Return to Article Details To “Look Real in the Moonlight”: Women’s Desire and Male Rootlessness in Picnic (1953)

William Inge (1913-1973) was not only “the most commercially successful American playwright of [the 1950s]” (Bryer and Hartig) but also one of the most critically acclaimed—a writer whose work some critics of the day putin one league with the plays of Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams (Shuman 41). Yet, today, almost 70 years after Inge’s last Broadway success, it seems that his work has been displaced from the canon of twentieth-century American drama. I see this as highly unfortunate because his contribution to the American dramatic literature is immense. His four major plays— Come Back, Little Sheba (1950);Picnic (1953); Bus Stop (1955); and The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1957) along with his critically undervalued fifth play, A Loss of Roses (1960) constitute a body of work that no critic or historian of the American theater should overlook. The revival of his plays in the twenty-first century by major theater companies in the U.S. as well as the continuing existence of The William Inge Theater Festival in Inge’shometown of Kansas, Independence, certainly attest to this point.

To illustrate how his work is also worthy of critical examination, this essay takes a look at Inge’s second major play, Picnic (1953). Relying on psychoanalytic theories articulated by second-wave feminists of the late 1980s and men’s studies theorists of the early 1990s, it offers a reading of Inge’s play which focuses on that which can be considered one of the most important aspects of his work: the undermining of gender roles. Particularly, this interpretation makes use of such works as Jessica Benjamin’s The Bonds of Love (1988), Nancy J. Chodorow’s Feminism and Psychoanalytic Theory (1989), R. William Betcher’s and William S. Pollack’s In a Time of Fallen Heroes (1993) and Stephen Frosh’s Sexual Difference (1994) to map the displacement of gender roles and to place them on a timeline of psychological conflicts, crises, and resolutions/lack of resolutions. The reason behind this choice of works is that they address foundational issues regarding gender and psychoanalysis while also, on certain occasions, commenting on social formations and phenomena that were also in place during Inge’s time, but which are perhaps less discernable in our owntimes.

Inge’s dislike of Picnic’s ending—the way that it was performed during its original Broadway run—is well-documented. Ralph F. Voss, the author of the definitive biography on Inge, A Life of William Inge: The Strains of Triumph (1989), recounts the long debate that took place during rehearsals between Inge and Joshua Logan, the director who signed up to direct Inge’s second major play (129). According to Logan, Inge “was afraid of being slick, of pandering to the public with a ‘happy ending’, so he kept writing [an] endlessly slow dimout [where] everything was negative” (277). Voss, however, is of the opinion that “[b]ecause of his own strong background in romantic comedy and musicals, Logan simply did not realize the degree of dedication that Inge felt towards realistic theater” (131), although he does concede that Logan can hardly be criticized for his instincts regarding public tastes and his insistence to follow those instincts (131). It was this production of Picnic, after all, with its modified, “happy ending” that has brought Inge the most critical acclaim as a dramatist, earning him both a Pulitzer Prize and the New York Drama Critic’s CircleAward. Inge could never forgive Logan, however, for making him change the ending (Voss 133), and with his publication of Summer Brave in1962—a rewritten version of Picnic that also restored the play’s ending as it was originally intended—he made his commitment to his initialvision perfectly clear, once and for all.

Whether the original ending would have made Picnic less or more successful, we will perhaps never know. Nevertheless, the text that we willbe focusing on is the one that was produced in 1953, not only because of its significance in Broadway history, but also because Picnic is, in many respects, a superior play to Summer Brave. Picnic’s psychological and gender conflicts are more acutely portrayed, the tensions more skillfully upheld and therefore it is this text that will help us point out Inge’s psychological insights the best, and ultimately lead us to a richer interpretation.

