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Homecoming: Act 4
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Mourning Becomes Electra, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Justice, Revenge, and Lasting Peace
Familial Love vs. Carnal Desire
History and Repetition
Wartime Horror vs. Domestic Discontent
Lineage, Biology, and Destiny
Summary
Analysis
A week later, a group of villagers have gathered outside the Mannon home. The group is led by Josiah Borden, who works as the manager of the Mannons’ shipping company. He is joined by his wife Emma, the local minister Everett Hills, and doctor Joseph Blake, the Mannons’ elderly, kindly family physician. Quietly, Emma gossips about Christine and Vinnie. Even though all the villagers hated Christine, they are touched by the grief she shows at Ezra’s death—especially compared to Vinnie’s calm, icy reaction.
In the Oresteia, the Greek chorus changes, becoming more active with each subsequent play. The same thing is true here, as Emma Borden and the rest now speculate not just about the Mannons’ circumstances but about their most private inner feelings. Once again, Christine’s grieving reaction and Vinnie’s iciness show how both women “mask” the true emotions they feel about Ezra’s death (in reality, Christine is glad, while Vinnie is crushed and filled with rage).
Themes
Emma is also skeptical of several of Christine’s requests. First, she seems desperate to avoid having Lavinia be alone with Orin, even sending Peter to escort the brother-and-sister duo from the train when Orin arrived home from the hospital. Emma also wonders why Christine wants to have such a private burial, rather than holding the funeral in the town hall (as would be customary for Ezra, the town’s mayor).
Christine’s anxiety about wanting to keep Orin and Lavinia from being alone together is likely linked to the fact that, given the chance, Vinnie will tell Orin their father’s final words (“she’s guilty”). Emma’s perceptiveness about Christine’s strange behavior, which the male townsfolk fail to notice, suggests that the women in the trilogy are attuned to each other’s tactics and motives in a way the men are not.
Themes
Doctor Blake, feeling loyal to the Mannon family, rebuffs all of these questions. Instead, he offers that Ezra probably died of a heart condition called angina—one likely set off by his excitement at being reunited sexually with his beautiful wife after so long away. Laughing, Blake, Borden, and the rest take their leave. As soon as they have done so, Christine comes onto the porch, visibly panicked.
Just like the more active chorus in the second play of the Oresteia, Blake now participates (albeit unknowingly) in Christine’s plot, as he assures his neighbors that Ezra died naturally. The crude sexual joke here points to a widespread, insidious misogyny—maybe part of the reason both Christine and Lavinia feel so trapped.
Themes
Hazel joins Christine on the steps, eager for Orin to arrive. Desperate to avoid Orin falling under Vinnie’s “influence,” Christine tells Hazel that she wants Hazel to marry her son. Then, overcome by Hazel’s youth and innocence, Christine reflects on how hard it is to remain hopeful in such a punishing world. Both women turn their attention to the drive, yearning for Orin to appear (though Christine can’t help but think that “he looks so much like his father at times”).
Christine’s reflection that Orin seems to be taking on his father’s qualities, paired with her anxiety that all youth gets corrupted and punished, suggests that history is something predestined rather than chosen. This view that people inevitably become their parents, and lose their innocence in the process, then ties back to the tragic Greek view of destiny—though Electra paints destiny as something biological rather than divine.
Themes
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Orin arrives, looking much like Brant and Ezra, though he is paler and thinner. Despite his sickly appearance, Orin has a boyish charm, one emphasized by the too-big lieutenant’s uniform that hangs off his frame. When Orin gets to the drive, he is disappointed that Christine has not come to greet him.
The contrast between Orin’s boyish sweetness and the too-big military uniform makes visual the idea that war overwhelms its soldiers’ youth, turning them into shells of their former selves.
Themes
Orin dispatches Peter to find Christine in the house, eager for a moment alone with Vinnie (“you old bossy fuzz-buzzer!,” as he affectionately calls her). Vinnie wants to mourn Ezra’s passing, but Orin feels hardened to death as a whole, having come to expect that everyone (himself included) would probably die in the war. Orin knows Vinnie wants him to be heroic and proud of his military service, but he only feels bitter.
On the one hand, Orin’s affectionate nickname for Vinnie—one will that recur throughout the plays—points to the fact that more than any relationship in the Mannon family, this brother-sister duo has real, healthy love for each other. On the other hand, however, Orin’s time in combat has hardened him, making him feel (much like Ezra, a seasoned soldier) that death is unavoidable.
Themes
Orin pivots, anxious for Vinnie to explain what has been happening between Brant and Christine. Vinnie tries to warn Orin to be on his guard, but before she can make her point clear, Christine emerges from the house, flinging herself on Orin and babying him. Grateful for the attention, Orin immediately forgets all of his suspicion of Christine—until Lavinia reminds him, whispering “remember, Orin!”
Orin’s clear preference for Christine over Lavinia painfully recalls Ezra’s similar treatment of his wife and daughter. Yet even as the Mannon family repeats history, Orin seems desperate to escape it, trying his best to avoid “remember[ing]” the rumors about his mother that he would rather forget.
Themes
Orin goes inside, and Christine tries to charm Vinnie into silence, arguing that she was a loyal wife to Ezra for 23 years before beginning her affair with Brant. Vinnie does not respond, and Christine’s pleading turns to rage and then panic. Christine knows her daughter is plotting something, but she cannot figure out what it is. As Vinnie schemes in silence, Christine hears Orin call from within the house. With effort, Christine composes herself and goes inside to tend to her son.
Lavinia and Christine constantly spar, but the similarities between mother and daughter are clear: both see themselves as loyal and heroic in their own ways, and both are skilled plotters, planning treachery that they keep carefully concealed. The moment Christine takes at the end of this act to compose herself marks yet another moment of “masking,” as she prepares to show Orin only the facets of herself that she wants him to see.
Themes
