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Mourning Becomes Electra 139
Thus, the next generation begins anew. Ezra, Abe’s son, marries
another exotic wife—Christine is French and Dutch—but their love
turns to hate, predictably, on their wedding night when, as Christine
tells Ezra, “You filled me with disgust.” (O’Neill 275). Her disgust
leads to a new form of banishment and impoverishment: during the
time she is pregnant with Orin, Ezra goes off to fight the Mexican
War. When Orin is born in Ezra’s absence, she creates a new world
for herself and Orin to inhabit together. When Ezra returns from
the war, he complains “I was hardly alive for you anymore.” (O’Neill
270). Banished from his wife’s love, Ezra turns to his professional
life—fittingly for a Mannon, he becomes a judge.
Meanwhile, David Mannon’s son, Adam, who physically resembles
both Ezra and Orin Mannon, has seen his father, a violent alcoholic,
commit suicide. Adam escapes to sea, but returns to find his mother
destitute and starving. Desperate for money, she had appealed to Ezra
for financial help, but the appeal was met with silence. When she dies
in Adam’s arms, he vows revenge. Returning to New England, Adam
falls in love with Christine and she with him, and an affair ensues.
When Ezra returns from being a General in the Civil War, they have
decided to kill him. Christine provokes a heart attack in Ezra, and
then substitutes poison for his heart medicine. Thus, the punishment
for Ezra Mannon’s wedding night sexuality is, like David Mannon
before him, first banishment, and then death.
Lavinia however, has discovered her mother’s affair with Adam,
and so is suspicious of her father’s sudden death. When Orin returns
from the Civil War to find his father dead, Lavinia proves to him that
their mother has been unfaithful. Orin, who has a classic mother fixation,
feels betrayed by her affair. Once again, the pattern is played out:
sexuality leads to death. Orin and Lavinia kill Adam.
As with The Oresteia, the reader has a sense that this pattern could
continue indefinitely with a recurring cycle of discovery, condemnation,
punishment and death, each character resembling every other,
each reaction to sexuality mirroring every other reaction. Aeschylus,
however, breaks the cycle by substituting a trial for personal revenge.
Indeed, that is the point of Aeschylus’ story: to promote Athens’ new
legal mode of resolving conflict. But O’Neill purposely avoids this
option by making certain that the murders are designed so as not to
draw the attention of the police (Adam, for instance, is killed by Orin
on his boat in what looks like a robbery). Without an outside force