These twelve years, Beloved One, have been a Journey into Light, into love. You know my gratitude. And my love!
Gene
Tao House July 22, 1941
This letter to his third wife only further exemplifies the quintessential Eugene O’Neill. To fully understand O’Neill’s complex character, one must be knowledgeable of his literary muses. O'Neill's was heavily influenced by such philosophers as Friedrich Nietzsche and radical authors like August Strindberg. Edmund Tyrone, O’Neill’s persona in Long Day’s Journey into Night, quotes and mentions them many times throughout the play. O’Neill’s use of such ideology better helps us to understand his relations with women, the sea, and ultimately, himself.
Mary Tyrone, Edmund’s mother, is often portrayed as a burden on the Tyrone family, partly due to her morphine addiction. Much of her escape from the present is rooted in her inability to forgive and forget past failures. "…Mary still thinks wishfully of her lost career as a nun or pianist. She yearns even more to be able to fulfill her chosen 'career' as a proper lady of a proper family." (The Role of Women in O’Neill’s Plays) This "yearning" was too the case for Eugene’s mother, Ellen Quinlan. Her condition was further stressed by her submission to a patriarchal society where the husband was expected to provide the status quo; a respectable house, an income, decent maids and servants, etc. James O’Neill was unable to give her the stability needed because he was an actor whose vanity could not distinguish himself from anyone other than Dante in The Count of Monte Cristo. O’Neill’s earlier plays portrayed women as weak and nuisances in such societies. "Mother, wife, or whore can be incorporated into one woman." (The Role of Women in O’Neill’s Plays) Over his lifetime, O’ Neill’s was married three times and a womanizer. Much of his views on them are shared with the playwright August Strindberg. Strindberg was also married three times and a misogynist. When asked his opinion on women’s suffrage, he described them as "half-apes ... mad ... criminals, instinctively evil animals."
Like the theme of women in his works, O’Neill utilizes descriptive imagery of the sea. Much of his life was spent in the Navy and traveling to such places as Buenos Aires and Honduras where he prospected for gold. His character Eugene describes his love of the seas and quotes the author Charles Baudelaire. Edmund states, “I was set free! I dissolved in the sea, became white sails and flying spray, became beauty and rhythm, became moonlight and the ship and the high dim-starred sky."(Act 4) Baudelaire also spent time at sea and was fascinated by its romanticism. A translated portion of Baudelaire’s Le Voyage reads:
"But the true voyagers are only those who leave Just to be leaving; hearts light, like balloons, They never turn aside from their fatality And without knowing why they always say: Let's go!"
"But the true voyagers are only those who leave Just to be leaving; hearts light, like balloons, They never turn aside from their fatality And without knowing why they always say: Let's go!"
This wander-lust found at sea eloquently describes O’Neill’s willingness to question and search for the truth. He once spoke of himself as "…a wanderer and a mountain climber…I like not the plains, and it seemeth I cannot long sit still."
O’Neill continued to observe the relations around him; however, he was unable to fully come to terms with himself. He was the stereotypical "tortured artist haunted by a family that was unorthodox and dysfunctional, often emotionally brutal…" (Eugene O’Neill: A Biography) He sought comfort in those who were practical and wrote of the human condition in a logical manner. The most present is those of Friedrich Nietzsche and his controversial "God is dead." This nihilistic quote is extremely influential in the forming of the Edmund’s cynical personality. Like Edmund, O’Neill was rather cynical and would criticize the materialism in the world. "I don’t love life because it’s pretty. Prettiness is only clothes deep. I am a true lover than that, I love it naked."
O’Neill stripped away the fiction of life and fully developed stories of complex human relations such as those present in Long Days Journey into Night. Much more than a brooding artist; he has lived it and incorporates his beliefs into the characters and theme of the play. He states: "I don not think that you can write anything of value or understanding about the present. You can only write about life if it is far enough in the past." The past and the present; a recurrent theme in many of his works, and O’Neill continues to live on and instill it into the future.
Sources:
"The Role of Women in O’Neill’s Plays" Readings on Eugene O’Neill. Greenhaven Press: 1998
"O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night and Irish-Catholicism" O’Neill: A Collection of Critical Essays Prentice-Hall, Inc.: 1964
Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal <http://www.piranesia.net/baudelaire/fleurs/index.php>
"Eugene O’Neill: A Biography" Readings on Eugene O’Neill. Greenhaven Press: 1998
