Professional Documents
Culture Documents
ENG 5733HF
Professor Redekop
21 August 2006
George Walker’s Love and Anger is a play which celebrates the virtues of a good fight, of
a good war, and the rewards it offers its participants. Though fights are a kind of embrace, they
cannot be engaged between true lovers—they require “good guys” and “bad guys,” who hate one
another. Walker understands this, and communicates this understanding primarily by cuing us to
appreciate that all the ostensibly good characters involved in the play’s cosmic battle between
good and evil have similar seeming, ostensibly evil counterparts. That is, he cues us to see
everyone involved in the fray as somewhat interchangeable, the same. So if war is being praised,
if construing the world as vice filled and some of its denizens as evil, is made to seem a
necessary “step” towards advancing one along own spiritual/emotional journey, is there anything
or anyone in the play subjected to unmitigated critique? Yes, someone is—and it is tempting
(but not accurate) to say that it is the satiric voice itself which is under satiric attack, for it is
play.
I understand that many will read or see the play and judge it one which makes a satiric
attack on vices such as power lust and greed. They will see it one which clearly establishes two
characters—Sean Harris and John Connor—as those most attracted to these particular vices. Yet
much would have to be ignored in order to construe the play in this way. One would have to
ignore much of how the play begins, for instance, for the play begins with both of these vices
being indulged in by the play’s ostensible foremost good and enlightened character—Peter
2
Maxwell. Maxwell believes that though he once was as vice prone as any other, though he
agrees with Harris when Harris argues that “for twenty years [he was] [. . .] one of the greediest
and one of the biggest” “greedy prick[s]” (70), that he has been reborn, that he is pure. Evidence
for him, in part, comes from the fact that he gave up a very lucrative, empowered position as
head of a prominent Toronto law firm to deal with society’s downtown’ downtrodden. It also
comes from his giving away of all of his possessions. Connor is willing to believe Sarah when
she suggests, as part of an effort to manipulate him, that Maxwell might be “env[ious]” (50) of
him; but though he is right to suspect that Maxwell may in his new position be indulging in
certain vices, the one vice he wouldn’t be inclined to indulge in likely would be envy, for the
play begins by showing just how much he gained, acquired, in his descent.
What has he acquired? New clientele—of a particularly attractive kind to a man in his
position. Yes: Maxwell wants us to imagine them as consisting not just of the disadvantaged but
of the “quasi-exotic,” the “pathetic,” the “dregs” (30-1). Harris deems Maxwell’s new clientele
reason to pity him, to not draw the law upon him, but the only client of his we actually encounter
actually offers him something he likely did not possess with any surety with his previous
clientele—namely, clear evidence of his power over them. That is, though Maxwell says that
with his previous clientele he used to “piss on their ingrained intelligence” (19), in order to
afford his services, his previous clientele would have had to have counted amongst the very rich
and very empowered in order to have been able to afford his services. They would have been the
sort to know that Maxwell was their lawyer, their servant, that they were paying him; and though
they would have respected Maxwell’s reputation and genius, they most surely would have been
demanding, expectant—difficult. Indeed, though the play concerns Maxwell’s life after his
having left his old law firm, it still reminds us of what previous clientele’ contact could have
3
been like for him by showing us how Harris’s new client—Connor—reacts when he believes
Harris is not adequately serving him. When confused and confounded by Sarah’s behavior
towards him, Connor reacts by turning to Harris and exclaiming: “Look, you’re my lawyer and I
Gail, Maxwell’s new client, shows some dismay with her lawyer—Maxwell—too, but is
much more readily made quiescent, for she is vastly more dependent on her lawyer than Connor
is on his. Connor can always hire a different lawyer, an option not available to the relatively
impoverished Sarah. Nor is there any chance that even if she could find some other help that this
help could count him/herself as one the country’s best lawyerly minds—something, we are told,
Maxwell once was and may yet still be. Her dependency upon Maxwell, we note, is made clear
both to her and to us at the beginning of the play’s first scene. Maxwell seems to have taken
advantage of the fact that he knows Gail really has no one else to turn to, by speaking in ways to
her he likely wouldn’t dare with a less pliant and vulnerable client—with someone who really
could afford to turn down his services. He has talked to her, or, more accurately, at her for a half
an hour, concerning things which clearly interest him but are of little interest to Gail. When Gail
complains about his apparent lack of interest in her concerns, Maxwell responds by first
reminding her that she is “marginal” (Maxwell tells her, “You’re marginal. Your cause is
marginal. Outside the corridor, so to speak” [13]), then of how lucky she is to have found him
(Maxwell tells her, “I believe you when obviously no one else does” [14]), and moves her to
understand that her desire to see her husband and herself at some point enjoying “a shiny new
future” (15) will depend on her “allowing” him to behave exactly as he wishes to behave
(Maxwell tells her, “you’ll have to allow me to proceed in my own way” [14]). That is, in
response to her assertiveness, Maxwell masterfully manages her into a more complaint pose.
