The Roaring 20s: famous for flappers, speakeasies, and rampant mariticide. From 1920-1929, 169 husbands were murdered by their wives. Even after the 19th Amendment’s ratification, it was commonplace to think of a wife as a mere extension of the husband’s property. Though women were increasingly realizing and exercising their autonomy, they found that the ever-closing walls of marriage restricted their movement. The male-dominated courts were unwilling to grant a divorce unless an “innocent spouse” was present; if they found both parties at fault, they were forced to stay together. Domestic violence was made illegal in 1920, but would the male judges have allowed a wife to leave her violent husband, or told her to submit to him? Submission implies inferiority, and though judges, juries, and attorneys–each a man–were called by Lady Justice to uphold the law equally, she stood alone–a solitary woman in a world where the scales of justice were tipped in favor of her male counterparts.
Machinal was written by playwright Sophie Treadwell. Before the fame, Treadwell was a journalist who based the story on her own work covering Ruth Snyder–a real woman who killed her husband in 1927. As a journalist, Treadwell constantly sought for deeper meaning. She desperately wanted to know why Ruth, and hundreds of other American women in the 1920s, were choosing to bury the hatchet in their husbands’ heads. In her research, she observed several women, crushed by the weight of an unwanted marriage, struggling to break free. Though women’s suffrage had just been established, culture dictated that young women were unable to support themselves, so marriage was non-negotiable. Marriage meant submission; brilliant young women everywhere acquiesced to the wills and whims of their husbands. They became the quiet, doting cogs in the machine.
The name itself is symbolic of her findings, as the word “machinal” means relating to machines. Machinal follows Helen (only referred to by name near the play’s conclusion) trying to operate in the industrial, patriarchal machine that is 1920s America. Throughout the play, Helen is suffocated by the rigid protocols she is expected, or rather demanded, to adhere to. She must find happiness in a society built around her, not for her–a society by men, for men.
Mirroring expressionist techniques, Machinal is split into nine “episodes.” In lieu of the scenes found in traditional theater where the story follows a linear structure, episodes are disjointed and abstract–made to convey emotions and show the inner minds of characters rather than just their actions.
“…it felt even more vulnerable than a musical ever has.”
Madi Schenk
Many stage actors never dip their thespian toes into plays, let alone expressionist plays. The confines of expressionism that may seem like a hindrance to some were fully utilized by Madi Schenk, an ONU student and Musical Theater major whose first play was Machinal. I asked Madi how her mindset changed from performing in previous musicals to fit the format of a play. “In a play, you don’t have any kind of music to get lost in or hide behind,” she said. “You have to captivate the audience with just your acting and yourself…In some ways, it felt even more vulnerable than a musical ever has.”
Helen is considered to be the envy of women her age at the time: she is beautiful, well-taken care of, has an ostensibly loving husband, and a precious daughter. But there is only one constant in her life: she is unhappy. At what, she’s not really sure. But everyone tells her that she has nothing to be unhappy about. So time and time again, her cries for help are ignored or shut down. No one attempts to help her, not even the man that she has a months-long affair with who claims to care about and understand her. She is constantly dehumanized and belittled: her husband and mother never call her by her name, and the man she loves only calls her “kid.” When the audience finally learns her name, it is at the end of the play when she is on trial, right before she dies.
It’s at this moment that her humanity finally breaks through the machinery. Helen’s actress Mikayla Kirr, JR Musical Theatre major, puts it that “Helen was the worst result of the system of society. She was so trapped that she believed her only way to freedom was murder…If you had seen the court scene of the show on its own, your opinion of Helen would have been completely different. You’d see her as a cold-blooded killer and nothing else.” But the show doesn’t let us stop there. It zooms in on her quiet, aching moments, daring us to witness her suffocation. In doing so, Kirr says “you realize just how human she is.”
So, I’m sure you’re wondering: what was her reason? Was she being abused, as were many women of that time? Did she kill him to be with her lover? Well, that’s just it: Helen didn’t really have a reason. At least, this is what the prosecution claimed during her trial. And on the stand, Helen said nearly as much. She said she wanted to be free. Well, she could have divorced him, right? Or just simply disappeared?
But you must remember: this was a woman with little education, little job experience, next to no family, and no money of her own. She was completely dependent on her husband, and it was designed to be this way. She had a financially advantageous marriage to a wealthy, older man that she did not like because this was what women did. She stopped working after they got married because this was what women did. She stayed at home and barely went out because this was what women did.
She wanted to be free. She felt trapped: not just by her marriage, but by what society was forcing upon her. This role was defined for her from the moment she was born a girl. Because of this one aspect of her life, she was expected to act a certain way, do certain things, all because this is what women do. Sound a little familiar?
She wanted to be free.