The plot of Picnic is set on the back porches of two houses and in the backyard that they share together. One of the houses is occupied by Flo Owens, a middle-aged, single mother and her two daughters, Millie and Madge. They also have a boarder, Rosemary Sydney who is a school teacher, about the same age as Flo. In the other house lives Helen Potts, nearing sixty, with her elderly mother. Inge uses the old convention of a stranger coming to town to start the action of the play: Hal Carter arrives at an unnamed, small Kansas town to reconnect with his old college friend, Alan, Madge’s boyfriend, and to ask his help in finding a job and in settling down. The three characters that we will be mainly focusing on are Madge Owens, Rosemary Sydney, and Hal Carter. While the central character of Picnic is surely Madge Owens, in Rosemary Sydney Inge has created one of his most intriguing female characters. Therefore, an investigation of the dynamics of gender roles cannot be followed through without dedicating a considerable amount of attention to the complex character of Rosemary. Moreover, an analysis of the motivations and internal struggles of HalCarter is necessary because he is the most vividly drawn male character in Picnic and also the one that comes closest to being the second protagonist of the play.

In practice, the analysis will follow the evolution of three psychological models and will trace how those models translate into the characters’ relationship to gender roles. Thus, the argument to be made is that both Madge and Rosemary face a psychological crisis which is closely connected to desire, while for Hal, his internal struggle has to do more with his place as an individual within society. To be more specific, Madge escapes the position of the idealized, female object of desire to become an authentic subject who has desire, while Rosemary does just the opposite, giving up her position as an autonomous subject—which is done through submission—only to be recognized as an object of desire. In the case of Hal, what is at stake is him leaving behind the position of the alienated, masculine subject and, in turn, becoming recognized as an integrated memberof the community—an attempt that he fails by the end and must try again, this time with Madge by his side.

It is quite early in the play that we find out about Madge’s status as the beautiful girl every boy in town wants to date. She is unreachable, however, as she is engaged to Alan, the typical nice boy of the era: affluent, college educated, with refined manners and an influential father, he is the dream husband whom Madge’s mother, Flo sees as everything a woman can ask for. It seems that Madge has certain doubts, however, like when she talks about being out of place among Alan’s friends, who all come from upper-middle class backgrounds. In turn, she is scolded by her mother who tells her that “[a] pretty girl doesn’t have long—just a few years” and that “[i]f she loses her chance then, she might as well throw all her prettiness away” (Inge 81). What Flo is articulating here is a common belief of an age where, in the words of Elaine Tyler May, the idea that “[y]outhful attractiveness held the promise of conjugal bliss” (114) was widely accepted.

Madge’s apprehensions make more sense when we learn that it is not only the boys of the town who see her as an object of desire. Alan himself objectifies Madge too and sees her as a possession, a status symbol even, almost similar to something like owning an expensive car. This is made quite explicit when Alan jokingly tells Madge: “I want to see if you look real in the moonlight” followed by the remark: “I don’t care if you’re real or not. You’re the prettiest girl I ever saw” (Inge 101). Clearly, it is objectification that is at work here; a kind of objectification which Stephen Frosh describes as the process by which the self “holds power over [the object] through the negation of its inner life” (29). Despite her being really careful about how she looks and despite her long preparations to make herself attractive, we come to find out that Madge actually hates this objectification. Perhaps the most compelling way that Inge reveals this is when Flo teases Madge about how much time she spends admiring herself in the mirror, to which Madge replies: “[i]t seems like—when I’m looking in the mirror that’s the only way I can prove tomyself I’m alive” (Inge 105).

Benjamin’s theory regarding women’s desire, partly based on the Eros and Psyche myth as told by Apuleius, perfectly describes what Madge is going through. Interpreting the character development of Psyche, Benjamin writes:


when she was universally adulated for her beauty, Psyche felt as if she were dead. It is only when she is freed from this idealization and objectification that Psyche can experience a true sexual awakening, first alone, and later in her desire to see and recognize her lover, Eros.” (129)

She specifies that while “[t]he idea that sexual desire arises in a state of aloneness . . . may seem a paradox . . . this state offers an opportunity to discover what is authentic in the self” (Benjamin 123). I argue that this is precisely the journey that Madge takes during the play, first discovering her authentic self in the solitude of her own room andfinally finding genuine connection with Hal Carter. The rugged, young drifter of the 1950s, Hal Carter is a person who is as lost as Alan, Madge’s soon-to-be fiancé is established and with this Inge creates a sharp contrast. If we see Alan as standing for the 1950s ideal of the dreamhusband and Hal as the nightmare of every mother wanting the best for her daughter, then it becomes quite easy to see how this contrast is socially subversive.

