Character Analysisby Margaret Loftus Ranald

CABOT, Eben, third son of Ephraim Cabot and half-brother of Simeon Cabot and Peter Cabot. Eben is twenty-five years old, "tall and sinewy," dark and rather good-looking, but with an expression that "is resentful and defensive. His defiant, dark eyes remind one of a wild animal's in captivity." There seem to be smouldering fires within him and "a fierce repressed vitality." He hates his father, as do his older half-brothers. Eben, the son of Ephraim's gentle second wife, hates his father for having worked her to death, but even more for having held thefarm as his. Ephraim had married Eben's mother because she had a legitimate claim to ownership of the farm. Now the son believes that his father has stolen his rightful inheritance. Of all threesons Eben is most like his father in his attachment to this hard-scrabble farm. He buys up the shares of his half-brothers, using Ephraim's own secret hoard of gold, and wishes for the death of his father (who has been away for two months), for then the farm would be his, and with the death of family hatred his mother's unquiet ghost would be exorcized. But Ephraim continues his pattern of filching from his son and outdoing him in everything. Even when visiting the town prostitute Eben knows that his father has preceded him. Now, whenEphraim returns with a new wife, Abbie Putnam Cabot, the cycle continues and Eben realizes that Abbie will get the farm. But despite his initial hatred of her, he is eventually seduced by her. In mythic terms, Phaedra has seduced Hippolytus, and Oedipushas slept with his mother. In Freudian terms the son has supplanted the father. But love has also entered this house, and with the consummation of Abbie and Eben's relationship, the ghostof Eben's mother leaves; her hostile spirit has turned kind. As a result of this affair a son is born to Abbie. Ephraim rejoices in it as his, though all the world knows differently. Once again Ephraim has stolen something belonging to Eben, and the son commences to hate the child, especially when Ephraim taunts him with the announcement that the farm will go to the

child or Abbie. He now wishes for the death of the child and turns against Abbie. Several myths now come together here: the Oedipus myth, the myth of Phaedra and Hippolytus, and now the myth of Jason and Medea. Like Medea, Abbie kills her child, but her motivation is to regain the love of Eben. His first reaction is to impose the same Old Testament justice that his father espouses. Abbie has sinned in killing her own flesh and blood and therefore she must pay; while on another level, the son would have preferred the death of his father, a Freudian view. Therefore his initial reaction is to follow the path of the angry God of retributive justice and he informs on Abbie. But then Eben wavers as his instinctual side comes into the ascendant. He is a child of nature and the land, subject to their rhythms and laws, the laws which brought them together in love. For that reason he returns to the farm to share Abbie's blame and punishment. Both have sinned in the name of love, and both must share their doom together. They depart from the farm for prison as the sun is rising and go forth in a shared devotion, almost a transfiguration. Both Eben and Abbie are characters who seem to be doomed by some malevolent deity, partly because they are both too close to the natural order of human existence. They are the two who seem to bemost attuned to the rhythms of nature and therefore cannot escapetheir destiny. It is important to note the significance of the farm for both of the lovers. For Abbie it means home and a place to belong and set down roots; for Eben it is a place of kinship with the earth, a small world insulated against what is outside. For him the stone walls that imprisoned his brothers are protection, where he lives with the spirit of his mother but alsowith classic Oedipal hatred of his father. Yet he is the only sonwho can have any comprehension of what the farm means both to himand his father, and therefore he must wrest ownership from his father. Eben and the farm are one. Though he does have some of his father's characteristics, Eben isnot quite so punitive in his conception of God. He also follows the Dionysian God of instinct, even more than his father, and in

surrender to that God he achieves a different kind of fertility. Nonetheless, when he hears of his child's murder, the Apollonian,judgmental, wrathful God makes him inform on Abbie, in unexpectedcontrast to Ephraim, who says he would never have told. This episode of Puritanism, of Old Testament rage, is short-lived, andin love he returns to Abbie. He then offers her a love which renounces everything, including life, to share in her punishment by accepting part of the guilt. This is the love, the charity of which Paul spoke in the New Testament; "Now there remaineth Faith, Hope, and Love, these three; and the greatest of these is Love." Obviously, Eben and his love for Abbie are not to be taken literally, otherwise one would have merely a melodrama of incest.In bringing his material together on a strong basis of myths reinterpreted in an American setting, O'Neill has obtained resonances from the Greeks, the Old and New Testaments, Nietzsche, Freud, and American history. As a result he has communicated the sense of doom, the feelings of pity and terror of which Aristotle spoke. Oedipus, Hippolytus, Judas Iscariot, and finally Jesus as interpreted by Saint Paul, all provide qualities of Eben Cabot, and it is through the sensitive use of all these myths that O'Neill has managed to give extraordinary power to the characters of a play which remains one of the finestin the American theatre. CABOT, Simeon. Oldest son of Ephraim Cabot, brother of Peter Cabot, and half-brother of Eben Cabot. Simeon is thirty-nine years old, heavily built, fleshy, and "bovine" in countenance. Like Peter, Simeon has worked resentfully on his father's farm all his life and cannot wait to leave it. His character, however,is not as hard as Peter's. When Simeon sees a golden sunset he recalls his wife Jenn, dead for the past eighteen years: "She'd hair long's a hoss's tail—and yaller like gold." His occasional recollection of her "makes it lonesome." For him, as for Peter, the farm's stone walls imprison them and he is happy to take fromEben his thirty pieces of gold (a significant number, reminiscentof the price paid Judas Iscariot) to free himself from slavery tohis father and to seek his fortune in California. Nonetheless, he

identifies with the "number one prize stock" that he and his brother have helped raise. Significantly, it is Simeon who announces the theme of escape from prison when he speaks of the walls "crumblin' and tumblin!" and takes the gate off the hinges:"We harby 'bolishes shet gates, an' open gates, an' all gates, bythunder!" He hates his father and as a character possesses the same symbolic significance as Peter: he is the son who must revolt against patriarchal dominance and exploitation and againstthe Puritan, Old Testament, wrathful God, or the Nietzschean Apollonian God. Also like Peter, he foreshadows the Dionysiac satyr-performance of Ephraim at the celebration for the birth of Abbie Putnam Cabot's son. As a last act of defiance, Simeon joinsPeter in heaving rocks through the parlor window. CABOT, Peter. Second son of Ephraim Cabot, brother of Simeon Cabot, and half-brother of Eben Cabot. Peter is thirty-seven years old, heavily built, fleshy, and "bovine" in countenance. Hehas worked resentfully on his father's farm all his life and cannot wait to leave. Although he has some sensitivity to the beauty of the sunset, it reminds him of "gold in the sky—in the West—Golden Gate—Californi-a! Goldest West!—fields o'gold." For him, as for Simeon, the stone walls they have helped to build on the farm imprison them, and he is happy to take from Eben his thirty pieces of gold (a significant number, reminiscent of the price paid Judas Iscariot) to try his fortune and find freedom inCalifornia. He is a trifle more practical and less sensitive thanSimeon but he too has some regrets about leaving the farm—for the"number one prize stock" that he and his brother have raised. He hates his father and, like his brother, possesses some symbolic significance as a character. An unwilling follower of the Protestant ethic, Peter is a son who must revolt against patriarchal tyranny, the Puritan wrathful God of the Old Testament, or the Nietzschean Apollonian God. As he leaves he becomes the ecstatic, intoxicated follower of the "easy" God his father forsook; and in his departing song and dance he, with his brother, foreshadows the boasting, drunk-en, Dionysiac satyr-dance performed by Ephraim Cabot at the celebration for the birthof Abbie Putnam Cabot's son. As a departing act, Peter and Simeonheave rocks through the parlor window.

 CABOT, Ephraim. Father of Simeon Cabot, Peter Cabot, and Eben Cabot, and husband of Abbie Putnam Cabot.  He is seventy-five years old, "gaunt, with great wiry power, but stoop-shouldered from toil." His face is as hard as the rocks on his farm, yet at the same time "there is a weakness in it, a petty pride in its own narrow strength." His eyes are close-set and myopic. Ephraim is the archetypal New England Puritan, the believer in hard work as a means to glorification, the man who thinks himselfto have a pipeline to the deity and actually hears God speaking to him. His God is an angry god, one of toil and punishment, not one of consolation, and as a result, Ephraim's life has become one of great loneliness. However, the "weakness" in his face indicates his occasional "lapses" from this harsh creed. Once he went away from his rock-riddled farm, following others from the locality to the Middle West where he found the land so rich that one merely had to plant the crops and sit back until they grew. But this ease distressed him, and finally he heard God speaking to him to say that this is not what He wanted. "God's hard, not easy," as Ephraim constantly says. Cabot believes that God, in fact, ordered him back to the farm, where he built his stone walls and forced the earth into fertility. Ephraim has also married three times. First to a woman like himself, a hard worker, who bore Simeon and Peter. Second, to Eben's mother, a softer person, but whose parents had some claim to the farm; she died, like her predecessor, worked to death by Eben's driving destiny. The third marriage, that to Abbie Putnam, a much youngerwomen, is a curious response to the stirrings of nature within Ephraim in a spring some twenty-five years after his second wife's death. This indicates not so much a "lapse" from service to the severe God of Puritanism, but rather an instinctive unity with the very farm itself. As he himself recognizes, Ephraim has become in effect the rock-strewn, hardscrabble farm, both in its difficultyand its fertility. For this reason, he identifies with both the land and its livestock. In fact, the only place where he really finds comfort is sleeping in the barn with the cows. This

identity with nature sends him forth to seek a wife, to gratify his loneliness, but also, as he reads it, in response to the willof an Old Testament God. He wants to have a suitable son to whom he can leave the farm, but none of his boys seems right. Each is a rebel against the hardness of the father, though their responses are different. After years of slavery to the old man, the older boys decide to follow the demands of the "easy" God andgo to California for gold. Nonetheless, they are so identified with the farm by their very "bovine" appearance that they regret leaving it. Significantly, they relate to the "fustrate, number one prize stock" they have bred, not to the imprisoning stone walls they have built to make the land fertile. Eben, despite hisalleged "softness," is the closest to the old man in his desire to own the farm, in his vengefulness, and finally in his acceptance of punishment from the "hard" God. But Ephraim is more than merely a God-fearing, God-obsessed patriarch of the New England persuasion. He is the Oedipal fatherwhom, in Freudian psychological theory, the son seeks to destroy and supplant in his mother's bed. He is also briefly a participant in an almost Dionysian revel when he capers like a satyr at the celebration of the birth of Abbie's child by Eben. He then becomes the personification of the punishing God when he hears of the murder of the child, but in momentary despair thinksof renouncing his harsh God, following his "easy" one to California, and destroying the results of his service to the harsh God of Puritanism or, in the Nietzschean terms, the Apollonian God. For this reason, he will turn the livestock looseand burn everything, but by the end of the play, the hardness haswon and Ephraim's life on the farm will continue. He is hounded by his own destiny and must pay for even his minor attempts to escape. In this manner, Ephraim becomes a mythic figure, a combination of the forces of New England Puritanism, Greek myth, Freudian psychology, and Nietzschean theory; in addition, he is emblematic of Nature herself, which cannot be denied. He should not be taken literally, though such a reading is possible, but symbolically, against the background of these varied sources. Thekey to his character is the long monologue in Part II, Scene ii, in which his dialect reaches a level of poetic eloquence that

