth is a schemer and dreamer who is averse to holding a steady job and relies mostly on petty theft, or “boosting,” to acquire what he needs, whether it’s a “diamond-esque” ring for his ex-girlfriend Grace or fancy new suits for his brother and himself. Because of the potential danger of his trade, Booth always keeps a gun within reach.
His dream is to become a card hustler hauling in big bucks from suckers on the street. This dream is motivated by his desire to reconnect with Grace, who, he believes, would like him more if his pockets bulged with cash. In the meantime, he is relegated to fantasies provided by the girlie magazines hidden under his bed. Booth’s view of himself and the world is greatly influenced by the fact that his parents abandoned his brother and him when they were teenagers. Booth now lives in a seedy furnished room that he shares with his brother.
Burning desire. What Booth wants most is to be a topdog who is richer, more powerful, and more successful in love than his brother. For Booth to become the topdog, therefore, his brother must become the underdog. It is a competition that only one can win.
Dramatic function. Booth has a dual function in the play: he is the protagonist of his own dramatic journey and the antagonist of his brother’s. As protagonist, he sets the play in motion by trying to enlist his brother in a card hustling scheme. This proposition triggers the dramatic journey of both brothers and fuels their interactions throughout the play. Meanwhile Booth’s inept approach to realizing his dream creates multiple opportunities to demonstrate why he is an underdog who will never rise above his loser status.
In the role of antagonist, Booth acts as the chief obstacle to his brother’s quest to live an honest life. As he tries to convince Lincoln to join his scheme, Booth poses an ongoing threat to their brotherly relationship—he twice tries to evict Lincoln from the room they share—and is an ongoing source of temptation for Lincoln to return to criminal life. It is Booth’s function as antagonist that brings his brother’s dramatic journey—and the play—to an end, with the shooting of Lincoln over a twenty-year-old money-roll in a nylon stocking.
The play explores the lure of the American dream and why the brothers and their parents fail to realize it. Booth embodies the belief that success is measured by money and material goods and cannot be achieved by working within the system. He thus enters the play as a thief with a penchant for the finer things in life and the ambition to become a master con artist. This set of values and desires pits him against his brother and creates the story’s central conflict.
Lincoln (a.k.a. Link)
Personal description. A black man in his late thirties, Lincoln was once a master dealer of three-card monte, earning up to a thousand dollars a day by playing the shell game on street corners with gullible passersby. When his partner was murdered, Link decided to give up the cards and seek honest employment. This led him to the unusual job of impersonating Abraham Lincoln in an arcade, where for the past eight months customers with toy guns have been shooting at him in reenactments of Lincoln’s assassination.
As with Booth, loss has been a dominant theme in Lincoln’s life. He has lost not only his parents and his business partner but also his wife, who threw him out of the house. This may explain why Lincoln now stays with his brother in a seedy room that is too small for two men, lacks running water and a bathroom, and requires him to sleep at night in an old recliner. It may additionally explain why he not only accepts this
miserable living situation but also fronts the rent for it. Booth is the only family he has left, and Link doesn’t want to lose him.
Burning desire. What Lincoln wants most is to be a topdog who has overcome his past and become an honest man with a family. This goal requires him to keep his brother under control so that Booth does not either draw him back to a life of crime or desert him. For Lincoln to succeed, therefore, Booth must remain in an underdog position.
Dramatic function. Like Booth, Lincoln is the protagonist of his own dramatic journey and the antagonist of his brother’s. As protagonist, he pursues a vision of the American dream that has evolved from his past struggles as a son abandoned by his parents and as a three-card monte dealer whose partner was murdered. As antagonist, Lincoln acts as the chief obstacle to his brother’s pursuit of a different American dream.
Thematically, Lincoln embodies the belief that success is measured by earned wealth and that one must work within the system to get ahead. He enters the play as an arcade employee who is willing to subject himself to daily humiliations in order to earn a legitimate paycheck. His desire for social conformity is so strong that he is willing to settle for less pay than his white predecessor and to live with the knowledge that he could be replaced at any time by a wax dummy. All of this puts Lincoln on a collision course with his scheming brother and generates the conflict of the play.
Lincoln also provides the play’s most striking image: a black man in whiteface dressed as Abraham Lincoln. An ironic reconstruction of the Great Emancipator and an inversion of a white minstrel in blackface, the image suggests a man who is disconnected from himself and his past and is playing a role that could lead either to emancipation or to destruction.
■ THE CLEAN HOUSE
Act one of Ruhl’s play introduces three women from different walks of life: Lane, a doctor; Matilde, her maid; and Virginia, a housewife who is Lane’s sister. Act two adds Charles, a doctor married to Lane, and Ana, his cancer patient and lover. In a realm where characters share private thoughts directly with the audience, the lack of surnames contributes to the feeling of intimacy the story fosters: we are literally on a first-name basis with each character.
Four of the five characters are women, a choice that reflects the author’s focus on women’s relationships and roles in society. Though two of the women are currently married and one was previously married, none has children, a fact that separates them from their traditional roles as mothers and heightens their presence as individuals who must redefine who they are.
Lane
Personal description. Lane, in her early fifties, is a successful doctor at an important hospital somewhere in Connecticut. She has been married for three decades to a doctor named Charles whom she met in medical school over a dead body. Though they live in the same house and work at the same hospital, they rarely see each other due to their demanding work schedules. Lane’s house—like her wardrobe—is white, and she expects it to be immaculate but feels it is beneath her station in life to clean it herself. She has recently hired a live-in housekeeper named Matilde.