A recurring symbol in the play is the train whistling in the distance. Not unlike in Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, Inge uses a vehicle to stand for some sort of promise, some sort of intangible desire. In the case of Madge, the nature of this desire is quite elusive at the beginning—it is a signifier of something exciting, something different than what is currently mapped out for her. The way she puts it into words is quite humorous and reflects the world of a teenager, someone who does not yet know much about the world outside of her hometown:


"I always wonder, maybe some wonderful person is getting off here . . . and [they] decide I’m just the person they’re looking for an important job in the Espionage Department. (She is carried away) Or maybe he wants me for some great medical experiment that’ll save the whole human race." (Inge 79)

Again, if we consider the gender roles of the time where being feminine was strongly associated with not having any kind of a career and the education of girls was aimed at preparations for becoming a housewife (Halberstam, “Chapter 39”), we can see how Madge’s daydreams—to be something great, to achieve something extraordinary, deviate from this pattern. To be fair, she does have a job at the local dime store, but both she and her mother see that as something temporary. We can also see that these fantasies do not have to do anything with her appearance—the thing almost everyone values in her the most—or her desire for a romantic partner for that matter.

The whistling train that initially does not signify anything specific, however, soon finds a signified—Hal Carter. The dancing scene in Picnic, besides providing Broadway audiences with their share of entertainment, is more meaningful than it first might seem. There are many ways to interpret it, and critics have done so. In our case, we will again reach for one of Jessica Benjamin’s theories in connection to women’s desire, more specifically, her theory about the intersubjective mode of desire. First, let us quote Inge’s stage directions about how the dancing scene between Hal and Madge should look like:


"(Some distance apart, snapping their fingers to the rhythm, their bodies respond without touching. Then they dance slowly toward each other and HAL takes her in his arms. The dance has something of the nature of a primitive rite that would mate the two young people)". (Inge 120)

Now let us compare this scene with what Benjamin says about the intersubjective mode of desire, a specific mode of women’s sexuality that nonetheless can be experienced by men just the same: “the exchange of gestures conveying attunement . . . serves to focus women’s pleasure . . .mak[ing] use of the space in-between that is created by shared feeling and discovery. The dance of mutual recognition, the meeting of separate selves,is the context for their desire” (Benjamin 130). What we have then in this dance scene is, indeed, a sort of mating ritual that, again, in Benjamin’swords, is a “desire [that] escapes the borders of the imperial phallus” (Benjamin 130). It is a meeting of two subjects in the intersubjective space without the object-subject binary that is inevitably bound up with the phallus as a symbol of desire (Benjamin 132). I argue that this is the scene when Madge’s and Hal’s desire for each other manifests itself for the first time and the fact that it is a dance based on mutuality and receptivity just goes to show how it also evades the construction of any kind of gender hierarchy.

Inge is not idealistic, however, and he complicates the relationship between Madge and Hal, showing them in a state of confusion, fear, and disarray after their implied sexual encounter during which Madge loses her virginity. Not only did they break the taboo regarding premarital sex, but they have also skipped the dating ritual, an essential institution of the age that worked as “a means of gaining privacy and intimacy before marriage” (May 112). And the fact that their betrayal of Alan—someone who is close to both of them—only dawns on them belatedly makes this scene expose the gap between social norms and reality all the more poignantly. Moreover, the way that this state of panic and shame characterizes the first erotic encounter—in the case of Madge, the loss of virginity—shows Inge’s deep understanding of human sexuality and if anything, it places him ahead of his time.

The ending scene of Picnic, where Madge packs up her things and follows the fugitive Hal to Tulsa to reunite with him completes her psychological transformation identified earlier in the chapter: the transformation from object of desire to authentic subject who has desire. Translated into gender roles, this evolution could be described as beginning with the position of the objectified beauty who has her life mapped out for her by social convention and tradition and moving towards a role where she follows her own desire and is ready to confront the hardships and dangers that will undoubtledly characterize her future. With not much money of her own and a lover who is a born troublemaker of whom she also does not know that much about, her prospects for the future are actually grimmer than many may have realized. But is it an ending that is realistic, despite Inge’s objections against it during rehearsals?

