Six Characters in Search of an Author

by

Luigi Pirandello

The Step-Daughter Character Analysis

Domineering, emotionally unstable, and larger-than-life, reputedly the child of the Mother and the Clerk, the roughly 18-year-old Step-Daughter helps precipitate the disintegration of the Characters’ family when she has a sexual encounter with the Father while working as a prostitute at Madame Pace’s atelier. She implores the Manager to stage the Characters’ drama in order to enact revenge on her family and contests the Father’s narrative of events throughout, suggesting he was more brutal than he admits, that he knew her identity when he visited her at the brothel, or that he may even be her real father. Nevertheless, she also suggests she may still have feelings for him and remains brutally antagonistic toward her apparent step-brother, the Son, and her brother, the Boy, whom she also partially blames for the family’s fate. In contrast, she treats the Child with excessive adoration, raising questions about whether the girl is really her sister (or might actually be her daughter). Like the Father, she cringes when the Actors try to perform the Characters’ story and tries to take control over the production from the Manager—specifically, by insisting that the scenes are set exactly as they were in reality. The Step-Daughter is at once a victim and an opportunist hoping to use the theater to air her grievances and win public acclaim. In contrast to the Father’s philosophical monologues, the Son’s internalized shame, and the Mother’s private suffering, the Step-Daughter’s coping mechanism of performance exemplifies both the power of storytelling and the perverse voyeurism of the theater.

The Step-Daughter Quotes in Six Characters in Search of an Author

The Six Characters in Search of an Author quotes below are all either spoken by The Step-Daughter or refer to The Step-Daughter. 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:
Reality, Illusion, and Identity Theme Icon
).
Act 1 Quotes

A tenuous light surrounds them, almost as if irradiated by them—the faint breath of their fantastic reality.
This light will disappear when they come forward towards the actors. They preserve, however, something of the dream lightness in which they seem almost suspended; but this does not detract from the essential reality of their forms and expressions.

Related Characters: The Manager, The Father, The Step-Daughter, The Mother, The Son, The Boy, The Child, The Door-Keeper
Page Number: 3
Explanation and Analysis:

The whole trouble lies here. In words, words. Each one of us has within him a whole world of things, each man of us his own special world. And how can we ever come to an understanding if I put in the words I utter the sense and value of things as I see them; while you who listen to me must inevitably translate them according to the conception of things each one of you has within himself. We think we understand each other, but we never really do. Look here! This woman (indicating the Mother) takes all my pity for her as a specially ferocious form of cruelty.

Related Characters: The Father (speaker), The Manager, The Step-Daughter, The Mother
Page Number: 10
Explanation and Analysis:

Oh, all these intellectual complications make me sick, disgust me—all this philosophy that uncovers the beast in man, and then seeks to save him, excuse him… I can’t stand it, sir. When a man seeks to “simplify” life bestially, throwing aside every relic of humanity, every chaste aspiration, every pure feeling, all sense of ideality, duty, modesty, shame… then nothing is more revolting and nauseous than a certain kind of remorse—crocodiles’ tears, that’s what it is.

Related Characters: The Step-Daughter (speaker), The Manager, The Father
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 15
Explanation and Analysis:

For the drama lies all in this—in the conscience that I have, that each one of us has. We believe this conscience to be a single thing, but it is many-sided. There is one for this person, and another for that. Diverse consciences. So we have this illusion of being one person for all, of having a personality that is unique in all our acts. But it isn’t true. We perceive this when, tragically perhaps, in something we do, we are as it were, suspended, caught up in the air on a kind of hook. Then we perceive that all of us was not in that act, and that it would be an atrocious injustice to judge us by that action alone, as if all our existence were summed up in that one deed.

