30 pages • 1 hour read
Sophie TreadwellMachinal
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1928A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Episodes 4-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Episode 4 Summary: “Maternal”
Episode 4, “Maternal,” and Episode 5, “Prohibited,”furtherHelen’s downward spiral. In Episode 4, she refuses to submit to motherhood, despite having just given birth. In Episode 5, she goes out to a bar to mix with other men. She will not accept her baby or bring the child to her breast, and she will not talk except to say no. When she’s finally alone, her speech moves back and forth from drowning puppies to Godto repetition of clichés about babies, and,then, to religion again, ending with “I’ll not submit” (802). In the bar, surrounded by couples in various stages of engagement, she says, “I want to keep moving” (883). She learns from the man she will have an affair with what it takes to finally get free, when the man she meets says, “I killed a man to get free” (955-956).
Episode 4focuses on Helen as a mother. We hear steel being riveted offstage. Onstage, characters in a hospital settingare seen but not heard. The young woman lies still in bed. She doesn’t respond when the nurse asks her questions, including, “Aren’t you glad it’s a girl?” (717-718). The young woman only shakes her head. We can still hear the riveting. She doesn’t like the sound but doesn’t want the window closed,as it would force her to feel too closed in. Her husband arrives with flowers and asks, “How are we today?” (727).The young woman doesn’t respond. The nurse and the husband are the only ones who talk, and they discuss the woman as if she isn’t in the room.
The doctor comes in and calls the woman “the little lady” (748). Again, the woman offers no response. The doctor tells the nurse to put the baby to Helen’s breast, but the young woman refuses her baby. The doctor doesn’t listen. When the nurse suggests waiting, the doctor says that he’s the one who makes the decisions.
When she is finally left alone, the young woman, talking to herself and the world, says, “I’ve submitted enough. I won’t submit to anymore” (775). Her thoughts unravel—drowned puppies, long golden stairs, heaven—and then she says, “nothing matters” (779).She remembers dogs who have given birth to puppies who get drowned, and then offers: “The weight is gone, inside the weight is gone, it’s only outside, outside, all around, weight, I’m under it […]” (801-802).
The scene ends as the riveting turns into piano music.
Episode 5 Summary: “Prohibited”
This episode’s setting is a bar. There’s an electric piano playing and people talking at tables. Two men start talking and we see that they are waiting for the young woman and the office telephone girl from Episode One. The men are sure the double-date will go well for them: “Just got to (Snaps fingers)–she comes running”(845).We also hear the conversations at each of the other two tables. At one of the tables, a man sits with a boy who he has brought to the bar as a date. They skirt the issue of whether the boy has ever loved a woman. At another table, a man and woman talk about getting an abortion. The true meaning of their conversation is at first obscure: either she wants to go through with having the baby or wants to go through with getting an abortion. The man knows a doctor who will perform the abortion. He then forces her to have another drink, even though she says she doesn’t want to.
The two men who are waiting for the young woman and the telephone girl get antsy. One of the men is having an affair with the telephone girl and needs to be home to his wife. He wants the other man to take Helen off his hands. Finally, the girls show up. Helen is introduced as Mrs. Jones. She tells them she’s heard all the jokes and not many are funny. The telephone girl and the man she’s having the affair with have a short, perfunctory conversation. We learn the protagonist’s name is Helen. She asks them, “Where do we go from here?” The men think she’s amusing, a“restless bab[y].” Helen says, “I just want to keep moving” (883). She drinks and smokes and wants to dance. As the telephone girl and her boyfriend leave, the telephone girl tells the man, “You be nice to her now. She’s very fastidious” (926). When the two of them are left alone and are talking, Helen’s responses convey disinterest. Meanwhile, the conversation at the table where the couple discusses abortion breaks in. The man is wearing the woman down: “I know, I know, I know,” she says wearily(947).
The first man and the telephone girl come back into the bar because the man wants the second man to call him at home the following night, to set up an alibi for him, so he can get out of the house and meet up with the telephone girl again. The man accompanying the telephone girl tells the young woman to ask her date how her date once killed a man in Mexico (he actually killed two men). When they hear this, the two women have very different responses. The telephone girl is interested in his having been in Mexico. The young woman wants to know if he really killed a man, and why. The murderer’s answer is, “To get free” (955-956). The episode returns briefly to one of the other tables. The man is still trying to find out if the boy is “a lover” (970).
Back at the table with the Helen and the murderer, he continues to explain why and how he killed someone. Helen tells him she’s glad he’s there.
The man and woman arguing about the abortion begin speaking again. The woman admits that she wants to have the baby (though the word “baby” is never spoken.) The man persists, and she gives in. They leave the bar.
Helen continues to question the man about how he did the killing. He then puts his hand on hers. The table with the man and boy interrupt their dialogue. The man asks the boy to see his rooms, saying, “I have a first edition of Verlaine” (1002).The boy takes the last sip from the man’s glass. The man says, “The last sip’s the sweetest–wasn’t it?” The boy responds, “And I always thought that was dregs.” (1009).They leave the bar.
The man tries to talk Helen into going to his place with him. She doesn’t really know what he’s talking about. The man responds, “You just haven’t met the right guy, that’s all, girl like you, you got to meet the right guy” (1019-1020). She responds, “I know” (1021), referencing her miserable marriage, though he doesn’t know it. Helen wants to know if the murderer likes her. She is scared and tempted. Since he lives in an apartment, she says that makes it ok for her to go with him. Here, she uses social values to rationalize her actions.Helen tells him not to get a bottle or bring pebbles, as the man used a broken bottle and pebbles to kill the man in Mexico.
Another man and woman enter the bar and order, “the same old thing” (1050).Helen leaves with the man as the music continues.
Episodes 4-5 Analysis
These two episodes represent Helen attempting to breakfree from her bonds: she refuses her baby, and she is about to take a lover. At the same time, the episodes also demonstrate the ways those in power manipulate others in order to get what they want. The doctor shuts down the nurse, and every table/conversation in the bar exposes a power play: the woman gives in to the abortion, though she doesn’t want to; the boy goes off with the older man;andHelen gets talked into leaving with the lover. She is swayed by the man because he tells her what she wants to hear.
One aspect of feminism that the play implicitly addresses in the bar scene is the division of Helen from the telephone girl. As quickly as possible, the man on the date with the telephone girl and the murderer seek to separate the two women from another, thereby disallowing group decision-making and any sense of a female community. One-on-one, it is easier for the male to manipulate and coerce and get his way with the female. The murderer offers the illusion of freedom to Helen, saying that killing made him free. Any rational audience member or reader will be well aware that killing someone makes the killer the opposite of free, though Helen, imprisoned and deluded as she is by patriarchal society, believes the man’s lies.