Lane has an older sister named Virginia whom she rarely sees, even though she lives nearby. The emotional distance between them may be explained by Virginia’s assessment that Lane has been “a bitch” since the day she was born. Lane sees herself in a more favorable light, as a smart, athletic, independent woman who has aged well and likes to be in control.
Burning desire. Lane disdains messiness of any kind, whether physical or emotional. What she wants most is a clean house and a perfect life with no complications. She sums up this desire in act one, scene 5, when she tells Matilde, “I just want my house—cleaned.”
Dramatic function. Lane is one of the three women who share the role of protagonist and together drive the play. Of the three, she ranks highest socially and earns the most money. Though she is absent from half of the play’s scenes and neither begins nor ends the play, Lane is the most active character and often the focal point of the action. The story takes place primarily in her living room and centers on the cleanliness of her house and the messiness of her relationships with her husband, her sister, her maid, and her husband’s lover. Lane is thus a central link to all of the other characters, each of whom plays a role in her dramatic journey.
In a story that presents different perspectives on cleaning, Lane represents the classist view that cleaning is a task for other people, namely those beneath her. Thematically, she embodies the idea that the quest for cleanliness alienates us emotionally from the rest of the world and that it is by accepting life’s messes that we develop meaningful relationships with others.
By making Lane a physician with a high income, Ruhl not only differentiates her from the other characters but also creates an organic way to bring Matilde and Ana into her life. Lane’s financial status is what allows her to hire an immigrant Brazilian woman, whom she would otherwise not have met. Her physician’s oath is what takes her to the home of her husband’s dying soul mate, whom she would otherwise have shunned.
Matilde
Personal description. Matilde, in her early twenties, is a Brazilian cleaning woman who hates to clean and would rather be a comedian. Her parents were the funniest people in Brazil until her mother literally died laughing at one of her father’s jokes and her father then shot himself. The tragedy prompted Matilde to move to the United States, where she landed a job as Lane’s housekeeper. Matilde continues to wear black as an expression of mourning for her parents.
Her job as a cleaning woman not only depresses her but also keeps her in a low income bracket. As a result, she cannot afford to buy the things she wants or to move to New York to pursue her dream of becoming a comedian. In the meantime, she enjoys telling jokes in Portuguese and using humor to get along in life and help others do the same.
Burning desire. What Matilde wants most is to heal from the loss of her parents. This need is implied by her black wardrobe, her persistent efforts to keep her parents alive in her imagination, and her desire to emulate them by thinking up jokes.
Dramatic function. Matilde is one of the three women who share the role of protagonist. In contrast to the other two, she represents the lower working class, who often must defer their dreams and do jobs they dislike in order to survive. Matilde opens and closes the play, appears in more scenes than anyone else, and has the most inner-life monologues. She thus maintains a strong presence throughout the story even though she is often alone onstage or a passive observer of story events. At times, she functions as a raisonneur who states the play’s themes related to cleanliness, dirtiness, and humor. At the end of act one, for example, she warns Lane that love does not always make people happy. “Love isn’t clean like that,” she says. “It’s dirty. Like a good joke.”
Matilde incites the play’s conflict by refusing to clean Lane’s house and triggers the climax by killing Ana with the perfect joke. Matilde also contributes to the main event by helping Lane and her sister Virginia overcome their differences and find a common bond as they care for the dying Ana.
By making Matilde a housekeeper, the playwright gives her a way to enter and affect the lives of four strangers in a new country. Her desire to be a comedian creates opportunities for humor and is integral to a story in which people die laughing. By giving Matilde a Brazilian background, the playwright also creates the opportunity to weave untranslated Portuguese into the dialogue, a dramatic element that embodies the thematic idea that life is full of mysteries that must be accepted for what they are.
Virginia
Personal description. Lane’s older sister, Virginia, is a housewife in her late fifties with not enough to do. A Bryn Mawr graduate who specialized in Greek literature, she was once headed for the life of a scholar but now finds herself in a dull marriage with a barren husband. “I wanted something—big. I didn’t know how to ask for it,” she confesses to Lane in act one, scene 13. Virginia envies her sister, who seems to get the best of everything: a more important life, more inte
resting career, and more handsome husband. Virginia wishes she were closer to Lane, who is usually too busy to make time for her.
Unlike Lane and Matilde, Virginia loves to clean. She considers it a privilege and a way to find meaning in life. “I love dust,” she tells the audience in one act, scene 3. “The dust always makes progress. Then I remove the dust. That is progress.” Virginia’s problem is that by approximately 3:12 every afternoon, her cleaning is done and she has nothing else to keep her busy. She has considered doing volunteer work but doesn’t know whom to volunteer for.
Burning desire. What Virginia wants most is a meaningful task. This begins as a secret desire to clean Lane’s house but evolves into a need to help her sister recover from a failed marriage.
Dramatic function. Virginia is another of the women who share the role of protagonist. Of the three, she is the one who feels most lost, a housewife whose life has been going downhill since the age of twenty-two. She is an eccentric character who appears in nearly half of the play’s scenes and generates much of the humor.
By making her an unhappily married woman with no career or children, the playwright creates a character who has little to do but think morbid thoughts and attempt to repress them. Since graduating from Bryn Mawr, Virginia has come to see the world as an ugly place full of dirt, and she now retreats from this vision by cleaning compulsively. Because she views housework as a good thing, she brings to the play a perspective on cleaning that differs significantly from that of everyone else.