Related Characters: The Father (speaker), The Step-Daughter
Page Number: 16
Explanation and Analysis:

The drama consists finally in this: when that mother re-enters my house, her family born outside of it, and shall we say superimposed on the original, ends with the death of the little girl, the tragedy of the boy and the flight of the elder daughter. It cannot go on, because it is foreign to its surroundings. So after much torment, we three remain: I, the mother, that son. Then, owing to the disappearance of that extraneous family, we too find ourselves strange to one another. We find we are living in an atmosphere of mortal desolation which is the revenge, as he (indicating Son) scornfully said of the Demon of Experiment, that unfortunately hides in me.

Related Characters: The Father (speaker), The Manager, The Step-Daughter, The Mother, The Son, The Boy, The Child
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 18
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 2 Quotes

Excuse me, all of you! Why are you so anxious to destroy in the name of a vulgar, commonplace sense of truth, this reality which comes to birth attracted and formed by the magic of the stage itself, which has indeed more right to live here than you, since it is much truer than you—if you don’t mind my saying so? Which is the actress among you who is to play Madame Pace? Well, here is Madame Pace herself. And you will allow, I fancy, that the actress who acts her will be less true than this woman here, who is herself in person. You see my daughter recognized her and went over to her at once. Now you’re going to witness the scene!

Related Characters: The Father (speaker), The Step-Daughter, Madame Pace
Page Number: 29
Explanation and Analysis:

On the stage you can’t have a character becoming too prominent and overshadowing all the others. The thing is to pack them all into a neat little framework and then act what is actable. I am aware of the fact that everyone has his own interior life which he wants very much to put forward. But the difficulty lies in this fact: to set out just so much as is necessary for the stage, taking the other characters into consideration, and at the same time hint at the unrevealed interior life of each. I am willing to admit, my dear young lady, that from your point of view it would be a fine idea if each character couldtell the public all his troubles in a nice monologue or a regular one hour lecture (good humoredly). You must restrain yourself, my dear, and in our own interest, too; because this fury of yours, this exaggerated disgust you show, may make a bad impression, you know. After you have confessed to me that there were others before him at Madame Pace’s and more than once…

Related Characters: The Manager (speaker), The Father, The Step-Daughter, Madame Pace
Page Number: 37-8
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 3 Quotes

The SON (to Manager who stops him). I’ve got nothing to do with this affair. Let me go please! Let me go!
The MANAGER. What do you mean by saying you’ve got nothing to do with this?
The STEP-DAUGHTER (calmly, with irony). Don’t bother to stop him: he won’t go away.
The FATHER. He has to act the terrible scene in the garden with his mother.
The SON (suddenly resolute and with dignity). I shall act nothing at all. I’ve said so from the very beginning (to the Manager). Let me go!

Related Characters: The Manager (speaker), The Father (speaker), The Step-Daughter (speaker), The Son (speaker), The Mother
Page Number: 49
Explanation and Analysis:
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The Step-Daughter Quotes in Six Characters in Search of an Author

The Six Characters in Search of an Author quotes below are all either spoken by The Step-Daughter or refer to The Step-Daughter. 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:
Reality, Illusion, and Identity Theme Icon
).
Act 1 Quotes

A tenuous light surrounds them, almost as if irradiated by them—the faint breath of their fantastic reality.
This light will disappear when they come forward towards the actors. They preserve, however, something of the dream lightness in which they seem almost suspended; but this does not detract from the essential reality of their forms and expressions.

Related Characters: The Manager, The Father, The Step-Daughter, The Mother, The Son, The Boy, The Child, The Door-Keeper
Page Number: 3
Explanation and Analysis:

The whole trouble lies here. In words, words. Each one of us has within him a whole world of things, each man of us his own special world. And how can we ever come to an understanding if I put in the words I utter the sense and value of things as I see them; while you who listen to me must inevitably translate them according to the conception of things each one of you has within himself. We think we understand each other, but we never really do. Look here! This woman (indicating the Mother) takes all my pity for her as a specially ferocious form of cruelty.