O'Neill does not always manage. Here, too, the excellent use of Biblical quotation when lyricism is beyond Ephraim's personal vocabulary is both totally in character and indeed inspired. But one must not forget the ineffable loneliness of the man, which must also arouse pity, as well as terror for the fate whichengulfs him. In his own way, he has sought love and wants to love. He is sensitive to the loneliness and the coldness he findswithin his house and among other people. His farewell words to Abbie indicate these qualities: "Ye'd ought t'loved me. I'm a man. If ye'd loved me, I'd never told no Sheriff on ye no matter what ye did, if they was t'brile me alive." This loss of Abbie makes him "lonesomer than ever"; but then the wrathful God controls him again as he returns to find Eben and Abbie in each other's arms, awaiting the Sheriff: "Ye'd ought t'be both hung onthe same limb an' left thar t'swing in the breeze an' rot—a warnin't t'old fools like me t'b'ar their lonesomeness alone—an' fur young fools like ye t'hobble their lust." His theology is bleak and seems to offer no true happiness: his vision of heaven is to have a farm "up thar," and one wonders whether the cultivation will be as difficult "thar" as on earth. The Sheriff's concluding remark contains tremendous irony: "It's a jim-dandy farm, no denyin'. Wished I owned it!" Ephraim Cabot is a titanic figure who must both fight and serve an angry God, and in a sense he is a symbol of a singularly bleak view of the humancondition. CABOT, Abbie Putnam. Wife of Ephraim Cabot and lover of Ephraim'sson, Eben Cabot. Abbie is the thirty-five-year-old third wife of the seventy-six-year-old Ephraim. She is a buxom, good-looking woman whose face is marred by an obstinate chin and a "gross sensuality." She has married Ephraim solely to gain possession ofa home and the farm. She had a hard life until Ephraim came along. Yet she has no love for him, only a desire to find a placewhere she can belong, and in fact she has a physical aversion to her husband. When Abbie arrives at the farm, she is attracted by Eben's youthful good looks and uses her most seductive tone to gain his

acceptance of her as his mother. Eben, however, sees her as a conniving interloper, a harlot who sold herself for the farm. Twomonths later, on a hot afternoon, Abbie accosts Eben. Clearly their physical attraction is almost unbearable, and she takes advantage of the situation. She herself is a ripe woman who responds to the stirrings of nature, and indeed finds herself onewith it. Eben fights against her, arousing her jealousy. However, as Abbiehad predicted, nature proves too strong for Eben. Even though he repulses her once more, she finally persuades him to court her inthe best parlor, the room in which his mother's funeral wake had taken place. When the two of them consummate their love in that room, it becomes theirs, and the restless spirit of Eben's mothervanishes. Here the myth of Phaedra and Hyppolytus is relived in the union of the two, together with the inclusion of the Oedipus situation by which Eben supplants his father. By the following year, a son is born to Abbie and Eben, as all the world well knows, except Ephraim. But the balance of the lovers' existence has been disturbed by the arrival of their child; Eben detests pretending that what is rightfully his belongs to his father just like the farm. The farm, fertility, and ownership all become one to him, but when Ephraim taunts him by saying that the farm will go to Abbie or "his" son, Eben wishes the child dead, turning against Abbie in hatred. She, by now the slave of her destiny and physical desire, smothers the baby, in an attempt to regain Eben's love. Here again, O'Neill uses myth, this time that of Medea, who killed her own children because she had lost the love of Jason. But, as Abbie herself later realizes, she should have killed the old man, because Eben is devastated by the discovery that Abbie has murdered his own flesh and blood. All she can do is attempt to make him understandher motivation—that she loves him, Eben, better than anything else in the world. She could bear anything, if only Eben would again say he loved her. But Eben rushes off to inform the Sheriff, and Abbie is left to face the Old Testament wrath of Ephraim. When Eben returns, Abbie

discovers with strange joy that he has come to claim participation in the crime and plans to share her punishment because of his love for her. As they depart from the farm in the custody of the Sheriff, they go toward a rising sun and into a new existence which will be made easier by love, a love that, like that expressed by Saint Paul, surpasses all other virtues. The character of Abbie, then, must be taken on a symbolic, nonliteral level as well as a literal one. She is the modern embodiment of a series of mythic resonances, coming from Ancient Greece, through Old and New Testaments, American history, SigmundFreud, and even Nietzsche, even though he saw women as little more than recreation for mankind. She is Phaedra attempting to seduce Hippolytus, Jocasta who loves her son as child and husband, Medea who murders her children, and the victim of a malevolent deity and hence unable to escape her destiny. This deity is both the wrathful God of Puritanism and the Old Testament and the Apollonian God of Nietzsche. Yet even in her tragedy she finds some consolation in the other side of the Nietzschean dichotomy, that is, in the Dionysian ecstasy of her love for Eben. It is this deeper level of meaning that makes thisplay an important contribution to the American theatre and makes the character of Abbie Putnam tragic, rather than merely weak or pathetic.