4
Gail will not being paying Maxwell in cash—there is something else he wants from her.
This “something” isn’t sex, but the play guides us to appreciate that if he had been a slightly
different man, this is what he might have expected from her as a form of payment. For with Gail
the play presents us with a childish—with her ball cap and jeans—young woman whose
readiness to be servile is suggested in that she is there in his office in response to the middle aged
Maxwell’s beckoning (i.e., his “call” [14]). She has a husband; but his return to her seems to rest
entirely with her managing to get this middle aged man to agree to take on her cause. This he
agrees to, but only if she agrees to “trust” (15) him, and submit to his unusual behavior and
requests. He hints that the thing she most has to offer is “love,” a willingness and an ability to
service the needs of all those in “need [of] love” (15). She shows this willingness, but also some
fear: she suspects he might be “crooked.” In sum, though I think—especially with his move to
assuage her fears, to get her to trust him, and his assurance that if she does so her reward will be
“a shiny new future”—there is more than a hint in the nature of their relationship, especially as it
between the candy laden pedophile and his child prey, very likely, we more strongly sense in his
interaction with her, the middle aged man who seeks revitalization through associating with
undergoing a midlife crisis. He is in his early fifties, and has been reminded of his mortality by
just having suffered a stroke. His mind is clearly on death: when he surveys his life, he
imagines it one where “Death was surrounding [him] [. . .] like a demon inevitability” (17). He
suddenly understands the way he had been living as unfulfilling—the standard assessment
someone who is undergoing a midlife crisis makes of his/her life. We should note that his
5
complaint about life no longer being fulfilling is also aired by his former partner, Harris. And
when Harris visits them, we are offered numerous cues to imagine them both as still being in
some way conjoined, as still, in their new directions, pursuing essentially the same goal.
With Harris and Maxwell we have two men of about the same age (specifically, Maxwell
is “50” and Harris is in his “early 50s” [12]), who pursued the same career path—law, and who
both seek rejuvenation: Maxwell seeks “rebirth” (31); Harris seeks “new challenges” (27).
Maxwell prefers to understand himself as someone who has taken a fundamentally different turn
than the one Harris has taken. And they might indeed seem far more opposite than they do
similar to one another. Maxwell has stripped himself of his earthly goods; Harris’ new pursuit is
built on all that he had accumulated: he will use the friends and reputation he garnered from
being an established lawyer to launch a career as a politician. Maxwell locates himself in the
“gutters” and associates with the destitute; Harris seeks “new mountain” (tops) and takes on
increasingly affluent and powerful clients (i.e., Connor). But unless we are determined to see
them as opposites, they could very easily be understood as two who have chosen paths which
both work equally well to help satisfy the very same needs and assuage the exact same fears.
