Suppressed Desires
by Susan Glaspell
Scene I
SCENE I: A studio apartment in an upper story, Washington Square South. Through an immense north window in the back wall appear tree tops and the upper part of the Washington Arch. Beyond it you look up Fifth Avenue. Near the window is a big table, loaded at one end with serious-looking books and austere scientific periodicals. At the other end are architect’s drawings, blue prints, dividing compasses, square, ruler, etc. At the left is a door leading to the rest of the apartment; at the right the outer door. A breakfast table is set for three, but only two are seated at it—HENRIETTA and STEPHEN BREWSTER. As the curtains withdraw STEVE pushes back his coffee cup and sits dejected.
Henrietta
It isn’t the coffee, Steve dear. There’s nothing the matter with the coffee. There’s something the matter with you.
Steve
[Doggedly.] There may be something the matter with my stomach.
Henrietta
[Scornfully.] Your stomach! The trouble is not with your stomach but in your subconscious mind.
Steve
Subconscious piffle!
[Takes morning paper and tries to read.
Henrietta
Steve, you never used to be so disagreeable. You certainly have got some sort of a complex. You’re all inhibited. You’re no longer open to new ideas. You won’t listen to a word about psychoanalysis.
Steve
A word! I’ve listened to volumes!
Henrietta
You’ve ceased to be creative in architecture—your work isn’t going well. You’re not sleeping well—
Steve
How can I sleep, Henrietta, when you’re always waking me up to find out what I’m dreaming?
Henrietta
But dreams are so important, Steve. If you’d tell yours to Dr. Russell he’d find out exactly what’s wrong with you.
Steve
There’s nothing wrong with me.
Henrietta
You don’t even talk as well as you used to.
Steve
Talk? I can’t say a thing without you looking at me in that dark fashion you have when you’re on the trail of a complex.
Henrietta
This very irritability indicates that you’re suffering from some suppressed desire.
Steve
I’m suffering from a suppressed desire for a little peace.
Henrietta
Dr. Russell is doing simply wonderful things with nervous cases. Won’t you go to him, Steve?
Steve
[Slamming down his newspaper.] No, Henrietta, I won’t!
Henrietta
But, Stephen—!
Steve
Tst! I hear Mabel coming. Let’s not be at each other’s throats the first day of her visit.
[He takes out cigarettes. MABEL comes in from door left, the side opposite STEVE, so that he is facing her. She is wearing a rather fussy negligee in contrast to HENRIETTA, who wears “radical” clothes. MABEL is what is called plump.
Mabel
Good morning.
Henrietta
Oh, here you are, little sister.
Steve
Good morning, Mabel.
[MABEL nods to him and turns, her face lighting up, to HENRIETTA.
Henrietta
[Giving MABEL a hug as she leans against her.] It’s so good to have you here. I was going to let you sleep, thinking you’d be tired after the long trip. Sit down. There’ll be fresh toast in a minute and [Rising] will you have—
Mabel
Oh, I ought to have told you, Henrietta. Don’t get anything for me. I’m not eating breakfast.
Henrietta
[At first in mere surprise.] Not eating breakfast?
[She sits down, then leans toward MABEL who is seated now, and scrutinizes her.
Steve
[Half to himself.] The psychoanalytical look!
Henrietta
Mabel, why are you not eating breakfast?
Mabel
[A little startled.] Why, no particular reason. I just don’t care much for breakfast, and they say it keeps down—[A hand on her hip—the gesture of one who is “reducing”] that is, it’s a good thing to go without it.
Henrietta
Don’t you sleep well? Did you sleep well last night?
Mabel
Oh, yes, I slept all right. Yes, I slept fine last night, only [Laughing] I did have the funniest dream!
Steve
S-h! S-t!
Henrietta
[Moving closer.] And what did you dream, Mabel?
Steve
Look-a-here, Mabel, I feel it’s my duty to put you on. Don’t tell Henrietta your dreams. If you do she’ll find out that you have an underground desire to kill your father and marry your mother—
Henrietta
Don’t be absurd, Stephen Brewster. [Sweetly to MABEL.] What was your dream, dear?
