Susan Glaspell

“ DICK: It's all rather mysterious, isn't it?
HARRY: And Claire doesn't make it any less so.
CLAIRE: Can I make life any less mysterious?
HARRY: If you know what you are doing, why can't you tell Dick?
DICK: Never mind. After all, why should I be told? (he turns away)
(At that she wants to tell him. Helpless, as one who cannot get across a stream, starts uncertainly.)
CLAIRE: I want to give fragrance to Breath of Life (faces the room beyond the wall of glass) —the flower I have created that is outside what flowers have been. What has gone out should bring fragrance from what it has left. ”

“ MADELINE: There's no use seeing him today.
AUNT ISABEL: He's—?
MADELINE: Strange—shut in—afraid something's going to be taken from him.
AUNT ISABEL: Poor Ira. So much has been taken from him. And now you. Don't hurt him again, Madeline. He can't bear it. You see what it does to him.
MADELINE: He has—the wrong idea about things.
AUNT ISABEL: 'The wrong idea!' Oh, my child—that's awfully young and hard. It's so much deeper than that. Life has made him into something—something he can't escape. ”

“ FEJEVARY: (trying a different tack, laughing) Oh, you're a romantic girl, Madeline—skunk and all. Rather nice, at that. But the thing is perfectly fantastic, from every standpoint. You speak as if you had millions. And if you did, it wouldn't matter, not really. You are going against the spirit of this country; with or without money, that can't be done. Take a man like Professor Holden. He's radical in his sympathies—but does he run out and club the police?
MADELINE: (in a smouldering way) I thought America was a democracy.
FEJEVARY: We have just fought a great war for democracy. ”

“ MADELINE: Play safe.
HOLDEN: If it's playing safe it's that one you love more than yourself be safe. It would be a luxury to—destroy one's self.
MADELINE: That sounds like Uncle Felix. (seeing she has hurt him, she goes over and sits across from him at the table) I'm sorry. I say the wrong things today.
HOLDEN: I don't know that you do.
MADELINE: But isn't uncle funny? His left mind doesn't know what his right mind is doing. He has to think of himself as a person of sentiment—idealism, and—quite a job, at times. Clever—how he gets away with it. ”

“ MADELINE: It's dreadful about families!
AUNT ISABEL: Dreadful? Professor Holden's devotion to his wife is one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.
MADELINE: And is that all you see it in?
AUNT ISABEL: You mean the—responsibility it brings? Oh, well—that's what life is. Doing for one another. Sacrificing for one another.
MADELINE: I hope I never have a family.
AUNT ISABEL: Well, I hope you do. You'll miss the best of life if you don't. Anyway, you have a family. Where is your father?
MADELINE: I don't know. ”

“ Margaret
Oh—Abbie!
Abbie
Not as you love—what’s right. If you loved her, don’t you want to protect her—now that she lies dead in there? [Her voice breaking.] Oh, Miss Margaret, it was right at the very end of her life. Maybe when we’re going to die things we’ve borne all our lives are things we can’t bear any longer. Just—don’t count that last hour.
Margaret
[After a moment of being swayed by this.] Yet you counted it, Abbie. You did what she said—because of the strength of her. You told me last night—her mind was there. Terrible the way it was right there. She hadn’t left her life. ”

“ MRS PATRICK: (stepping back) You call what you are life? (laughs) Bleak as those ugly things that grow in the sand!
ALLIE MAYO: (under her breath, as one who speaks tenderly of beauty) Ugly!
MRS PATRICK: (passionately) I have known life. I have known life. You're like this Cape. A line of land way out to sea—land not life.
ALLIE MAYO: A harbor far at sea. (raises her arm, curves it in as if around something she loves) Land that encloses and gives shelter from storm.
MRS PATRICK: (facing the sea, as if affirming what will hold all else out) Outside sea. Outer shore. Dunes—land not life. ”

“ I don't believe you know how much Mrs Fejevary thinks of Mrs Holden.
HOLDEN: She has been very, very good to her.
FEJEVARY: And will be. She cares for her. And our children have been growing up together—I love to watch it. Isn't that the reality? Doing for them as best we can, making sacrifices of—of every kind. Don't let some tenuous, remote thing destroy this flesh and blood thing.
HOLDEN: (as one fighting to keep his head above water) Honesty is not a tenuous, remote thing.
FEJEVARY: There's a kind of honesty in selfishness. We can't always have it. Oh, I used to—go through things. ”