The (stereo)typical midlife fear is fear of death. Both paths Maxwell and Harris are on would
help alleviate these fears. Obviously Maxwell believes that in with his new life he has in some
sense become a child again. He prefers now to be called “Petie” because it better suits who he
has become: namely, “[y]ounger,” “more unfinished” (30). He believes he has become the
person he once was before law school corrupted him—the young Maxwell who once had
principles, who followed his parents’ code of honor. Rather than someone who will soon face
death, he believes his miraculous re-invention of himself amounts to a re-birth, to starting again,
once more from the beginning. He will help create a “new era,” one he imagines he will help
6
shepherd along: Phase two will amount to “[t]he amazing rebirth of Petie Maxwell and the new
era to which he is dedicated” (31). But though Maxwell will be reborn, Harris’s new path will in
a sense mean he will never die: for though no matter how successful a lawyer becomes, it is only
the lawyer who moves on to becoming a politician who has any chance of becoming a
historically relevant figure, i.e., of becoming immortalized. The politician can become an epic
figure, someone who might potentially be seen as superhuman—beyond the merely mortal, who
In short, the play offers us very good reasons for believing that Maxwell and Harris are
not as different as they would prefer to imagine themselves to be. Maxwell evidently believes
that Harris used him. He wants Harris to believe Harris’ theft of his wife and kids made him feel
like one of “God’s lowest creatures” (32). But we should not be so quick to believe him in this,
for the play hints that Harris’ theft may well have been an especially fortuitous development for
Maxwell. In pursuit of a new life path, Maxwell seeks to shorn himself of all that ties him to a
former one he associates with death. He gleefully gives away all that he had acquired during his
twenty years as a lawyer; but had he had to distance himself from his wife and kids as well, he
might not have been able to do so without feeling guilty for having done so. Middle aged men
who in their mid-life crisis act childishly and hang out with young women, often experience a
crippling hangover: they must deal with the anger and disappointment they inevitably receive
from wives and children they’ve abandoned and humiliated. Thanks to Harris’ “theft” (for
though Maxwell chides Harris for thinking of his wife as a possession, it seems clear that
Maxwell thinks of her as one as well: He exclaims, “You’d been screwing my wife” [32;
emphasis added]), Maxwell can more easily imagine his rebirth as righteous.
7
Maxwell might actually “owe him one” for taking his wife (a wife, we note, he thought a “jerk”
[31]) and kids off his hands. The play, by having Maxwell assess that his humiliation could be
completed either by Harris allowing him to bend down and kiss his ass or by Harris bending
down and kissing Maxwell’s, strongly suggests that who exactly is using whom may not be so
clear. More than this, with satisfaction being made to seem achievable regardless of who does
the bending down and who stands erect, it encourages us to assess Maxwell’s actual descent and
Since Harris is Maxwell’s old partner, and since Connor is made to seem as much Harris’
new partner as he is his new client (they are likened to a team throughout), we are guided to
compare Maxwell and Connor as if they were old and new partners of Harris’. And indeed, in
how they both differ from Harris, and despite Maxwell’s attempt to delineate Connor as nothing
other than a Nazi, they can actually seem quite similar to one another. Maxwell acknowledges
that Harris is charming. His charm and ease are the product of his affluent and assured family
background. He is polished, good looking, superior—the sort of person people feel almost
obligated to promote to societies’ highest positions, regardless of whether they’ve done anything
to do deserve such elevation. Both Maxwell and Connor have also made good—but despite the
odds, through their ingenuity (genius) and boldness. Connor makes clear that he more-or-less
emerged from nothing—that is, from a working class background. The same seems true for
Maxwell as well, for he characterizes the background he was raised in one which promoted
values usually associated with lower middle class backgrounds: namely, humility and honour.
Both, too, are hotheads. Connor is explosive and quick to anger; and even though Maxwell can
be tender, he can rage as loudly and as emphatically as Connor can. (Harris accuses him of
8
having spread “outrageous, bullheaded, unsupportable, inflaming crap” about Connor, and given
what we see of Maxwell, we do not doubt that Harris’s characterization of Maxwell’s efforts are
on the nose.)
Maxwell and Connor also seem similar in that both are making claim to the very same
territory—both are ostensibly about “serving” the needs of the lower classes: Maxwell would be
their legal and moral crusader; Connor would be their guide to all they need know of the world
they live in. In fact, at the beginning of scene three, when Sarah is telling her story of an
invasion to Eleanor and Gail, given all we had by then heard of Connor and Maxwell, as we hear
her story and think of its protagonists we might be thinking as much of Maxwell as we are
Connor. Her story is about invasive men who are “looking for a place to take over,” that are
“[l]ooking for adventure” (33). These men have “sold” (33) all their goods, have “prostitute[d]”
“their wives,” and have set up for themselves a “headquarters” in this alien territory (33-4).