Synopsisby Margaret Loftus Ranald

A tragedy in three parts and twelve scenes laid "in, and immediately outside of, the Cabot farmhouse in New England, in the year 1850." The house faces south "to a stone wall with a wooden gate at center opening onto a country road. The house is in good condition but in need of paint." The wood siding has weathered to gray, and the shutters are faded. On either side of the house are two huge elms which bend down over the roof, appearing to protect and at the same time to subdue: "They brood

oppressively over the house. They are like exhausted women resting their sagging breasts and hands and hair on its roof, andwhen it rains their tears trickle down monotonously and rot on the shingles." A path runs "around the right hand corner of the house to the front door." The side of the house facing the audience has four windows, the upstairs ones being of the bedrooms of the father and the brothers, and the larger, downstairs ones being of the parlor on the right and the kitchen on the left. Part I, Scene i: Sunset on an early summer day. The air is still and the sky above the farmhouse is filled with color, but the house itself is in shadow. Eben Cabot comes out on to the porch, looks down the road, mechanically swings a dinner bell, and then looks up appreciatively at the' sky. He is a tall, sinewy, twenty-five-year-old, with a handsome face marred by a "resentfuland defensive expression." He has dark hair and eyes which have the look of a trapped animal about them. "He is dressed in rough farm clothes." As he gazes at the sky he says, "God! Purty!" thenspits on the ground and goes in. Simeon Cabot and Peter Cabot, Eben's half-brothers, come in from their work. Simeon is thirty-nine and Peter is thirty-seven. They are rather "bovine" men, bent somewhat from years of hard farm work, and as they move theyjostle each other slightly "like two friendly oxen." They are dressed in farm work clothes and heavy muddy boots. They stop fora moment in front of the house and look at the sky. Their faces soften and they begin a laconic conversation which repeats Eben's"purty!" Simeon recalls that it was eighteen years ago that his wife died. Now and then he recalls, "Makes it lonesome. She'd hair long's a hoss's tail—an' yaller like gold!" Peter gives a brief recognition to the dead woman but then says, "They's gold in the West, Sim," and excitedly speaks of the fortunes that can be made for the asking in California, "Golden Gate—Californi–a!—Goldest West!—fields o' gold." The excitement communicates itselfto Simeon as Peter recalls the everlasting misery of their lives on the farm, raising one stone on top of another to build "stone walls fur him to fence us in!" The two begin to speculate on the whereabouts of their father, Ephraim Cabot, who has been gone forthe past two months. He last left the farm thirty years ago to

marry "Eben's maw." Eben, who has been listening out the window, says, "I pray he's died," much to the surprise of his brothers. Again the three of them gaze at the sun, Eben remarking, "Sun's downin' purty," while Simeon and Peter together speak of "gold inthe West." Initially Eben misunderstands "Yonder atop o' the pasture, ye mean?" But the two brothers answer as one: "In California!" With that, they go inside for dinner. Part I, Scene ii: The color is fading, and with the coming of twilight the inside of the kitchen becomes visible. The kitchen is clean and neat but thoroughly masculine in appearance. There is a ship's poster saying "California" on the rear wall center. Places have been laid for three, and Eben serves boiled potatoes and bacon together with "a loaf of bread and a crock of water." The two older men sit down and start eating while Eben picks at his food, "glancing at them with a tolerant dislike." Finally thesilence is broken when Simeon and Peter both upbraid Eben for wishing their father dead. Eben considers himself his mother's son and has never forgotten the way Ephraim worked her to death. Simeon and Peter also remember her kindness, but they don't reactquite like Eben. Peter, in fact, notes that Ephraim is slaving himself and his sons to death, On'y none o' us hain't died—yit." Simeon perceives that there is "something' " driving the old man to act as he does, but he does not understand what it might be. Eben then asks what is driving his brothers to California, suggesting that they'll never get there because they are waiting for their share of the farm, their two-thirds. But he maintains that the farm really belonged to his mother: "Didn't he steal it from her? She's dead. It's my farm." Gradually it comes out that Eben cannot forgive his brothers for not trying to save his mother from overwork, and the two older men recite a laconic litany of the farm chores that came first, until Eben finally speaks again of the stone walls: "makin' walls till yer heart's astone ye heft up out o' the way o' growth onto a stone wall t'wall in yer heart." Peter asks him why he did nothing, and Ebentakes refuge in the same excuse—"chores." However, he believes that she still haunts the place, and "sooner'r later, . . . I'll see t' it my Maw gits some rest an' sleep in her grave." 

Again the brothers wonder what has become of Ephraim, who had driven off looking unusually spic and span. He had felt the stirrings of spring, "an' now I'm ridin' out t' learn God's message t' me in the spring, like the prophets done. "And, after an admonition to the two older men not to run away, he had gone—singing a hymn. Eben asks why they had not prevented his departure and asserts that he is stronger than they. They are mildly amused by this and even more so when Eben announces that he is going up the road, and the brothers realize that it is to see the town prostitute, Min, whom each one of them had known, including Ephraim; "He was fust! . . . We air his heirs in everything." At first Eben thinks of bashing Min, but then when he is left alone, he softens: "By God A'mighty she's purty, an' Idon't give a damn how many sins she's sinned afore mine or who she's sinned with, my sin's as purty as any one on 'em!" Part I, Scene iii: It is pitch dark and just before dawn as Eben goes in the front door, "chuckling bitterly and cursing half-aloud." He goes upstairs. He enters their bedroom with a lighted candle, and the interior of the bedroom becomes visible, with itslow sloping roof, the double bed in which Simeon and Peter are sleeping, and Eben's cot at the rear. With a combination of "silly grin and malicious scowl" Eben tells his news: Ephraim hasmarried a woman of thirty-five. This news makes Simeon and Peter decide to depart for California, and Eben pulls out a paper in which he offers to buy their shares in the farm for three hundreddollars apiece, which he can get from Ephraim's secret hoard: "I know whar it's hid. . . . Maw told me." The older men don't quitecommit themselves and tell Eben to fix some "vittles" for them. He tells them that he has indeed been with Min and suggests that "this cow the Old Man's hitched t'! She'll beat Min, I got a notion!" Simeon's curious suggestion, "Mebbe yell try t' make heryour'n, too?" calls forth a disgusted denial from Eben. Left alone, the brothers discuss Eben's offer, noting shrewdly that "if Paw's hitched we'd be sellin' Eben somethin' we'd never git nohow!" In the meantime, while waiting for Eben to return, they will laze around and drink. Both men wish Ephraim damned, and Simeon ironically recalls his departure to seek God's will when