If we look at it closely, we find that there is, in fact, psychological grounding for Madge’s decision to follow Hal. Chodorow stresses the tendency of girls to idealize their fathers and men in general starting from the Oedipal crisis. She explains that this is due to the fact that a girl “does not receive the same kind of love from her mother as a boy does . . . [since] a mother, rather than confirming her daughter’s oppositeness and specialness experiences her as one with herself” (Chodorow 72). What this leads to is that “a daughter turns to her father looking for this kind of confirmation and a sense of separateness from her mother, and cares especially about being loved” (Chodorow 72). According to Chodorow, this prepares the groundwork for a woman’s idealization of her father in particular, and men in general—an idealization due to which the girl is ready to overlook the faults and shortcomings of the father and later lover “as long as she feels loved” (72). Examining Madge’s family background, we find out that Madge did receive confirmation regarding her specialness from her father. In one scene, Flo, Madge’s mother, tells her daughter: “You were the first born. Your father thought the sun rose and set in you. He used to carry you on his shoulder for all the neighborhood to see” (Inge 83). We also learn that Madge misses her father greatly and that, as a consequence of her father not loving her sister, Millie, to the same extent when he was around, her mother has been trying to compensate Millie possibly by acting more affectionate towards her than towards Madge. Thus, the longing from Madge’s part for a masculine kind of affection is intensified and it is possible to read this as contributing to her idealization of Hal, resulting in her decision to leave everything behind just so that she can be together with him.

An argument can be made that this ending is, in many ways, similar to the closing scene of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, in that the heroines final courageous act does by no means guarantee her future happiness. We might admire both Madge’s and Nora’s moral greatness—Madge’s will to follow her desire and Nora’s bravery to break out of her suffocating housewife role and search for something of her own—but we are nonetheless left in the dark in connection with the actual consequences of those actions. In Picnic, Inge even alludes to the possibility that Madge might as well repeat her mother’s actions and marry a man who is altogether unfit to take up the challenges of fatherhood. Hal’s attempts to fit into the community do fail after all. But is that really an indication of his true character? And if not, what is it exactly that hinders his integration?

Psychologically, Hal’s internal problem is turning from the lone, alienated male subject into a subject who can participate in an intersubjective space with others. To help us understand what is exactly at stake for Hal, we must look at what we find out about his life generally throughout the play. We know about his frustrations as a teenager, about him trying to run away from home by stealing someone’s motorcycle. We know that he spent a year in reform school and that when he returned home, his mother, who was by that time living with her new boyfriend, resented his presence. We find out about Hal’s father that he was a drunkard, but that despite all that, he still provided Hal with ideals about what it means to be a man. Hal recounts: “He says, ‘Son, there’ll be times when the only thing you got to be proud of is the fact you’re a man. So wear your boots so people can hear you comin’, and keep your fists doubled up so they’ll know you mean business when you get there” (Inge 111). What is implied in these reminiscences is an affectionate father figure trying to provide his son with a model for a positive male identity. The death of the father and the mother’s refusal topay for the funeral and her successful attempt to take away Hal’s inheritance from him—a filling station—has left Hal with nothing but deluded dreams of becoming a Hollywood star—the outcome of which was yet another failure. Hal’s story about the two women who have picked him up on the road and sexually took advantage of him and then robbed him of most of his possessions—something that took place before the events of the play—is another instance of Inge proving that the objectification of the male body by the desiring female gaze is possible just as much as the objectification of the female body by the male gaze.