“ What is peace? Peace is what the struggle knows in moments very far apart. Peace—that is not a place to rest. Are you resting? What are you? You who'd take me from what I am to something else?
TOM: I thought you knew, Claire.
CLAIRE: I know—what you pass for. But are you beauty? Beauty is that only living pattern—the trying to take pattern. Are you trying?
TOM: Within myself, Claire. I never thought you doubted that.
CLAIRE: Beauty is it. (she turns to Breath of Life, as if to learn it there, but turns away with a sob) If I cannot go to you now—I will always be alone. ”

“ CLAIRE: I'm not hungry.
HARRY: But we have a guest. Two guests—Adelaide's staying too.
CLAIRE: Then you're not alone.
HARRY: But I invited Dr Emmons to meet you.
CLAIRE: (her smile flashing) Tell him I am violent to-night.
HARRY: Dearest—how can you joke about such things!
CLAIRE: So you do think they're serious?
HARRY: (irritated) No, I do not! But I want you to come down for dinner!
ADELAIDE: Come, come, Claire; you know quite well this is not the sort of thing one does.
CLAIRE: Why go on saying one doesn't, when you are seeing one does (to TOM) Will you stay with me a while? ”

“ Ian
The clocks! Bring them! [Seizes the spade over by the house; begins to dig a grave behind the sun-dial.] Bring every one! We will bury the clocks before the sun-dial—an offering, a living sacrifice. I tell you this is great, Eloise. What is a clock? Something agreed upon and arbitrarily imposed upon us. Standard time. Not true time. Symbolizing the whole standardization of our lives. Clocks! Why, it is clockiness that makes America mechanical and mean! Clock-minded! A clock is a little machine that shuts us out from the wonder of time. ”

“ Margaret comes out from the room where she has been with Bernice, leaving the door wide open behind her. With the quiet of profound wonder; in a feeling that creates the great stillness, she goes to Abbie.
Margaret
Oh—Abbie. Yes—I know now. I want you to know. Only—there are things not for words. Feeling—not for words. As a throbbing thing that flies and sings—not for the hand. [She starts to close her hand, uncloses it.] But, Abbie—there is nothing to hide. There is no shameful thing. ”

“ Madeline. And what do you suppose Horace is doing? (this a little reproachfully) Running around buying twenty-one red candles. Twenty-two—one to grow on. Big birthday cake. Party to-night.
MADELINE: But, auntie, I don't see how I can be there.
AUNT ISABEL: Listen, dear. Now, we've got to use our wits and all pull together. Of course we'd do anything in the world rather than see you—left to outsiders. I've never seen your uncle as worried, and—truly, Madeline, as sad. Oh, my dear, it's these human things that count! What would life be without the love we have for each other? ”

“ This is what I want to put up to you. Why not give things a chance to mature in your own mind? Candidly, I don't feel you know just what you do think; is it so awfully important to express—confusion?
HOLDEN: The only man who knows just what he thinks at the present moment is the man who hasn't done any new thinking in the past ten years.
FEJEVARY: (with a soothing gesture) You and I needn't quarrel about it. I understand you, but I find it a little hard to interpret you to a man like Lewis.
HOLDEN: Then why not let a man like Lewis go to thunder?
FEJEVARY: And let the college go to thunder? ”

“ But no definite fragrance, no limiting enclosing thing. I call the fragrance I am trying to create Reminiscence. (her hand on the pot of the wistful little flower she has just given pollen) Reminiscent of the rose, the violet, arbutus—but a new thing—itself. Breath of Life may be lonely out in what hasn't been. Perhaps some day I can give it reminiscence.
DICK: I see, Claire.
CLAIRE: I wonder if you do.
HARRY: Now, Claire, you're going to be gay to-day, aren't you? These are Tom's last couple of days with us.
CLAIRE: That doesn't make me especially gay. ”

“ Ian
Eloise, how wonderful! Can the clocks and live by the sun-dial? Live by the non-automatic sun-dial—as a pledge that we ourselves refuse to be automatons!
Eloise
Like Alice Knight. [She takes clock from dial and puts it face downward on the ground.] I shall never again have anything to do with a clock!
Ian
Eloise! How corking of you! I didn’t think you had it in you. [Raising his right hand.] Do you solemnly swear to live by the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? ”