They believe themselves “indestructible,” are intent on being “free to be themselves,” have
voices inside them “talking to them,” and have a proprietary, expansive desire to get their “word
[. . .] out” (34). Maxwell is looking for adventure (he will identify his activities as an
“adventure” [42]), has given away all his goods, has a wife who is now sleeping with another
man, believes he is “immune” (32) to persecution, has entered an unfamiliar part of town and set
up headquarters there, has argued that his turn to the “dark side” in law school resulted from a
force taking him over, believes himself finally “back” (26) to being the man he once was, and
has made the whole city aware of his opinion of Connor and has his mind on the “reorganization
of an entire culture” (29). So even though Sarah’s story is about white crusaders who hate those
who aren’t white, and even though Maxwell and others repeatedly call Connor a Nazi, it is a
9
story which hints that its main protagonists are more readily comparable to Maxwell than they
are to Connor.
So given that the play would have us question just how different villains actually are
from heroes, it might seem this play is a satire on the supposed virtues of would-be progressive
crusaders. Though I have focused on the play’s first act, the play’s ending could even more
readily be looked to for evidence to buttress such a thesis. Most particularly, the trial which
terminates the play evidences an outrageously greedy and unfair Maxwell. Though he
acknowledges that you can repent just by “say[ing] to yourself ‘I repent’” (70), he won’t allow
that Harris can do the same to exonerate himself from damnation. “Me!Me! [, Maxwell
exclaims]. The demigod. The former greedy prick. The man with a hole in his brain. The
angry man. The reborn man. The avenger!” (71), is the only one who gets to repent. One
cannot but sense here that to Maxwell, Harris amounts to means by which to satisfy his own
enormous need to feel purposeful and grandiose. The trial also evidences a greedy and unfair
Sarah as the presiding judge. Sarah believes she is a fair not a prejudicial judge (79), but she too
is shown to be interested in using the trial to satisfy her need to humiliate Connor and Harris—
the same need she satisfied earlier in the play when she pretended to be Maxwell’s lawyer (“Well
that just shows how stupid you are. I’m a mental patient. You’ve been tricked by a person with
a shattered mind” [51]). Her verdict that Harris and Connor are to be brutally humiliated and
killed (drowned in washroom toilets) is a verdict evidently influenced by whim, not evidence.
And since this verdict follows a long series of humiliations (which include brutal physical assault
and extensive name calling) inflicted upon the two (on Connor, especially), it is no surprise that
Mel Gussow, in a review for the New York Times, argues that the play is “self-
defeating[,]” for “[a]s the lawyer [Maxwell] [. . .] sinks deeper into misanthropy and into
course, if the play was construed a satire on the vices of progressive reformers rather than those
of the rich and powerful, the particular nature of Gussow’s reaction to Maxwell should
encourage us to see it as a rather effective satire. Indeed, those who react to the play as Gussow
did and who are familiar with the history of satire, might see the play as akin to Apuleius’
Metamorphoses; for according to Ronald Paulson, just as Love and Anger makes the rich and
poor seem similar to one another, just as it repeatedly emphasizes their intrinsic similarity and
mutual culpability by having them frequently fuse into one another into “a mass of punching,
kicking, groaning bodies” (52), and just as it seems to use cheese as a metaphor for making some
The Metamorphoses shows that in a narrative satire fictions operate through the
interrelatedness of characters: not only the relationship between two people, a fool and a
knave, but between rich and poor fools, [. . .] and so on. They are held close to a theme
or a vice, but they also project a visualizable world of total interrelatedness, like a cheese
similar in all its details, and finally static; but a world nevertheless in which Lucius
Or perhaps they would see the play as akin to picaresque satires, to those satires Paulson believes
feature Quixote (heroic) figures akin to Maxwell in that though they aim to be honourable they
“easily become [. . .] selfish egoist[s] who tr[y] to make over the world in [their] [. . .] own
image” (101). But though in so many ways Love and Anger might seem a play which observes
11
and critiques would-be heroes, its intention is ultimately not to show their foolishness. Nor is it a
play whose primary intent is to critiques their counterparts, i.e., the bad guys. For the play is
actually one which would have us attend to the real wisdom not the folly of those who would
The plays makes this point primarily through what happens to Sarah as she engages with
those she deems evil and beyond redemption. Like Maxwell, the play draws us to understand
Sarah as akin to several other characters frequently found in the masses which inevitably
develops in the play’s various melees. She believes that both she and Connor have mean spirited
voices in their heads which speak to them and control them, and she serves as Maxwell’s new
partner—and thereby draws us to compare her to his former partner, Harris. And she, too, is
someone who seeks revitalization and freedom. And though, while pretending to be his new law
partner, she is the one who voices a loud critique of simple and brutal solutions—she gets
Connor to admit that killing the poor might be a solution to downtown problems, she actually
demonstrates why brutality may indeed serve to provide solutions to long troubling problems.