At the beginning of the play then, Hal is in a position of alienation and rootlessness, with only unrealistic or vague ideas about what it means to be a functional male member of society. Looking at it from a psychological point of view, he is that which Betcher and Pollack describe as a fatherless male individual, one of those men who “feel deficient and father-hungry . . . [and] suppress it with a macho, false-self façade” (88-89). To put his condition into a larger context, we can also look at it from a sociological point of view, in which case his situation becomes even less uncommon. For example, K. A. Cuordileone describes the crisis of the mid-century American male as the condition of being a member of a “’mass society’ in which the individual, unloosened from traditional social, kinship, or spiritual moorings, left rootless and adrift, became ever more overwhelmed by the impersonal, self-crushing forces of modernity” (98). Failing college, being stripped of his inheritance, his father dying, his dreams of Hollywood falling into pieces, Hal’s feeling of being lost is both because of personal and historical reasons.

His first step towards integration is doing different jobs around the yard for Mrs. Potts, a woman past middle age but all the livelier, who takes pity on him and offers him a big breakfast. The integration process then begins with work. Hal, however, quickly oversteps this role and becomes more involved; playing the part of the protective male, he confronts Bomber, a tough kid of about sixteen who grabs Madge’s arm when she refuses to promise him a date. Unfortunately, his heroism is not rewarded but, instead, he is faced with social stigma when Flo pigeonholes him as a “tramp” (Inge 79) even before knowing who he is. The breakthrough for him—the moment where it seems like he has finally gained acceptance—is when it is revealed that he is a friend of Alan’s, back from their college days. This inspires optimism in Hal as he meditates on the many different possibilities that now seem available to him. Typically of Inge, Hal’s fantasies reflect an image of the successful man that is most likely inspired by Hollywood and Madison Avenue: “something in a nice office whereI can wear a tie and have a sweet little secretary and talk over the telephone about enterprises and things” (Inge 94-95). What Alan can actually offer him is, by stark contrast, a job to work on an oil pipeline.

Hal is not particularly discouraged by this, however and his optimism extends beyond the hope for a job. He wants full integration, wants to become a participant in the town’s social and cultural life: to listen to music and read many books like Millie; to join a Bible study group organized for young people, and of course, to go the town’s big Labor Day picnic. It would not be right to call him naïve, however, for he is very much aware that he never fully mastered certain social norms and codes of behavior. There is a fear in Hal, that he counters with over-confidence. It is a fear of determinism; the fear that he can never belong anywhere, that he is, by nature, unfit for society. He confesses this fear to Alan multiple times,like when he tells him that he has never been to a picnic, and thus does not know how to behave at such an event: “I wasn’t brought up proper like you. I won’t know how to act around all these women” (Inge 101) or when he reminds Alan of how he was treated as a social outcast at college because of his different social background: “Those other snob bastards always watchin’ to see which fork I used” (Inge 94). For Hal, this fear is not only about belonging, however, but also about self-actualization and the American dream, one’s right to dream and to have those dreams fulfilled: “This is a free country, and I got just as much rights as the next fellow. Why can’t I get along?” (Inge 95). Here, Hal poses a question that resounds all throughout twentieth-century American drama: O’Neill’s James Tyrone, Miller’s Willy Loman, or Williams’ Chance Wayne are only a few examples of characters who have been sold dreams that could never materialize.

As far as Hal’s characterization and the plot of Picnic goes, Inge never makes it clear whether Hal is doomed to be alone or not—him being ostracized can be read both as a result of dramatic circumstance or as a result of hubris generated by unbridled desire. I argue for the latter, for the simple reason that it fits more conveniently into Inge’s poetics, a set of dramatic techniques that are characterized by the subversion of gender norms and social rules by psychological forces. Clearly, Madge and Hal have a natural attraction to each other so strong that they are willing to give up everything they have so that they can be together. There is an important difference between the situation of the two characters, however. While for Madge, her willingness to give up the safety that Alan offers to her has emotional reasons, for Hal, the decision to abandon his attempts at social integration is initially done much more impulsively, so much so that it easily invites criticism. Indeed, Hal’s final line at the end of “ActThree”: “We’re not goin’ on no goddamn picnic”, with the stage directions “(Picking her up in his arms and starting off. His voice is deep and firm)” (Inge 127) suggests a kind of male desire thatis purely sexual and a hostile attitude toward social convention that comes off as antisocial.