“ HOLDEN: (taking it up) 'Born of the fight for freedom and the aspiration to richer living, we believe that Morton College—rising as from the soil itself—may strengthen all those here and everywhere who fight for the life there is in freedom, and may, to the measure it can, loosen for America the beauty that breathes from knowledge.' (moved by the words he has spoken) Do you know, I would rather do that—really do that—than—grow big.
FEJEVARY: Yes. But you see, or rather, what you don't see is, you have to look at the world in which you find yourself. The only way to stay alive is to grow big. ”

“ SILAS: Isn't it providing for them to give them a better world to live in? Felix—you're young, I ask you, ain't it providing for them to give them a chance to be more than we are?
FELIX: I think you're entirely right, Uncle Silas. But it's the practical question that—
SILAS: If you're right, the practical question is just a thing to fix up.
FEJEVARY: I fear you don't realize the immense amount of money required to finance a college. The land would be a start. You would have to interest rich men; you'd have to have a community in sympathy with the thing you wanted to do. ”

“ As to writing, Margaret, the things that interest you wouldn’t interest most people.
Margaret
“Wouldn’t interest most people!” Oh, Craig, don’t slide away from that one honest moment. Say you haven’t got it. Don’t say they wouldn’t want it. Why, if now—in this our day—our troubled day of many shadows—came a light—a light to reach those never lighted places—wouldn’t want it? I wish some one could try them! No, Craig, they all have their times of suspecting their lives are going by in a fog. They’re pitifully anxious for a little light. [202] Why—they continue to look to writers. ”

“ CLAIRE: (low—and like a machine) Will you all—go away?
(ANTHONY goes—into the other room.)
HARRY: Why—why, yes. But—oh, Claire! Can't you take some pleasure in your work? (as she stands there very still) Emmons says you need a good long rest—and I think he's right.
TOM: Can't this help you, Claire? Let this be release. This—breath of the uncaptured.
CLAIRE: (and though speaking, she remains just as still)
Breath of the uncaptured? ”

“ SILAS: There's other land for my own children. This is for all the children.
GRANDMOTHER: What's all the children to you?
SILAS: (derisively) Oh, mother—what a thing for you to say! You who were never too tired to give up your own bed so the stranger could have a better bed.
GRANDMOTHER: That was different. They was folks on their way.
FEJEVARY: So are we.
(SILAS turns to him with quick appreciation.)
GRANDMOTHER: That's just talk. We're settled now. Children of other old settlers are getting rich. I should think you'd want yours to.
SILAS: I want other things more. ”

“ Do you know that in America today there are women in our prisons for saying no more than you've said here to me!
MADELINE: Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself!
FEJEVARY: I? Ashamed of myself?
MADELINE: Yes! Aren't you an American? (a whistle) Isn't that a policeman's whistle? Are they coming back? Are they hanging around here to— (pulling away from her uncle as he turns to look, she jumps up in the deep sill and throws open the window. Calling down) Here—Officer—You—Let that boy alone!
FEJEVARY: (going left, calling sharply) Holden. Professor Holden—here—quick! ”

“ ALLIE MAYO: (slowly) When you keep still for twenty years you know—things you didn't know you knew. I know why you're doing that. (she looks up at her, startled) Don't bury the only thing that will grow. Let it grow.
(The woman outside still crying under her breath turns abruptly and starts toward the line where dunes and woods meet.)
ALLIE MAYO: I know where you're going! (MRS PATRICK turns but not as if she wants to) What you'll try to do. Over there. (pointing to the line of woods) Bury it. The life in you. Bury it—watching the sand bury the woods. ”

“ FEJEVARY: Are you crazy? What are these people to you?
MADELINE: They're people from the other side of the world who came here believing in us, drawn from the far side of the world by things we say about ourselves. Well, I'm going to pretend—just for fun—that the things we say about ourselves are true. So if you'll—arrange so I can get it, Uncle Felix, as soon as it's mine. ”

“ Margaret
I doubt if you see, Laura.
Laura
Well I don’t say I sympathize. But I see.
Margaret
No; for if you did see, you would have to sympathize. If you did see, you would be ashamed; you would have to—hang your head for this thing of locking any man up because of what his mind sees. If [188] thinking is not to become—whatever thinking may become!—then why are we here at all? [She stops and thinks of it.] Why does Bernice—her death—make that so simple tonight? Because she was herself. She had the gift for being herself. And she wanted each one to have the chance to be himself. ”