"I'll bet right then an' thar he knew plumb well he was goin' whorin', the stinkin' old hypocrite!" Part I, Scene iv: The interior of the kitchen as in Scene i, witha candle on the table. Simeon and Peter have just finished breakfast, and almost as a reflex action they are about to leave for work when Simeon remembers that they have decided not to workat all if Eben wants to be sole owner. As soon as he hears this, Eben races off to milk the cows: "I'll work my durn fingers off fur cows o' mine." Again, Simeon and Peter note his likeness to Ephraim. The two of them sit down and start drinking. They look at the farm, the sky, and their future with very mixed emotions. They resent how much of themselves they have put into the farm, yet they are also proud of what they have done and regret leavingit. Their defiant assertion of freedom from "stone walls" masks acertain apprehension, and so they go "help Eben a spell," for thehabits of a lifetime are hard to break. Just as they start to move, Eben enters with the news that Ephraim and his woman are on the way, and the two older men hasten to get their bundles before he returns. Eben asks whether they'll sign the paper before they go, and Peter counters by asking to see the money. As the brothers go upstairs, Eben pulls up a floorboard under the stone and extracts a canvas bag containing thirty twenty-dollar gold pieces (a significant number, recalling Judas Iscariot). After testing and counting thecoins, Simeon and Peter sign and go out to the gate. Eben seems in a delighted trance, while the two brothers mock Ephraim, who is unhitching. Simeon and Peter are in a state of euphoria as they celebrate their freedom from "this stinkin' old rock-pile ofa farm." Simeon takes the gate off the hinges and declares that he "bolishes . . . all gates, by thunder!" With this, Peter suggests that they take it with them and let it "sail free down some river." As Ephraim and his wife enter, the brothers freeze. Ephraim is seventy-five, gaunt, toilworn; his face is hard, yet still "with a weakness in it, a petty pride in its own narrow strength." His eyes are myopic, small and close-set, and "he is dressed in his

dismal black Sunday suit." Abbie Putnam Cabot "is thirty-five, buxom, full of vitality." She has a pretty round face "marred by its rather gross sensuality." She has an obstinate jaw and determined eyes "and about her whole personality the same unsettled, untamed, desperate quality which is so apparent in Eben." Abbie looks at the farm with a curious echo of the three brothers: "It's purty—purty! I can't b'lieve it's r'ally mine." This last comment galvanizes Ephraim into an assertion of ownership and then a relenting "Our'n—mebbe!" recalling his loneliness in the past. Simeon and Peter greet him with assorted insults which culminate in their heaving two stones through the parlor window as they dance drunkenly away, intoxicated both by liquor and freedom, singing the gold-seekers' words to the tune of "Oh Susannah!" Abbie, meanwhile, has gone into the house to meet Eben, after Ephraim has warned her not to assert her ownership of the farm to him. As the older brothers leave, Abbie looks after them from the bedroom window. "Is it my room, Ephraim?" When her husband replies "Our'n!" she makes an uncontrollable grimace of aversion and shuts the window. Suddenlythe thought strikes Ephraim that his sons might have injured the stock or caused some other damage, and he rushes off to the barn. After a moment, Abbie pushes open the kitchen door and enters to look at Eben, who does not see her at first. She looks at him calculatingly, and is "dimly awakened by his youth and good looks." Throughout the rest of this scene, Abbie uses "her most seductive tones" to Eben, as he, "obscurely moved, physically attracted to her," listens to the tale of her life. She understands his rage in seeing her take his mother's place, she says, and recalls that she herself was orphaned early and had to go into service "in other folks' hums." Then she married, but herhusband was a drunk, her baby died, and she was once more workingfor others. After her husband's death, her lot did not change until Ephraim came along—"An' bought yew—like a harlot," says Eben, enraged that the price for Abbie is his mother's farm. The two of them level with each other, Abbie saying quite frankly that that was the only reason she married Ephraim and Eben

threatening to tell his father. In turn, Abbie threatens to get Ephraim to drive Eben off the place, and she carefully and specifically asserts her ownership of the farm, home, kitchen, and bedroom, yet finally asks that they be friends. Eben, hypnotized, at first agrees, but then he flings out of the room, finding his father offering a Bible curse on Simeon and Peter. Eben mocks the old man, who replies by telling his son, "Ye'll never be more'n half a man!" As they walk off to the barn, the faint song of Simeon and Peter can still be heard, and Abbie, in the kitchen, washes her dishes as the curtain falls. Part II, Scene i: Two months later, outside the Cabot farmhouse, on a hot, Sunday afternoon. Abbie is sitting, rocking listlessly on the porch, as Eben pokes his head out the window to see if theporch is empty. Abbie senses his presence and stops rocking, while Eben, realizing that she is there, scowls and spits "with exaggerated disdain." Abbie waits breathlessly until Eben comes out dressed in his best suit. As he passes her, she chuckles tauntingly and rouses his ire. She asks where he is going "all slicked up like a prize bull," and he replies in kind. But as they look at each other, "their physical attraction becomes a palpable force quivering in the hot air." Abbie very softly tellsEben that no matter what he says, he is attracted to her, and he has been fighting against his nature ever since she entered the house. She speaks of nature, the heat of the day, the burning inside, humanity's kinship with nature: "Nature'll beat you Eben.Ye might's well own up t'it fust 's last." Eben tries to break away from her, claiming that he is fighting both her and his father for his mother's rights to the land. Abbie then gets him to admit that he is going out to visit Min, the prostitute, who he insists is better than Abbie because she acts honestly and isn't working to steal what is his—the farm. This gives Abbie a chance to throw a tantrum and order him out as Ephraim enters. The old man seems to have softened somewhat since his marriage, and his eyes have become dreamy. However, he is as physically strong as ever. He inquires as to the reason for all the shouting, and she claims that Eben had declared his father was getting soft. As Ephraim looks up at the sky—''Purty, hain't