Mabel
[Laughing.] Well, I dreamed I was a hen.
Henrietta
A hen?
Mabel
Yes; and I was pushing along through a crowd as fast as I could, but being a hen I couldn’t walk very fast—it was like having a tight skirt, you know; and there was some sort of creature in a blue cap—you know how mixed up dreams are—and it kept shouting after me, “Step, Hen! Step, Hen!” until I got all excited and just couldn’t move at all.
Henrietta
[Resting chin in palm and peering.] You say you became much excited?
Mabel
[Laughing.] Oh, yes; I was in a terrible state.
Henrietta
[Leaning back, murmurs.] This is significant.
Steve
She dreams she’s a hen. She is told to step lively. She becomes violently agitated. What can it mean?
Henrietta
[Turning impatiently from him.] Mabel, do you know anything about psychoanalysis?
Mabel
[Feebly.] Oh—not much. No—I—[Brightening.] It’s something about the war, isn’t it?
Steve
Not that kind of war.
Mabel
[Abashed.] I thought it might be the name of a new explosive.
Steve
It is.
Mabel
[Apologetically to HENRIETTA, who is frowning.] You see, Henrietta, I—we do not live in touch with intellectual things, as you do. Bob being a dentist—somehow our friends—
Steve
[Softly.] Oh, to be a dentist!
[Goes to window and stands looking out.
Henrietta
Don’t you see anything more of that editorial writer—what was his name?
Mabel
Lyman Eggleston?
Henrietta
Yes, Eggleston. He was in touch with things. Don’t you see him?
Mabel
Yes, I see him once in a while. Bob doesn’t like him very well.
Henrietta
Your husband does not like Lyman Eggleston? [Mysteriously.] Mabel, are you perfectly happy with your husband?
Steve
[Sharply.] Oh, come now, Henrietta—that’s going a little strong!
Henrietta
Are you perfectly happy with him, Mabel?
[STEVE goes to work-table.
Mabel
Why—yes—I guess so. Why—of course I am!
Henrietta
Are you happy? Or do you only think you are? Or do you only think you ought to be?
Mabel
Why, Henrietta, I don’t know what you mean!
Steve
[Seizes stack of books and magazines and dumps them on the breakfast table.] This is what she means, Mabel. Psychoanalysis. My work-table groans with it. Books by Freud, the new Messiah; books by Jung, the new St. Paul; the Psychoanalytical Review—back numbers two-fifty per.
Mabel
But what’s it all about?
Steve
All about your sub-un-non-conscious mind and desires you know not of. They may be doing you a great deal of harm. You may go crazy with them. Oh, yes! People are doing it right and left. Your dreaming you’re a hen—
[Shakes his head darkly.
Henrietta
Any fool can ridicule anything.
Mabel
[Hastily, to avert a quarrel.] But what do you say it is, Henrietta?
Steve
[Looking at his watch.] Oh, if Henrietta’s going to start that!
[During HENRIETTA’S next speech settles himself at work-table and sharpens a lead pencil.
Henrietta
It’s like this, Mabel. You want something. You think you can’t have it. You think it’s wrong. So you try to think you don’t want it. Your mind protects you—avoids pain—by refusing to think the forbidden thing. But it’s there just the same. It stays there shut up in your unconscious mind, and it festers.
Steve
Sort of an ingrowing mental toenail.
Henrietta
Precisely. The forbidden impulse is there full of energy which has simply got to do something. It breaks into your consciousness in disguise, masks itself in dreams, makes all sorts of trouble. In extreme cases it drives you insane.
Mabel
[With a gesture of horror.] Oh!
Henrietta
[Reassuring.] But psychoanalysis has found out how to save us from that. It brings into consciousness the suppressed desire that was making all the trouble. Psychoanalysis is simply the latest scientific method of preventing and curing insanity.