Regarding male sexual socialization, Betcher and Pollack do identify a tendency in which “sex [becomes] the only way a man can allow himself to need and to have the need for contact fulfilled” (203) and Frosh talks about the same thing when he mentions a phenomenon where sex is “the only form of intimacy allowable to many men” (115). It is hard to decide whether this is the case, for Inge complicates the situation during the dialogue that takes place after the couple has had sex and returned to the house:


"MADGE. I guess . . . it’s no more your fault than mine.
HAL. Sometimes I do pretty impulsive things." (Inge 132)

Whichever is the case, what becomes clear during the dance scene as well as the dialogue between Hal and Madge in which we see them together the last time, is that the two lovers do recognize each other mutually, despite their traumatic sexual encounter:


"MADGE. After all, you’re a man.
HAL. And you’re a woman, baby . . . [y]ou’re a real, live woman." (Inge 144)

Hal’s attempts at integration ultimately fail, but he may have gained something that is—it is implied—more important than being socially accepted: in Madge he has found a true romantic partner.

Next to this genuine connection Inge places the relationship between Rosemary Sydney and Howard Bevans, a relationship that turns into marriage only because Rosemary would rather submit to Howard than to face the terrifying possibility of growing old alone. Thus, her psychological development is, I argue, the exact reverse of Madge’s: instead of progressing from the position of the object of desire toward a position of subject who has desire, Rosemary sacrifices her place as the subject who has desire to become, or at least to be seen and accepted as the object who is desired.

Rosemary Sydney, at first glance seems to be someone who is content on her own. She is a school teacher, who lives in one of the rooms of the Owens household. She has a few girlfriends who are also teachers and a boyfriend called Howard, a middle-aged businessman, whom she occasionally sees. Gradually, however, her independence is revealed to be nothing but a façade that she puts on to mask her insecurities. One of the first rather explicit ways that Inge indicates this is in a scene where some of the characters start having a couple of drinks. Reminiscing of her youth, Rosemary’s insistence that she was once as pretty as Madge and that she too, was the object of desire in the eyes of many men once, reveals internal conflict concerning aging and loneliness:


"ROSEMARY. Shoot! When I was a girl I was just as good-looking as she is!
HOWARD. Of course you were, honey.
ROSEMARY. (Taking the bottle) I had boys callin’ me all the time. But if my father had ever caught me showing off in front of the window he’d have tanned me with a razor strap. (Takes a drink) ‘Cause I was brought up strict by a God-fearing man." (Inge 117)

The trope of the father who is now absent but whose past behavior influences a character is very common in Inge’s work. In the case of Rosemary, a part of her father’s legacy is his daughter’s unresolved resentment towards him which intensifies the tension between her conflicting attitudes towards men: she both wants to be desired by them while at the same time she is unwilling to admit her need for them. As the plot progresses, this tension only tightens, reaching its boiling point in two key scenes that are especially worthy of closer analysis: the scene whereher shame of not being an object of desire takes the form of extreme contempt for Hal, and the scene where she completely submits to Howard just so that the businessman would finally agree to marry her, and thus, in Rosemary’s mind at least, freeing her from her lonely existence as a schoolteacher.

Rosemary’s strong verbal attack on Hal takes place shortly after the dancing scene between Madge and Hal. Seeing the young couple dance evokes desire in Rosemary, a desire to be young again. She desires Hal and wants to be in Madge’s place, which is represented by her wanting to dance with Hal. What is fascinating about this scene is that Rosemary’s desire for Hal is expressed simultaneously with her devaluing of him as a man which can beread as an expression of her wish to master Hal—to hold power over him by objectifying him. One of her strategies to dominate him is to evoke in him that which, from a psychoanalytic point of view, is one of the greatest masculine fears: the threat of castration. Telling Hal that he reminds her of a statue of a Roman gladiator that stands in the library of the school she teaches at, Rosemary relates how the statue was castrated by the chisel of the janitor after the female teachers made a petition to make the naked figure look more “decent” (Inge 121). Indirectly referring to the fragility of masculinity, Rosemary is also careful to point out how the only thing that the Roman gladiator had on was a shield which could not defend the statue from it being castrated. Reading Inge’s stage directions attached to Hal’s reply to Rosemary’s anecdote confirms that the story did, in fact, achieve its desired effect: “(He seldom has been made so uncomfortable) Ma’am, I guess I just don’t feel like dancin’” (Inge 121).

