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David Mannon
Marie Brantôme was David Mannon’s lover and Adam Brant’s mother. A Canadian nurse, Marie was working in the Mannon household when she began a secret affair with David. According to her son, Marie’s beauty also made her an object of lust for David’s brother Ezra and their father, Abe Mannon. After Marie’s pregnancy was discovered, Marie and David were ostracized and disinherited from the Mannon family. After years of being abused by an embittered David, Marie ultimately died of a curable illness when Ezra refused to help out with her medical bills. For Lavinia and Orin, Marie becomes the ultimate symbol of sexuality. Indeed, when Orin confesses his incestuous feelings for his sister, he does so by comparing her to Marie Brantôme.
Marie Brantôme Quotes in Mourning Becomes Electra
The Mourning Becomes Electra quotes below are all either spoken by Marie Brantôme or refer to Marie Brantôme . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Homecoming: Act 2
Quotes
BRANT—If I could catch him alone, where no one would interfere, and let the best man come out alive—as I’ve often seen it done in the West!
CHRISTINE—This isn’t the West.
BRANT—I could insult him on the street before everyone and make him fight me! I could let him shoot first and then kill him in self-defense!
CHRISTINE—(scornfully) Do you imagine you could force him to fight a duel with you? Don’t you know dueling is illegal? Oh, no! He’d simply feel bound to his duty as a former judge and have you arrested! (She adds calculatingly, seeing he is boiling inside) It would be a poor revenge for your mother’s death to let him make you a laughing stock!
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
The Haunted: Act 3
Quotes
ORIN—I love you now with all the guilt in me—the guilt we share! Perhaps I love you too much, Vinnie!
LAVINIA—I don’t know what you’re saying!
ORIN—There are times now when you don’t seem to be my sister, not Mother, but some stranger with the same beautiful hair— (He touches her hair caressingly. She pulls violently away. He laughs wildly.) Perhaps you’re Marie Brantôme, eh? And you say there are no ghosts in this house?
The Haunted: Act 4
Quotes
LAVINIA—Kiss me! Hold me close! Want me! Want me so much you’d murder anyone to have me! I did that—for you! Take me in this house of the dead and love me! Our love will drive the dead away! It will shame them back into death […] Take me, Adam! [She is brought back to herself with a start by this name escaping her—bewilderedly, laughing idiotically) Adam? Why did I call you Adam? I never even heard that name before—outside of the Bible! (then suddenly with a hopeless, dead finality) Always the dead between! […]
PETER—Vinnie! You’re talking crazy! […] What happened to you on the Islands. Was it something there? Something to do with that native?
LAVINIA—[…] I won’t lie anymore! Orin suspected I’d lusted with him! And I had! […] He had me! I was his fancy woman!
Get the entire Mourning Becomes Electra LitChart as a printable PDF.
Marie Brantôme Quotes in Mourning Becomes Electra
The Mourning Becomes Electra quotes below are all either spoken by Marie Brantôme or refer to Marie Brantôme . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Homecoming: Act 2
Quotes
BRANT—If I could catch him alone, where no one would interfere, and let the best man come out alive—as I’ve often seen it done in the West!
CHRISTINE—This isn’t the West.
BRANT—I could insult him on the street before everyone and make him fight me! I could let him shoot first and then kill him in self-defense!
CHRISTINE—(scornfully) Do you imagine you could force him to fight a duel with you? Don’t you know dueling is illegal? Oh, no! He’d simply feel bound to his duty as a former judge and have you arrested! (She adds calculatingly, seeing he is boiling inside) It would be a poor revenge for your mother’s death to let him make you a laughing stock!
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
The Haunted: Act 3
Quotes
ORIN—I love you now with all the guilt in me—the guilt we share! Perhaps I love you too much, Vinnie!
LAVINIA—I don’t know what you’re saying!
ORIN—There are times now when you don’t seem to be my sister, not Mother, but some stranger with the same beautiful hair— (He touches her hair caressingly. She pulls violently away. He laughs wildly.) Perhaps you’re Marie Brantôme, eh? And you say there are no ghosts in this house?
The Haunted: Act 4
Quotes
LAVINIA—Kiss me! Hold me close! Want me! Want me so much you’d murder anyone to have me! I did that—for you! Take me in this house of the dead and love me! Our love will drive the dead away! It will shame them back into death […] Take me, Adam! [She is brought back to herself with a start by this name escaping her—bewilderedly, laughing idiotically) Adam? Why did I call you Adam? I never even heard that name before—outside of the Bible! (then suddenly with a hopeless, dead finality) Always the dead between! […]
PETER—Vinnie! You’re talking crazy! […] What happened to you on the Islands. Was it something there? Something to do with that native?
LAVINIA—[…] I won’t lie anymore! Orin suspected I’d lusted with him! And I had! […] He had me! I was his fancy woman!
