Familial Love vs. Carnal Desire Theme Analysis

It is shortly before sunset and the soft light of the declining sun shines directly on the front of the house, shimmering in a luminous mist on the white portico and the gray stone wall behind, intensifying the whiteness of the columns, the somber grayness of the wall, the green of the open shutters, the green of the lawn and shrubbery, the black and green of the pine tree. The white columns cast black bars of shadow on the gray wall behind them. The windows of the lower floor reflect the sun's rays in a resentful glare. The temple portico is like an incongruous white mask fixed on the house to hide its somber gray ugliness.

LAVINIA—(in a dry, brittle tone) I remember your admiration for the naked native women. You said they had found the secret of happiness because they had never heard that love can be a sin.

BRANT—(surprised—sizing her up puzzledly) So you remember that, do you? (then romantically) Aye! And they live in as near the garden of paradise before sin was discovered as you'll find on this earth! Unless you've seen it, you can't picture the green beauty of their land set in the blue of the sea! The clouds like down on the mountain tops, the sun drowsing in your blood, and always the surf on the barrier reef singing a croon in your ears like a lullaby! The Blessed Isles, I call them! You can forget there all men's dirty dreams of greed and power!

CHRISTINE—I know you, Vinnie! I've watched you ever since you were little, trying to do exactly what you're doing now! You've tried to become the wife of your father and the mother of Orin! You've always schemed to steal my place!

LAVINIA—(wildly) No! It’s you who have stolen all love from me since the time I was born!

BRANT—[…] Does Orin by any chance resemble his father?

CHRISTINE—(stares at him—agitatedly) No! Of course not! What put such a stupid idea in your head? […] It was Orin you made me think of! It was Orin!

BRANT—I remember that night we were introduced and I heard the name Mrs. Ezra Mannon! By God, how I hated you then for being his! I thought, by God, I’ll take her from him and that’ll be part of my revenge! And out of that hatred my love came […]

CHRISTINE—What made you sit there? It’s his chair. I’ve so often seen him sitting there—(forcing a little laugh) Your silly talk about resemblances—Don’t sit there. Come. Bring that chair over here.

CHRISTINE—We’ve always been so close, you and I. I feel you are really—my flesh and blood! She isn’t! She’s your father’s! You’re a part of me!

ORIN—(with strange eagerness) Yes! I feel that too, Mother!

CHRISTINE— […] We had a secret little world of our own in the old days, didn’t we?—which no one but us knew about.

ORIN—(happily) You bet we did! No Mannons allowed was our password, remember!

CHRISTINE—And that’s why your father and Vinnie could never forgive us! But we’ll make that little world of our own again […] I want to make up to you for all the injustice you suffered at your father’s hands. It may seem a hard thing to say about the dead, but he was jealous of you. He hated you because he knew I loved you better than anything in the world!

ORIN—Finally those islands came to mean everything that wasn't war, everything that was peace and warmth and security. I used to dream I was there. […] There was no one there but you and me. And yet I never saw you, that's the funny part. I only felt you all around me. The breaking of the waves was your voice. The sky was the same color as your eyes. The warm sand was like your skin. The whole island was you. […]

You’ve still got the same beautiful hair, Mother. That hasn’t changed. (He reaches up and touches her hair caressingly. She gives a little shudder of repulsion and draws away from him but he is too happy to notice). Oh, Mother, it’s going to be wonderful from now on! We’ll get Vinnie to marry Peter and there will just be you and I!

ORIN—God! To think I hoped home would be an escape from death! I should never have come back to life—from my island of peace! (then staring at his mother strangely) But that’s lost now! You’re my lost island, aren’t you, Mother?

ORIN—Did you ask her why she stole Mother’s colors? I can’t see why—yet—and I don’t think she knows herself. But it will prove a strange reason, I’m certain of that, when I do discover it!

PETER—(surprised) You stopped at the Islands?

ORIN—Yes. […] But they turned out to be Vinnie’s islands, not mine. They only made me sick—and the naked women disgusted me. I guess I’m too much of a Mannon, after all, to turn into a pagan. But you have seen Vinnie with the men—!

[…] Handsome and romantic-looking, weren’t they, Vinnie?—with colored rags around their middles and flowers stuck over their ears! Oh, she was a bit shocked at first by their dances, but afterwards she fell in love with the Islanders! […] Oh, I wasn’t as blind as I pretended to be! Do you remember Avahanni?

LAVINIA—I loved those Islands. They finished setting me free. There was something there mysterious and beautiful—a good spirit—of love—coming out of the land and sea. It made me forget death. There was no hereafter. There was only this world—the warm earth in the moonlight […] the natives dancing naked and innocent—without knowledge of sin!

[…] Oh, Peter, hold me close to you! I want to feel love! Love is all beautiful! I never used to know that! I was a fool! (She kisses him passionately. He returns it, aroused and at the same time a little shocked by her boldness. She goes on longingly.) We’ll be married soon, won’t we […] We’ll make an island for ourselves on the land, and we’ll have children and love them and teach them to love life so that they can never be possessed by hate and death!

LAVINIA—What kind of history do you mean?

ORIN—A true history of all the family crimes, beginning with Grandfather Abe’s—all of the crimes, including ours, do you understand?

LAVINIA—(aghast) Do you mean to tell me you’ve actually written—

ORIN—Yes! I’ve tried to trace to its secret hiding place in the Mannon past the evil destiny behind our lives! I thought if I could see it clearly in the past I might be able to foretell what fate is in store for us, Vinnie—but I haven’t dared predict that […]

So many strange hidden things out of the Mannon past combine in you! For one example, do you remember the first mate, Wilkins, on the voyage to Frisco? […] Adam Brant was a ship’s officer, too, wasn’t he?

ORIN—(with a quiet mad insistence) Can’t you see I’m now in Father’s place and you’re Mother? That’s the evil destiny out of the past I hadn’t dared predict! I’m the Mannon you’re chained to!

HAZEL—You don’t want her to marry Peter?

ORIN—No! She can’t have happiness! She’s got to be punished! (suddenly taking her hand—excitedly) And listen, Hazel! You mustn’t love me any more. The only love I can know now is the love of guilt for guilt which breeds more guilt—until you get so deep at the bottom of hell there is no lower you can sink and you rest there in peace!

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?

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!