After Sarah does the admirable and amazing in persuading a veteran lawyer and a canny
businessman that she is in fact a competent lawyer and holds means by which Maxwell might be
managed, she, Gail, Harris, and Connor enter into a wild melee. Stage instructions tell us that
this melee is followed by a blackout and an intermission: the audience is encouraged to wonder
what might have happened to those involved—to wonder what might have happened to the two
women who took on at least one opponent who “wanted to kill” (53) them. When the play
resumes, the audience is seemingly offered very good reasons for suspecting things turned out
poorly, for “[t]he office is a mess,” “Gail is sitting on the floor against the desk [,] [. . .] and
Sarah is lying face down near the door” (53). But though Sarah says she likely has a broken
12
bone, she (and Gail) is doing very well indeed. Sarah found delivering blows very
“satisfying”—she thoroughly enjoyed getting “in a few really good whacks” (53). She guesses
that she’d have been better off if she’d “started hitting earlier in [. . .] life” (53)—and she may
well be right; for hitting has lead not just to elation but to an ability “to make sense” (54), to
sanity, and to a willingness to admit she does not in fact believe herself black—a step, perhaps,
At the very least, the battle proved therapeutic—and in the loving and supportive
sisterhood it helped engender between Gail and Sarah, it seems to promise even more. And we
note that after the fight, neither of them seem to hate those they fought with. There is indeed
little hate in evidence. Instead, there is only love and reflection. Gail explores why her
perception of how the rich ostensibly operate could drive her to hate them, and admits that the
rich might not be the villains she sometimes feels they are. Sarah admits that she imagines
herself black because it helps her “feel brave” (54)—an admission which might soon lead her to
understand that she preferred to conceive of her foes as Nazis (or vampires) because it gave her
reason to feel brave, to act heroically. There is real reason for believing so, for previously Sarah
admitted that though she “doesn’t take messages” from ordinary people, she would rise to action
Though her therapist likely wouldn’t let Sarah punch him up in order to help her feel
sane, her doctors—though they seem to do little more than drug her up—might well appreciate
that what Sarah really needs is to be around those who inspire fear and hatred. For we are told
that they believe Sarah “has to have a way, even in her state, to manifest her courage [. . .] [--]
[t]hat her courage is still the most important thing to her” (35). It is Eleanor who relates this
information, and it is Eleanor who clearly does not believe it to be true: for her response to
13
Sarah’s manifestation of tremendous courage is to berate her for it. She sees the results of the
melee and gauges it the result of Sarah’s impulsive decision to attack Gail. She goes irate, and
tells her sister to stop “scaring [her] [. . .] to death” (56). Eleanor would have Sarah remain
pacified, sedated through drugs, because an active and alert Sarah is someone who might do
things which would cause Eleanor considerable distress. We note that Eleanor would have
wished Maxwell had been inhibited from moving to “the slums” for the same selfish reason. For
even with Maxwell suffering from another stroke, she can’t help but berate him (something the
now sane Sarah notices and comments on) about how the move has ended up making her “very
uneasy” and unable to “function” (56). Maxwell, however, wants Eleanor to join in with his
group, to join in with his movement. It is a request he makes several times, and we note her
typical response to it is the one she offers to his initial request: “Don’t involve me in whatever it
is you’re up to these days. I have problems of my own” (16). Near the play’s close, however,
she says she would be “grateful” (61) to be included—but this may actually be cause for
Maxwell to curse rather than celebrate, for, arguably, nowhere in the text is there evidence that
her involvement would be anything but a bad thing for Maxwell and his gang.