it?"—and compares it to a warm field, Abbie laughs at him. He allows, "I'd like t'own my place up thar," because he is beginning to feel "ripe on the bough." But above all else, he is lonely, because the house is always cold—even when the outside temperature is boiling. In the barn, however, with the cows, it is always warm and comforting. He begins to talk almost kindly ofEben, but Abbie finesses this approach with "Hain't I yer lawful wife?" At this, Ephraim covers her hand with kisses and showers her with praises from The Song of Solomon. Satisfied that she has him under control, Abbie taxes him with planning to leave the farm to Eben, but Ephraim swears that he has no intention of leaving it to anyone—he would rather burn anddestroy it all, except for the cows—and except for Abbie, whom hewould turn free. At this, Abbie tells Ephraim that Eben has gone to visit Min and alleges that his trying to make love to her had caused the uproar Ephraim had heard. Enraged, Ephraim suggests that he horse-whip his son off the farm, but Abbie refuses, because Ephraim needs another hand. Sadly, Cabot says that none of his sons will bother to stay with the farm: "Simeon an' Peter air gone t' hell—an' Eben's follerin' 'em." She then suggests that "mebbe the Lord'll give us a son" and claims that she has long been praying for this. Ephraim swears that if that were to happen, he would do anything for her. He kneels down and pulls her down too so that they can pray for a son: "An' God hearkened unto Rachel!" Part II, Scene ii: It is about 8 P.M. the same day, and "the interior of the two bedrooms on the top floor is shown." Eben is sitting on the side of his bed in his undershirt and underpants in the room on the left. Cabot and Abbie are seated side by side on the edge of their large, old-fashioned feather bed, he in his nightshirt and she in a nightdress. By the flickering light of the tallow candles, Ephraim speaks of the way Abbie and the farm have become one to him: "Me an' the farm has got t' beget a son." Then in a long monologue, Ephraim tells of the way he came to thefarm, made "fields o' stones" fertile land: "When ye kin make corn sprout out o' stones, God's livin' in yew!" Ephraim's God is

a hard deity, as he has learned. Once, after two years on this hardscrabble farm, Cabot had given into weakness like the rest ofthe folk in the area. He had trekked West with them and found easy, rich land: "Ye'd on'y to plow an' sow an' then set an' smoke yer pipe an' watch thin's grow." But the voice of his God came to him saying, "This hain't with nothin' t' Me. Git ye back t' hum!" With that, Ephraim walked away from his land and returned because "God's hard, not easy! God's in the stones!" Andas God founded His church on a rock, so Ephraim built his farm out of stones, in efforts that made him hard, too. In his loneliness he took his first wife, the mother of Simeon and Peter, but even then his loneliness was unassuaged. When she diedafter twenty years, he was less lonely, and his boys helped him with the farm, his own land: "When I thought o' that I didn't feel lonesome." But then he married Eben's mother, partly becauseof his loneliness and also to bring her family to drop an ownership claim against the farm. But he remained lonely, even though she bore Eben; she never understood him, and after sixteenyears she, too, died. Then he lived with the boys, all of whom hated him because of his hardness, while he reciprocated by hating their softness: "They coveted the farm without knowin' what it meant." Then in the past spring he heard again the voice of God telling him "t' go out an' seek an' find!" He turns to Abbie again with the words of Solomon, "Yew air my Rose o' Sharon!" but he is greeted with a blank stare of resentment. At this he pushes her away angrily, almost threateningly, saying, "If ye don't hev a son t' redeem ye..." In reply, Abbie promises him a son, "I kin foretell." Lonely and cold in his own house, Ephraim returns to the barn: "I kin talk t' the cows. They know the farm an' me. They'll give me peace." As Ephraim clumps down the stairs, Eben, on the other side of thewall, sits up, listening. Abbie, "conscious of his movements" stares at the wall. Meanwhile, Ephraim goes out of the house and raises his arms: "God A'mighty, call from the dark!" Then, receiving no answer, he goes to the barn. "Eben and Abbie stare at each other through the wall." Eben sighs, "and Abbie echoes it." Abbbie listens at the wall, and Eben reacts as if he can seewhat is going on. Then, as she enters his room, he turns away.

She stands looking at him and then rushes to embrace and kiss him. At first he submits, then hurls her away. Abbie asks why, and Eben says he hates her, but Abbie recalls that his lips were burning with desire. Eben suggests that he might have been thinking of someone else, and Abbie responds that she wouldn't love a weak thing like him: "I on'y wanted yew fur a purpose o' my own—an' I'll have ye fur it yet `cause I'm stronger'n yew be!"At this, he orders her out of his room, and she taunts him as nothing more than hired help. She says there is still one room inthe house which she does not own, and she will now go down there,light the candles, and make it hers. "Won't ye come courtin' me in the best parlor, Mister Cabot?" In confused horror, Eben recalls that the room hasn't been opened since his mother's funeral. Abbie leaves with "I'll expect ye afore long, Eben," andthe young man, almost mechanically, puts on his white shirt, tie,coat, and hat, but no shoes. He looks around in bewilderment—"Maw! Whar air yew?"—and slowly walks out. Part II, Scene iii: A few minutes later in the parlor, "a grim, repressed room like a tomb in which the family has been interred alive." The candles are all lit, and Abbie is seated on the edge of the horsehair sofa looking unexpectedly "awed and frightened, ready to run away." Eben opens the door, dressed as before, with "an expression of obsessed confusion." The spirit of Eben's mother, which seems to haunt the room, has frightened Abbie, but now that Eben has entered, it seems "soft an' kind." Eben recallshis mother and says that the farm was really hers. Gradually, Abbie answers his recollections of his mother with comparisons toher own lot and asks him to kiss her, "Same's if I was a Maw t' ye." But lust overcomes her and frightens him while she pleads, saying that she (his mother) wants him to love Abbie. Revelation comes to Eben: "It's her vengeance on him—so's she kin rest quietin her grave." With this, Abbie stretches her arms out to him as Eben throws himself on his knees and admits that he has been "dyin' fur want o' ye!" They embrace and kiss violently. Part II, Scene iv: The "exterior of the farmhouse. It is just dawn." Eben, dressed in work clothes, comes out and goes to the gate. He seems changed and more confident, "grinning to himself

