Off to Oleanna

Discussing Rochester and Antoinette today gave me a nagging feeling in the back of my head I couldn't get rid of. I knew I'd heard something like this before. There was some story that I had heard about that felt very familiar to this one, the way Rochester and Antoinette feel towards each other. Luckily, my memory prevailed; I was thinking of the two-character play Oleanna by David Mamet.

Roger Ebert describes his experience seeing Oleanna as such:

Experiencing David Mamet's play "Oleanna" on the stage was one of the most stimulating experiences I've had in a theater. In two acts, he succeeded in enraging all of the audience - the women with the first act, the men with the second. I recall loud arguments breaking out during the intermission and after the play, as the audience spilled out of an off-Broadway theater all worked up over its portrait of...sexual harassment? Or was it self-righteous Political Correctness? 

The play, later adapted to a film that Ebert didn't care for at all (read more here if you're interested), was modified to become a response to the Anita Hill - Clarence Thomas hearings (it was originally written and shown before these with a very similar storyline; a third scene was written after the hearings). In it, Carol, a female college student, has come to the office of her professor, John. She does not understand the material in his class and is seeking his help to understand a book he himself wrote in which he questions the modern insistence that everybody participate in higher education. John and Carol talk but are interrupted by frequent phone calls from John's wife, who is trying to get him to come home. John is about to be granted tenure, along with a raise, and he and his wife are about to close on a new house anticipating this; her phone calls all relate to last minute issues over this. John decides to help Carol after initially appearing insensitive, taking the blame for her lack of comprehension. He agrees to give her an A if she continues to meet with him in his office to discuss the material. At one point in the conversation, he attempts to put his arm on her shoulder to comfort her, but is violently shaken off. Finally, Carol has warmed to John and is about to divulge to him a secret when they are again interrupted by John's wife, who admits that her calls were a scheme to get him to come home for a surprise reception in his honor. He leaves.

Carol and John meet again. In the time between their meetings, John's tenure has been threatened because Carol has filed an official complaint against him of sexism, citing daily occurrences of sexist remarks towards students, his offer to give her an A for meeting with him privately in his office, and his touching her shoulder, now considered sexual harassment. John intends to resolve the matter privately with Carol, which will cause the complaint to be withdrawn from the tenure committee. They are unable to reach an agreement, and Carol gets up to leave. John physically restrains her, Carol screams for help, and the second act is finished.

After these events, John has been denied tenure and has been suspended with threat of dismissal. He is again in his office packing his things. He has not been home to see his wife or family, trying to work out what happened in a hotel room. He has asked to speak with Carol one last time. Carol informs him that she feels he has abused his position of power and privilege. She accuses him of mocking and exploiting the system that pays his rent (through his book). John learns via phone call that the charges against him now amount to attempted rape, which Carol offers to drop if he agrees to sign on to a list of books a group Carol is working with (for advice and support over the charges) has drafted to be removed from the university, his own included. John refuses, arguing that he'd prefer to be dismissed. In light of all this, John angrily asks Carol to leave his office. The phone rings and his wife wants to speak to him; he calls her "baby," allegedly dismissively, which Carol objects to, saying he should not refer to her that way.  John, now fully enraged, beats Carol, verbally abuses her, and holds a chair above her head as she cowers on the floor. The play ends with Carol saying, "Yes... that's right."

Through all this, you should be able to see what Frank Rich meant when he called the play "incendiary." He says that "during the pause for breath that separates the two scenes of Mr. Mamet's no-holds-barred second act, the audience seemed to be squirming and hyperventilating en masse, so nervous was the laughter and the low rumble of chatter that wafted through the house." It's an uncomfortable, difficult topic to talk about, and leaves everyone outraged. Nobody's right; John acts unwisely in the first act, Carol in the second, and both in the last. But what's most prevalent is the dynamic, between a man with power dealing with a situation regarding a woman.

Although nothing in Wide Sargasso Sea so extreme as accusations of attempted rape over touching somebody's shoulder or physical and verbal abuse goes down, I think what we have seen so far is very similar to, at least, the first act of Oleanna. Antoinette has a problem: she and Rochester do not relate nearly as well as she would like. Rochester has to appropriately deal with the situation before him; he is married to this woman, but there are reasons to believe that he has been misled about her and has been pushed into an unfavorable relationship. To his credit, he investigates the claims without prejudice. He describes Daniel as annoying him; even though he makes scary claims, Rochester's default is still to side with his wife until he can figure things out. He talks to Daniel, who he realizes may just be trying to blackmail him. He talks to Amelie, who describes Daniel as a bad man, uppity and ready to stir trouble. Once he has context, he goes to talk to Antoinette directly. They talk, somewhat successfully, much unlike they have before that point. Rochester asks her questions prompted by Daniel's allegations. Before she answers, Rochester decides that she is not ready to talk to him about it and offers to talk another time, but Antoinette insists upon giving her answer. Instead, though, she tells him the story of her childhood, and maneuvers around his question. He at one point calls her Bertha, which she objects to. Finally, they go in to bed, and Antoinette assumably casts Christophine's spell on him, causing them to be close and do things that he does not remember.

Comparing this to Oleanna yields two obvious similarities. John's behavior toward Carol (touching her shoulder, offering to meet with her in private for a better grade) echoes that of Rochester (calling Antoinette "Bertha" and other actions that appear innocent on the surface but carry potentially problematic overtones). Further, Carol's escalation of the events of the first act echo Antoinette's response to Rochester's lack of closeness (getting Christophine to help her with an obeah spell). I think our discussions in class about the dynamic here, frightfully similar to that of Oleanna, are reminiscent of Ebert's and Rich's descriptions of the audience of that play, though severely toned down. Some side with Rochester; according to them, his behavior has been nothing but reasonable given the situation he's been put in. Others side with Antoinette, noting that she has a very poor lot in all this with all of her money gone to Rochester, and that his behavior towards her has been lacking. Honestly, just like Mamet portrays in the play, I don't think either are perfectly in the right. Neither are working towards being together or getting to know each other and have a healthy relationship. Rochester seeks the input of everybody but Antoinette after receiving Daniel's letter, while her first response to their growing gap is to put a spell on him and force him to be with her. What they could use is a good relationship counselor, and not a series of escalating and increasingly enraging actions, like in Oleanna. That's definitely no example to follow.