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Scene 3
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Betrayal, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Love, Jealousy and Betrayal
Time, Perspective, and Identity
Literature and Integrity
Responsibility and Consequences
Summary
Analysis
In the autumn of 1974, Jerry and Robert share a drink in Robert and Emma’s living room while Emma puts her son to bed offstage. Jerry and Robert discuss how boy babies are different from girl babies. Jerry asserts boy babies are more anxious about leaving the womb and facing the world, and Robert questions why this would be so.
The play has moved back in time another year. Jerry and Robert are sharing a friendly drink, but the audience knows that Robert has already known about the affair for a year by now—though Jerry is ignorant of this. Due to Robert’s characteristic inexpressiveness, the audience can’t easily tell whether he’s acting different around Jerry than he normally would. Their conversation focuses on pop-psychology, though it again reveals Jerry’s self-pitying tendencies in attributing a greater burden of anxiety to males.
Themes
Emma enters. Jerry reveals he has popped in because he was just around the corner having tea with Casey. Emma claims not to have known that Casey had left his wife and moved to her neighborhood. Emma and Robert say that Casey has dried up artistically, but Jerry disagrees. Emma maintains that his latest work was “dishonest.”
Knowing that Emma will eventually begin an affair with Casey, the audience may wonder whether she’s really ignorant of Casey’s situation, Her unusually strong reaction to Casey’s book raises the question of whether their relationship has already begun. Robert, meanwhile, reveals more of his unease with his role purveying literature of dubious quality.
Themes
Robert presses Jerry on when they’ll play squash, but Jerry is evasive. Robert reveals he’s been playing squash with Casey. Emma asks if she can watch Jerry and Robert’s next match, and Robert condemns at length the idea of women being present at the male ritual of squash.
Jerry’s evasion of playing squash with Robert suggests his sense of guilt, on which Robert deliberately puts pressure. Robert then evokes Casey as an implicitly worthier man than Jerry, foreshadowing Casey’s usurpation of Jerry’s role as Emma’s lover. Robert’s borderline misogynistic monologue suggests his contempt for Emma’s roll in disrupting his and Jerry’s friendship.
Themes
Jerry reveals he’s going to New York next week with Casey on a publicity tour. He leaves, and Robert kisses Emma. She resists at first, and then she cries quietly on his shoulder.
Jerry’s presence clearly stirs strong, tortured emotions between Robert and Emma, of which Jerry himself is blithely unaware. His business trip abroad foreshadows the increasing work commitments that will undermine his and Emma’s affair.
Themes
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