Age and Purpose

As discussed in previous blog posts, a prominent theme in the play is that of lost youth, particularly in Chance and the Princess. But how does one "lose youth"? Williams offers a number of quotes where the characters themselves allude to their own ideas of what it means to age.

Heavenly: "Scudder's knife cut the youth out of my body, made me an old, childless woman. Dry, cold, empty, like an old woman".

The princess: "Well, sooner or later, at some point in your life, the thing that you lived for is lost or abandoned, and then... you die, or find something else."

To me, the intersection between the three characters ideas is that at the moment being described, they've lost their purpose. Heavenly, who is clearly nothing more than a sexual object throughout the play, has the purpose of most of the women in St. Cloud: to marry and have children. Therefore, her infertility aged her. For the Princess, her exit from the world of acting and subsequent failure to return were her moments of aging -- she admits without that world she has nothing to live for except drugs.

Chance, however, is a little different. While it is apparent to us that he has lost both of his dreams (acting and Heavenly), he is in complete denial about it and clings to them both as tightly as he can. This is because he knows that they are the two things that keep him young, and the reason for that is that if he gives up on both acting and the girl he truly has nothing to live for, and that will make him old. When asked why he had to stay in St. Cloud despite his imminent castration, he tells the princess "Something's got to mean something, don't it, Princess? ... Something's still got to mean something." Once the Princess pulls the plug on his big acting shot, Heavenly is truly the only thing he has left connecting him to his vitality and giving him a purpose. He would rather be castrated than give up on that hope.

William's interpretation of aging, in summary, is that one becomes old precisely at the moment when they no longer have a reason to get out of bed in the morning, so to speak. It's a very intriguing definition that can be applied to Black Swan and Long Day's Journey into Night, and puts the self-destruction of the characters in these works into a new perspective. After all, if nothing in reality can give you a reason to get out of bed in the morning, you simply have to give yourself a reason in any way you can (including but not limited to morphine, a perfect performance, and sex with a girl named Heavenly).

--Christine