Eleanor, from the play’s beginning to its end, is portrayed as someone who does or very
easily could spoil all the fun others are up to. She is a bummer. Even after she has said she
would “honestly” be very grateful to be included in Maxwell’s plans, just her presence causes
Sarah to lose confidence in her performance as the trial’s judge (we notice her ascent from
cowering “patient” to competent lawyer to compelling judge), and prompts her to start to cry.
Her active part in the trial proves to be her slapping of Connor’s face for his blasphemous prayer,
an action which serves to make her seem every bit the same person she was at the beginning of
the play, when she responded defensively to Maxwell’s lambasting of religion. (A battle follows
14
her slapping Connor, but we note that somehow everyone but Eleanor ends up “form[ing] [the] [.
. .] mass of [tangled] bodies” that end up on the couch—a development which may in part make
it seem as this melee is a combined effort by everyone involved to exclude Eleanor.) She is the
one who would call in either the police or the hospital in response to any dangerous
development. And we note that if she had called an ambulance after Maxwell suffered his
stroke, he would have been denied the opportunity to die honorably and redemptively in battle.
(Harris and other characters also at times threaten to call the police, but they always pull back,
find reasons for not doing so—indeed, their threats to call the police seem akin to those made by
kids who make the threat with no real intention of following through.)
We also note that in scene one, Maxwell’s sudden need to berate people on the street, to
insist that they “[h]ave a little self-respect” (19), follows his being schooled by Eleanor on the
proper way to treat people. That is, Eleanor seems to make Maxwell, the would-be crusader of
the downtrodden, to sound, in his demand that the street people “[g]et out of the garbage” (19),
like her—who is first shown “[c]arrying a bag of cleaning supplies” (16), and who is identified
by her sister as being “brilliant” at “tidy[ing] up” (61). The real threat to Maxwell and Sarah’s
rejuvenation, we are told, is clearly not Harris and Connor—who, though they begin by mocking
the trial, not only actively participate in it, but end up showing admirable enthusiasm, emotion,
and belief in its legitimacy (they dance and cheer when they believe the trial has proved their
innocence and virtue)—but rather, Eleanor. And we note that after she shows some capacity to
unsettle Maxwell and Sarah, to make them seem less assured, that Eleanor becomes the victim of
Connor disturbs Eleanor when he handles and moves her because “[s]he was in [his] [. . .]
way” (20); and in this particular instance violence is set up as praiseworthy, not because it can
15
make people feel good, but can make them feel quite terrible. Maxwell gauges Connor’s
behavior odious: he essentializes Connor as a “bully” (20), as suggests that it suggests that he
might have beaten his own secretary so badly that she needed to be sent to the hospital (21). But
the play guides us to question just how offended Maxwell is by Connor’s violence towards
Maxwell’s proxy. The principle way in which it does this is to suggest that Maxwell understands
Eleanor as his mother, and that he—not Connor—is actually the person with pressing Oedipal’
(or, rather, inversed Oedipal—as he is would welcome violence to his mother not his father)
issues. Connor’s assault on Eleanor follows a contest between Maxwell and Eleanor, which is
very much made to seem one between child and mother. While interacting with Gail, he takes
out and plays with a string of coloured paper clips. Eleanor, wishing him to behave less
childishly, takes them from him—an action he follow up by rebelliously taking another paper
clip out from his pocket. But since the contest they have between one another concludes with
her successfully shaming Maxwell into temporarily terminating his unorthodox and childish
behavior and become an advocate of orthodox and “adult” virtues (cleanliness, self-respect), it is
a contest which is ultimately won by Eleanor. But then she is bullied by Connor, and we note
that Maxwell makes an effort to construe the assault one made by a child upon a mother. He
asks Connor, “What’s wrong. Some trouble with mummy?” (20). But the play ultimately makes
it very clear that it is Maxwell, not Connor, who is prone to think of Eleanor as his mother: for
his near last words are, “Eleanor, you look like my mother” (83).