Steve
[From his table.] It is also the latest scientific method of separating families.
Henrietta
[Mildly.] Families that ought to be separated.
Steve
The Dwights, for instance. You must have met them, Mabel, when you were here before. Helen was living, apparently, in peace and happiness with good old Joe. Well—she went to this psychoanalyzer—she was “psyched,” and biff!—bang!—home she comes with an unsuppressed desire to leave her husband.
[He starts work, drawing lines on a drawing board with a T-square.
Mabel
How terrible! Yes, I remember Helen Dwight. But—but did she have such a desire?
Steve
First she’d known of it.
Mabel
And she left him?
Henrietta
[Coolly.] Yes, she did.
Mabel
Wasn’t he kind to her?
Henrietta
Why yes, good enough.
Mabel
Wasn’t he kind to her.
Henrietta
Oh, yes—kind to her.
Mabel
And she left her good kind husband—!
Henrietta
Oh, Mabel! “Left her good, kind husband!” How naïve—forgive me, dear, but how bourgeoise you are! She came to know herself. And she had the courage!
Mabel
I may be very naïve and—bourgeoise—but I don’t see the good of a new science that breaks up homes.
[STEVE applauds.
Steve
In enlightening Mabel, we mustn’t neglect to mention the case of Art Holden’s private secretary, Mary Snow, who has just been informed of her suppressed desire for her employer.
Mabel
Why, I think it is terrible, Henrietta! It would be better if we didn’t know such things about ourselves.
Henrietta
No, Mabel, that is the old way.
Mabel
But—but her employer? Is he married?
Steve
[Grunts.] Wife and four children.
Mabel
Well, then, what good does it do the girl to be told she has a desire for him? There’s nothing can be done about it.
Henrietta
Old institutions will have to be reshaped so that something can be done in such cases. It happens, Mabel, that this suppressed desire was on the point of landing Mary Snow in the insane asylum. Are you so tight-minded that you’d rather have her in the insane asylum than break the conventions?
Mabel
But—but have people always had these awful suppressed desires?
Henrietta
Always.
Steve
But they’ve just been discovered.
Henrietta
The harm they do has just been discovered. And free, sane people must face the fact that they have to be dealt with.
Mabel
[Stoutly.] I don’t believe they have them in Chicago.
Henrietta
[Business of giving MABEL up.] People “have them” wherever the living Libido—the center of the soul’s energy—is in conflict with petrified moral codes. That means everywhere in civilization. Psychoanalysis—
Steve
Good God! I’ve got the roof in the cellar!
Henrietta
The roof in the cellar!
Steve
[Holding plan at arm’s length.] That’s what psychoanalysis does!
Henrietta
That’s what psychoanalysis could un-do. Is it any wonder I’m concerned about Steve? He dreamed the other night that the walls of his room melted away and he found himself alone in a forest. Don’t you see how significant it is for an architect to have walls slip away from him? It symbolizes his loss of grip in his work. There’s some suppressed desire—
Steve
[Hurling his ruined plan viciously to the floor.] Suppressed hell!
Henrietta
You speak more truly than you know. It is through suppressions that hells are formed in us.
Mabel
[Looking at STEVE, who is tearing his hair.] Don’t you think it would be a good thing, Henrietta, if we went somewhere else? [They rise and begin to pick up the dishes. MABEL drops a plate which breaks. HENRIETTA draws up short and looks at her—the psychoanalytic look.] I’m sorry, Henrietta. One of the Spode plates, too. [Surprised and resentful as HENRIETTA continues to peer at her.] Don’t take it so to heart, Henrietta.
Henrietta
I can’t help taking it to heart.
Mabel
I’ll get you another. [Pause. More sharply as HENRIETTA does not answer.] I said I’ll get you another plate, Henrietta.
Henrietta
It’s not the plate.
Mabel
For heaven’s sake, what is it then?
Henrietta
It’s the significant little false movement that made you drop it.
Mabel
Well, I suppose everyone makes a false movement once in a while.