Nonetheless, Rosemary cannot avoid the humiliation of being rejected by Hal: “She gropes blindly across the stage, suffering what has been a deep humiliation) I suppose that’s something wonderful—they’re young” (Inge 122). It is no wonder that she jumps at the first opportunity to hurt Hal and accuses him of feeding whiskey to Millie. We can read this attack as a projection of her unbearable feelings of shame onto Hal, channeled through an outburst of intense contempt (Betcher andPollack 125): “You’ll end your life in the gutter and it’ll serve you right, ‘cause the gutter’s where you came from and the gutter’s where you belong” (Inge 124). While bringing up the threat of castration was an indirect attack on Hal, conveniently weaved into an anecdote, this insult is as direct as can be. And if we abide by our statement made earlier that Hal’s biggest fear is that he is inherently an inferior being who cannot fit in anywhere, then we can say that Rosemary has instinctually found Hal’s Achilles heel and thus, has successfully broken through that shield which is Hal’s pose of macho individualism.

If this scene has shown Rosemary trying to turn herself into an object of desire by dominating the subject who is meant to desire her, then we can say that the other pivotal scene in her character development—the scene where she begs Howard to marry her—represents her submission to the subject who can either accept or refuse her as an object of desire. This scene takes place at the opening of “Act Three: Scene One” and directly precedes the conversation between Hal and Madge after they have had sex. Since it isimplied that Rosemary and Howard also had sexual intercourse before getting back to the house, the placement of the scenes creates a contrast: first we get to witness a crisis in the relationship of an older, middle-aged couple and then we get to see an equally crucial moment in the romance of Madge and Hal. The way that both these scenes are set during the early morning hours, while “[a] great harvest moon shines in the sky” (Inge 128) then only underlines their importance and suggests that there are certain truths that will come to light, as if illuminated by the moonlight.

Something else that is similar between the two scenes is that they are both anticlimactic. What is different is that they are disillusioning indifferent ways. In the case of the young couple, there is a temporary alienating effect which we can identify as being the opposite of the dancing scene, the implication being that phallic sexuality creates estrangement while the intersubjective mode of desire generates genuine connection. In the case of Howard and Rosemary, however, there is no authentic bonding experience either way: their dancing is unrelaxed and they cannot sustain it for very long; and it seems that it is only Howard who feels rather satisfied after the coital activity while Rosemary has fallen into that which Inge describes as “a groggy depression (Inge 128). Seeing her unhappiness and her subsequent desperation during this scene can easily make one think that the only reason Rosemary had decided to have sex with Howard was so that she could get closer to convincing him to marry her. Thus, when Rosemary says: “You can’t go off without me. Not after tonight. That’s sense” (Inge 129), what she means is that, according to social norms, such intimacy must be followed by engagement—which is something that Howard acknowledges when he tells Rosemary: “A businessman’s gotta be careful of talk. And after all, you’re a schoolteacher” (Inge 128).

However, since it seems that the risk of being exposed is negligible, Rosemary must try harder to make a case for marriage. The role that she must assume to finally get what she wants is the complete opposite of the role that she has been playing up until now. Slowly nearing towards the end of middle-age, the position of the autonomous female subject who has desire is no longer appreciated by Rosemary and she explicitly admits this when she tells Howard: “It’s no good livin’ like this, in rented rooms, meeting’a bunch of old maids for supper every night, then comin’ back home alone” (Inge 130). Her desperation overpowering her pride, Rosemary turns to submission: “(Desperate) Oh, God! Please marry me, Howard. Please .. . (She sinks to her knees) Please . . . Please . . .” (Inge 131). Despite the status quo that said that women must ultimately be submissive to their husbands, Rosemary’s humiliation here is quite unusual if we remember how the act of proposal—bending a knee and presenting the significant other with a ring—is typically a chivalric act that is entirely masculine. Because of this, Rosemary’s fear of ending up alone is made all the more apparent—she is ready to do anything just so that she can escape her isolation. But is marriage to Howard really an escape? Based on what we have previously noted about their dating relationship—i.e., that it was notvery meaningful—it is rather difficult to make the case that their marriage to each other will be any different.