with evident satisfaction." The parlor window is flung open just as he reaches the gate, and Abbie looks out, her hair over her shoulders and eyes filled with longing. She calls him back and they kiss several times. Abbie declares that Ephraim won't suspect anything, and now that the parlor is her room, or "our room," as she corrects herself to Eben, she will let in the sun. Eben says, "Maw's gone back t' her grave. She kin sleep now." Abbie says she isn't going to bother to get Ephraim's food, and just then Ephraim appears in the distance, looking vaguely up at the sky he is barely able to see. Eben treats his father with a curious blend of humor and mild insolence, something Ephraim cannot understand, and accuses Eben of being drunk, but Eben says, " 'Tain't Ricker, jest life. Yew'n me is quits. Let's shakehands." Mystified, Ephraim looks at him as Eben asks whether he had felt his mother going back to her grave: "She's quits with ye." Ephraim, not knowing what to say, says he has slept with thecows: "They know how t' sleep. They're teachin' me." Eben acts sojovially that the balance of authority seems to have shifted and Ephraim senses it, particularly when Eben begins to treat him like a fool: "I'm the prize rooster o' this roost." But Ephraim looks scornfully after his son. "A born fool," he says as he goesto look for breakfast. The curtain falls. Part III, Scene i: The following year, a night in late spring. Each of the two upstairs bedrooms is lighted by a candle. Eben lies on his bed, scowling at the floor through which he can hear the noise of a dance from the kitchen. In the master bedroom there is a cradle by the bed. Downstairs, the floor has been cleared for dancing, with benches placed against the wall. Ephraim Cabot is in "a state of extreme hilarious excitement" as a result of all the whiskey he has drunk, and he is serving drinks to all the men. Married couples and young people from the neighborhood are crowded in, and a musician busily tunes his fiddle. Abbie sits in a rocking chair with a shawl around her shoulders. She is pale, thin, and drawn, and her eyes stray continually to the open door as if she is expecting someone. The entire company is chattering, laughing, and exchanging broad winks. Abbie asks where Eben is, and a young girl replies scornfully that he has spent most of his time at home since she

came. A man suggests himself for consideration as a successor to Eben if Abbie gets tired. All in all, the company is having a bawdy time at the expense of Abbie and Ephraim, the latter of whom is quite oblivious to what is being said as he calls on his guests to dance for him. There is a short square dance sequence in which everyone participates in one way or another, dancing or clapping, except Abbie. Suddenly, Cabot is unable to restrain himself and "prances into the midst of the dancers, scattering them, waving his arms wildly." Everyone stops and watches as the fiddler works harder and harder on "Pop Goes the Weasel" and Cabot capers higher and higher, kicking with both legs, looking "like a monkey on a string," and punctuating his dancing with comments on his physical stamina. Finally, the fiddler stops, andCabot then stops. Upstairs, Eben enters the master bedroom and looks at the child in the cradle, confusedly yet with "a trace of tenderness, of interested discovery." At that moment, Abbie seems to sense something, almost by telepathy, and goes up to the baby. Cabot orders the music to resume and goes outside for some air as the company start whispering among themselves, making "a noise as of dead leaves in the wind. "As Cabot leans on the gate and stares at the sky, Abbie and Eben kiss and bend over the baby. Eben sayshe doesn't want to continue with "lettin' on what's mine's his'n." He has been doing that all his life and is getting to theend of his rope. Abbie comforts him with a kiss, saying that something will happen, and they remain in an embrace. Ephraim, atthe gate, feels somehow lonesome, finding himself uncomfortable in the house. "Somethin's always livin' with ye." And in search of peace he goes down to the barn. The fiddler strikes up "Turkeyin the Straw" and the real merriment begins. Part III, Scene ii: The outside of the farmhouse a half-hour later. Eben is "looking up at the sky, an expression of dumb bewilderment on his face," as his father appears. When he sees Eben, he becomes cruelly triumphant, comes up, and slaps him on the back, while in the background the sound of the dance can be heard. He asks Eben why he isn't inside looking for a girl: "Ye might 'am a share o' a farm that way." This angers Eben, who

taxes Ephraim with the way he got title to his farm, through marriage. Ephraim denies the charge, but when Eben says, "An' I got a farm anyways," Ephraim treats him with scornful confidence,telling him that he will never get any of the farm. It will belong to the new child and to Abbie, who has told him about the way Eben had tried to make love to her. When he sees the impression this information has made on Eben, he embroiders further, claiming that Abbie had wanted Eben cut off so that she could have the farm. At this, Eben threatens to murder Abbie, andthe two men grapple. But Ephraim is too strong for Eben, who is rescued by Abbie. Eben engages in bitter recriminations with Abbie, who franticallyprotests her love. Eben tells her she has made a fool of him by getting his father to disinherit him if Abbie has a son. Pleadingly, Abbie explains that she was after vengeance then because of Eben's going to Min, but she "didn't mean t' do bad t'ye!" and begs for forgiveness. Eben, however, wants revenge on both of them and threatens to leave for the California gold fields. Then, when he is rich, he will return and kick out Abbie and his father, and the child too. As far as the infant is concerned, Eben wishes it would die: "I wish he never was born! Iwish he'd die this minit! I wish I'd never sot eyes on him! It's him—yew havin' him—apurpose to steal—that's changed everythin!." In answer to Abbie's pleading, Eben admits that he had indeed loved her "like a dumb ox!" and his hatred arises from the beliefthat she had tricked him. So, he will leave the next morning. Abbie says that if Eben hates the child, so too will she: "He won't steal [the farm]! I'd kill him fust! I do love ye! I'll prove t' ye!" Desperately, Abbie asks for a kiss, and when Eben refuses, she asks whether he would love her once more if she could make it so that things were as they were before the baby came, and Eben replies laconically, "I calc'late not. But ye hain't God, be ye?" As Eben leaves to get drunk and dance, Abbie calls after him: "I'll prove I love ye better'n . . . Better'n anything else in the world!" Part III, Scene iii: It is just before dawn, and the kitchen and the Cabots' bedroom are visible. Eben is in the candlelit