Unlike Maxwell, Sarah wants Eleanor to understand that she (i.e., Eleanor) is not to liken
herself to a (specifically, her) mother. And we note that in the way Sarah characterizes mothers,
that she does not assess them in the standard Freudian way: that is, she understands mothers as
16
Freud conceives fathers—as formidable beings who would bully and dominate their children.
She portrays Sarah as responding to Eleanor’s mothering in the same Freud argues children were
want to react to their father’s, that is, by finding means by which to safely “air” their desire to
retaliate, for revenge, without arousing the attention of the censuring super-ego. She encourages
Eleanor to take pills she knows will leave her in a death-like comatose state. When Eleanor is
espied in this state, she jokes/hints that Eleanor might be dead: “Besides, there’s no waking her
anyway. She took a couple of my pills. These things are lethal” (63). There are other hints in
the play that suggest that Maxwell implicitly wishes for Eleanor to incur harm. We note, for
instance, that despite Maxwell’s outrage at Connor for his having physically moved Eleanor, that
at one point Maxwell himself tries to do the same: We are told that “He tries to push her out the
door” (42). We also note that the play commences with his making clear he would war with
institutions such as religion, an institution Eleanor finds “comforting” (17); and that Maxwell
aims to include Eleanor, who is shown resisting him, in his project when it reaches the
Eleanor is not hurt or slain by play’s end, and if we construe the play as holding the same
conception of mothers as many of those living in the twentieth-century’s other extended period
of Darwinian capitalism—the 1920s—did, this development would in fact have been too much to
ask. At one point in the play, Maxwell calls God a “she” (42), suggesting that rather than a man
and a father, the most powerful entity anywhere is in fact a woman and a mother. Ann Douglas
writes that 1920s New Yorkers essentially believed the same thing: that the most powerful
negative influence over their lives was the lasting influence of the Victorian Titaness.
Specifically, she writes in Terrible Honesty that for its cultural emergence, modern New York
(believed that it) depended upon a collective and ruthless effort to distinguish itself from a
17
Victorian, matriarchal past. She writes that modern New Yorkers believed their predecessors
were mere puppets of leading matriarchs whose influence suffocated and smothered them, and,
in order to avoid their fate, she writes that they worked to make their era, their city, one which
(matriarchs).
Douglas spends a great deal of her book delineating how writers, especially, played a big
showing how writers especially not only helped create but helped maintain the manic 20’s
momentum going. And it may be that works such as Love and Anger may have played a part in
helping sustain the manic period of indulgent capitalism that Torontonians found themselves in
attendance. For just like writers (and theorists such as Freud, who downplayed the mother’s
influence in pursuit of erecting the conception of the father as so very brutal but also so very
empowered) in the 20s helped effect the idea of the brutal but very empowered father-figure
male in their works, Love and Anger leaves one with the sense that the featured bully of mothers
—Connor—will continue to rule the Toronto environs. It ends with him, most especially, feeling
rejuvenated, righteous, and determined to “keep the momentum going” (81). And though it is
easy to imagine playgoers being disappointed that he wasn’t defeated, it also easy to imagine the
affluent amongst them, those who were enjoying the spoils Darwinian capitalism offered them
(which likely includes the bulk of them: left leaning professionals should count themselves
amongst those who have benefited most in the new economy), might at some level be reassured
that the play did not in the foretell the termination of current economic trends and/or the rise of
successful and empowered populist campaigns against luxurious living and the rich, in the
18
foreseeable future. Since satires are normally construed as aiming to not just critique but help
bring to an end a vice ridden age, they might be fairly imagined as being glad that the play—
which in various ways seems to be a satire—may actually more accurately be deemed, anti-
satiric.
.
19