It is important to point out that the difference between the Hal-Madge and Rosemary-Howard relationships is not the only contrast that we find in Picnic. For example, critics have generally overlooked how in the character of Madge’s younger sister, the sixteen-year-old Millie, Inge has created acharacter who, if she is to follow her dreams, is to become someone whom social critics would later label as the “new woman” of the 1960s. In contrast with Madge’s possible marriage to Hal, Millie imagines for herself a future that is radically different from that of her sister’s: “Madge can stay in this jerkwater town and marry some ornery guy and raise a lot of dirty kids. When I graduate from college I’m going to New York, and write novels that’ll shock people right out of their senses” (Inge 147).

Another example is the character of Helen Potts whose marriage was annulled by her own mother when she was young. The contrast here is against both the central and the middle-aged couple of Picnic: with the sad story of Mrs. Potts who came of age in a time and in a family setting where she wasn’t even allowed to follow her own desire, Inge points to social progress in a midcentury setting that, retrospectively, we now see as the age of everything but social change. Despite what must have been a deep humiliation, Mrs. Potts continued to take care of her mother as she grew sick and old, her only rebellion being her keeping the family name of her temporary husband: Potts. Inge ending the play with Mrs. Potts being called on by her mother and her following her mother’s instructions, makes for a “happy ending” that is put into a larger context. While for such charactersas Madge and Hal, the events that took place were life-transforming, for Mrs. Potts, everything that has occurred does not bring much change in her life. Thus, what remains is merely memories of an exciting Labor Day picnic.

To conclude our analysis, let us look at those psychological conflicts which we identified as well as the gender roles/relations that they destabilized. The three characters that we focused on were Madge, Hal, and Rosemary. Madge’s character development was placed on a timeline beginning from her position as an object of desire and ending at her transformation into a subject who has desire, as someone who desires another subject. Accordingly, the great, objectified beauty of the town who was to marry Alan, the dream husband of the age, has discovered a more authentic part of herself and has chosen a romantic partner who is not socially accepted. Moreover, she has also signed onto a precarious future where she will have to face such threats as poverty and social stigma and has rejected a future that was to provide her with permanent safety. In turn, Hal’s main conflict was him trying to fit in amongst the townfolk—an attempt which has turned out to be a failure. Thus, he remained the alienated subject who would have to try again and perhaps, with more success with Madge helping him out. Moreover, during his relationship with Madge and interactions with the other characters, his macho bravado was revealed to be no more than a masculine pose trying to mask his insecurities in the face of an increasingly modernized, alienating world. Finally, Rosemary’s transformations were also put under scrutiny. What we found out here isthat out of the fear of everlasting loneliness, Rosemary has given up her pose of the kind of individualism that denied the need for other persons for the role of the wife who submits to her husband, though perhaps only temporarily.

All in all, Inge’s use of psychological conflicts was shown to upset gender roles in a way that is socially subversive. Psychological conflicts are, therefore, it is implied in our analysis, just as non-static as the gender roles which they destabilize. And therein lies an important aspect of Inge’s talent—for it can be said that while the gender roles that he portrayed did indeed, become obsolete, the psychological forces which he so skillfully revealed, did not. Therefore, while it is appropriate to call Inge’s plays “period dramas” in the sense that they are set during aspecific period, it would be wrong to say that they belong exclusively to a certain period of American history. On the contrary, with such a distance in time, one could even go as far as to say that the contours of his plays have become even clearer to us—the revitalization of his work in recent years would certainly prove this point. Whether this is true or not, I think it is safe to say that his plays survive, and as long as theater companies keep performing them, they are continually brought to life.


 

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