kitchen, sitting at the table, his carpetbag on the floor in front of him. Upstairs, the bedroom is lighted by an oil lamp; Cabot is asleep, and Abbie is leaning over the cradle with a lookof "terror yet with an undercurrent of triumph." She seems about to break down and fling herself on her knees by the cradle, but Ephraim moves and groans. She pulls herself together, goes out, and in a moment reappears in the kitchen. She runs to Eben, "flings her arms around his neck and kisses him wildly." He remains stiff and unmoved, looking straight ahead. Hysterically, Abbie announces, "I done it, Eben!" but Eben doesn't understand. He reiterates his plan to leave, leaving "Maw t' take vengeance on ye." He won't tell his father the truth because "the old skunk'd jest be mean enuf to take it out on that baby." And then he expresses his own love for the child, because it is his, it looks like him, and some day he will come back. Abbie, not hearing Eben, then announces, "I—killed him, Eben." However, Ebenthinks she means Ephraim and manufactures an alibi—that the old man killed himself while he was drunk. Instantly Abbie realizes, "But that's what I ought t' done, hain't it? I oughter killed himinstead! Why didn't ye tell me?" Eben, horrified at the discoverythat his son has been smothered, cries out, "Oh, God A'mighty! A'mighty God! Maw, whar was ye, why didn't ye stop her?" Eben's grief then turns to rage as Abbie tells of her desperationand her reason for doing an act she regrets—she loves Eben more even than her own child. But Eben is blinded by his anger and maintains that she plans to blame him for the murder. "But I'll take vengeance now! I'll git the Sheriff! I'll tell him everythin! Then I'll sing 'I'm off to California!' an' go—gold—Golden Gate—gold sun—fields o' gold in the West!" Abbie calls after him, "Eben, I love ye! I don't care what ye do—if yell on'ylove me agen," as she faints to the floor. Part III, Scene iv: One hour later, just after dawn with a brilliant sunrise. Abbie is sitting at the kitchen table with herhead on her arms. Upstairs, Cabot has just woken and starts to talk to Abbie. Then he gets up, blaming himself for oversleeping.With pride, he looks at the cradle and his "purty" son and then goes downstairs, asking for his breakfast. Abbie, at first almost

like stone, then tells him she has smothered the child. Ephraim reacts with stunned fury, shaking her and asking why she did it. Abbie then pushes him away furiously and springs to her feet, spewing out the hatred and rage she feels towards her husband, wishing she had murdered him instead, and finally admitting the child's paternity. Cabot's face hardens: "I got t' be—like a stone—a rock o' jedgment!" If Abbie's statement is true, then Ephraim is glad the child is dead, and "I'll deliver ye up t' thejedgment o' God an' the law!" But to his surprise, he learns thatEben has already gone to do so. "In a voice full of strange emotion," he tells Abbie, "Ye'd ought t' loved me. . . . I'd never told no Sheriff on ye no matter what ye did." At that moment Eben comes running back, and when Cabot learns that he has indeed told the Sheriff, he pushes his son away, warning Eben to get off the farm before he murders him. Ephraim then leaves. Eben, unhearing, enters the kitchen, falls on his knees beside Abbie, and begs her forgiveness, telling her that ashe waited for the Sheriff to appear, he realized that he had loved Abbie and always would. That is why he has run back, to talk to her before she can be taken away so they can run off together. Abbie refuses, because she must pay for her sin. Eben says he will share it with her by alleging that he planned the murder and must pay, too: "I want t' share with ye, Abbie—prison 'r death 'r hell 'r anythin'!" Finally Abbie realizes that she can't talk him out of his plan. Footsteps are heard; it is Cabot, back from the barn. He enters to find Eben kneeling beside Abbie with his arms around her, bothstaring straight ahead. Almost maniacally, he wishes them both hanged and then announces that he has turned his stock loose and by so doing has freed himself. He will set fire to house, barn, everything and go to California. He breaks into a caper. But thenhe looks for his hoard and discovers that Eben had given it to Simeon and Peter for their passage money. After a moment of shockEphraim resigns himself: "I calc'late God give it to 'em—not yew!God's hard, not easy! . . . God's hard an' lonesome." The ease ofthe West is not for him, and Eben is His instrument to save Ephraim from his weakness.

 At this moment, the Sheriff enters with two other men, and Eben tells his story of participation in the murder. Cabot looks at Eben "with a trace of grudging admiration" and goes out to round up his stock and recommence life. The two prisoners bid him good bye and then embrace each other, to the embarrassment of the Sheriff and his men. They go out the door hand in hand, and Eben says, "Sun's arizing'. Purty, hain't it?" Abbie agrees, and they stand momentarily looking upwards, with a curiously detached air mingled with devotion. The Sheriff delivers the final ironic line: "It's a jim-dandy farm, no denyin'. Wished I owned it!"