Related Characters: The Father (speaker), The Manager, The Step-Daughter, The Mother
Page Number: 10
Explanation and Analysis:

Oh, all these intellectual complications make me sick, disgust me—all this philosophy that uncovers the beast in man, and then seeks to save him, excuse him… I can’t stand it, sir. When a man seeks to “simplify” life bestially, throwing aside every relic of humanity, every chaste aspiration, every pure feeling, all sense of ideality, duty, modesty, shame… then nothing is more revolting and nauseous than a certain kind of remorse—crocodiles’ tears, that’s what it is.

Related Characters: The Step-Daughter (speaker), The Manager, The Father
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 15
Explanation and Analysis:

For the drama lies all in this—in the conscience that I have, that each one of us has. We believe this conscience to be a single thing, but it is many-sided. There is one for this person, and another for that. Diverse consciences. So we have this illusion of being one person for all, of having a personality that is unique in all our acts. But it isn’t true. We perceive this when, tragically perhaps, in something we do, we are as it were, suspended, caught up in the air on a kind of hook. Then we perceive that all of us was not in that act, and that it would be an atrocious injustice to judge us by that action alone, as if all our existence were summed up in that one deed.

Related Characters: The Father (speaker), The Step-Daughter
Page Number: 16
Explanation and Analysis:

The drama consists finally in this: when that mother re-enters my house, her family born outside of it, and shall we say superimposed on the original, ends with the death of the little girl, the tragedy of the boy and the flight of the elder daughter. It cannot go on, because it is foreign to its surroundings. So after much torment, we three remain: I, the mother, that son. Then, owing to the disappearance of that extraneous family, we too find ourselves strange to one another. We find we are living in an atmosphere of mortal desolation which is the revenge, as he (indicating Son) scornfully said of the Demon of Experiment, that unfortunately hides in me.

Related Characters: The Father (speaker), The Manager, The Step-Daughter, The Mother, The Son, The Boy, The Child
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 18
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 2 Quotes

Excuse me, all of you! Why are you so anxious to destroy in the name of a vulgar, commonplace sense of truth, this reality which comes to birth attracted and formed by the magic of the stage itself, which has indeed more right to live here than you, since it is much truer than you—if you don’t mind my saying so? Which is the actress among you who is to play Madame Pace? Well, here is Madame Pace herself. And you will allow, I fancy, that the actress who acts her will be less true than this woman here, who is herself in person. You see my daughter recognized her and went over to her at once. Now you’re going to witness the scene!

Related Characters: The Father (speaker), The Step-Daughter, Madame Pace
Page Number: 29
Explanation and Analysis:

On the stage you can’t have a character becoming too prominent and overshadowing all the others. The thing is to pack them all into a neat little framework and then act what is actable. I am aware of the fact that everyone has his own interior life which he wants very much to put forward. But the difficulty lies in this fact: to set out just so much as is necessary for the stage, taking the other characters into consideration, and at the same time hint at the unrevealed interior life of each. I am willing to admit, my dear young lady, that from your point of view it would be a fine idea if each character couldtell the public all his troubles in a nice monologue or a regular one hour lecture (good humoredly). You must restrain yourself, my dear, and in our own interest, too; because this fury of yours, this exaggerated disgust you show, may make a bad impression, you know. After you have confessed to me that there were others before him at Madame Pace’s and more than once…

Related Characters: The Manager (speaker), The Father, The Step-Daughter, Madame Pace
Page Number: 37-8
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 3 Quotes

The SON (to Manager who stops him). I’ve got nothing to do with this affair. Let me go please! Let me go!
The MANAGER. What do you mean by saying you’ve got nothing to do with this?
The STEP-DAUGHTER (calmly, with irony). Don’t bother to stop him: he won’t go away.
The FATHER. He has to act the terrible scene in the garden with his mother.
The SON (suddenly resolute and with dignity). I shall act nothing at all. I’ve said so from the very beginning (to the Manager). Let me go!

Related Characters: The Manager (speaker), The Father (speaker), The Step-Daughter (speaker), The Son (speaker), The Mother
Page Number: 49
Explanation and Analysis: