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GETTING ALBEE'S GOAT: 'Notes toward a Definition of Tragedy'
American Drama, Summer 2004 by Kuhn, John
Stevie has read the letter and insisted Martin state his case. She listened to it with all its provocations and digressions. Now it's Stevie's turn, and she offers a superb summary for both Martin and the audience-jury. She starts with the clearest description of their hubris, the blinding pride that made them particularly susceptible to their tragedy-they were and are superior to "most people":
I have heard you tell me how much you love me, how you've never loved another woman, how we have been a more perfect marriage than chance would even allow. We're both too bright for most of the shit. We see the deep and awful humor of things go over the heads of most people; we see what's hideously wrong in what most people accept as normal; we have both the joys and sorrows of all that. We have a straight line through life, right all the way to dying, but that's OK because it's a good line ... so long as we don't screw up. . . . And you've screwed up! . . . Do you know how you've done it? How you've screwed up? . . . Because you've broken something and it can't be fixed, {ii; 88]
The play has been charged with their cleverness, but his lack of awareness of how he has offended profoundly offends Stevie. Now she brings the judicial charge down to two things, herself and an animal, insofar as they are alike in his mind and actions. A simple falling out of love could have been fixed with time, she says:
But tell me you love me and an animal-both of us!-equally? The same way? That you go from my bed-our bed . . . get in yout car and go to her, and do with her what I cannot imagine myself imagining? Or-worse! . . . that you've come from her, to my bed!? To out bed!?. . . and you do with me what I can imagine . . . love [you for] . . . want you for!? . . . That you can do these two things . . . and not understand how it ... SHATTERS THE GLASS!!?? How it cannot be dealt with-how stopping and forgiveness have nothing to do with it? and how I am destroyed? How you are? How I cannot admit it though I know it!?[ii; 88-89]
Only once does she interrupt herself, in almost an "aside"', to marvel again at their love, still so good and "fresh each time," and to mourn its loss and corruption. Is this "good love" of theirs still a point of pride? Is it what she will desperately hold onto? If so, love draws her pain out through her absence in Scene Three until her return. Interestingly, the high value that both Martin and Stevie place upon their love and marriage never wavers. he makes a point of his faithfulness and Ross's infidelities in the first scene [i; 38-40], she speaks of their "more perfect marriage than chance would even allow" [ii; 88], and Martin uses the term "salvation" to represent the sanctity and goodness of the love and marriage that he, in despair, assumes he's lost [iii; 97]. Albee delineates this "perfect marriage" of two persons, raising it to an ideal that is shattered with a terrible sense of loss.
Stevie is moving now with the crunch of broken glass and ceramics beneath her feet as the stage images their shattered world. With their former identities broken or melted down and away, coherence is gone for her and the very chain of causality is broken. "How stopping has nothing to do with having started?!" she cries out; "How nothing has anything to do with anything!?" [ii; 89] She accepts her new character-role-takes up her "tragic face," mask, persona-and pronounces her doom without tears:
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