Henrietta
Yes, Mabel, but these false movements all mean something.
Mabel
[About to cry.] I don’t think that’s very nice! It was just because I happened to think of that Mabel Snow you were talking about—
Henrietta
Mabel Snow!
Mabel
Snow—Snow—well, what was her name, then?
Henrietta
Her name is Mary. You substituted your own name for hers.
Mabel
Well, Mary Snow, then; Mary Snow. I never heard her name but once. I don’t see anything to make such a fuss about.
Henrietta
[Gently.] Mabel dear—mistakes like that in names—
Mabel
[Desperately.] They don’t mean something, too, do they?
Henrietta
[Gently.] I am sorry, dear, but they do.
Mabel
But I’m always doing that!
Henrietta
[After a start of horror.] My poor little sister, tell me about it.
Mabel
About what?
Henrietta
About your not being happy. About your longing for another sort of life.
Mabel
But I don’t.
Henrietta
Ah, I understand these things, dear. You feel Bob is limiting you to a life in which you do not feel free—
Mabel
Henrietta! When did I ever say such a thing?
Henrietta
You said you are not in touch with things intellectual. You showed your feeling that it is Bob’s profession—that has engendered a resentment which has colored your whole life with him.
Mabel
Why—Henrietta!
Henrietta
Don’t be afraid of me, little sister. There’s nothing can shock me or turn me from you. I am not like that. I wanted you to come for this visit because I had a feeling that you needed more from life than you were getting. No one of these things I have seen would excite my suspicion. It’s the combination. You don’t eat breakfast [Enumerating on her fingers]; you make false moves; you substitute your own name for the name of another whose love is misdirected. You’re nervous; you look queer; in your eyes there’s a frightened look that is most unlike you. And this dream. A hen. Come with me this afternoon to Dr. Russell! Your whole life may be at stake, Mabel.
Mabel
[Gasping.] Henrietta, I—you—you always were the smartest in the family, and all that, but—this is terrible! I don’t think we ought to think such things. [Brightening.] Why, I’ll tell you why I dreamed I was a hen. It was because last night, telling about that time in Chicago, you said I was as mad as a wet hen.
Henrietta
[Superior.] Did you dream you were a wet hen?
Mabel
[Forced to admit it.] No.
Henrietta
No. You dreamed you were a dry hen. And why, being a hen, were you urged to step?
Mabel
Maybe it’s because when I am getting on a street car it always irritates me to have them call “Step lively.”
Henrietta
No, Mabel, that is only a child’s view of it—if you will forgive me. You see merely the elements used in the dream. You do not see into the dream; you do not see its meaning. This dream of the hen—
Steve
Hen—hen—wet hen—dry hen—mad hen! [Jumps up in a rage.] Let me out of this!
Henrietta
[Hastily picking up dishes, speaks soothingly.] Just a minute, dear, and we’ll have things so you can work in quiet. Mabel and I are going to sit in my room.
[She goes out left, carrying dishes.
Steve
[Seizing hat and coat from an alcove near the outside door.] I’m going to be psychoanalyzed. I’m going now! I’m going straight to that infallible doctor of hers—that priest of this new religion. If he’s got honesty enough to tell Henrietta there’s nothing the matter with my unconscious mind, perhaps I can be let alone about it, and then I will be all right. [From the door in a low voice.] Don’t tell Henrietta I’m going. It might take weeks, and I couldn’t stand all the talk.
[He hurries out.
Henrietta
[Returning.] Where’s Steve? Gone? [With a hopeless gesture.] You see how impatient he is—how unlike himself! I tell you, Mabel, I’m nearly distracted about Steve.
Mabel
I think he’s a little distracted, too.
Henrietta
Well, if he’s gone—you might as well stay here. I have a committee meeting at the book-shop, and will have to leave you to yourself for an hour or two. [As she puts her hat on, taking it from the alcove where STEVE found his, her eye, lighting up almost carnivorously, falls on an enormous volume on the floor beside the work table. The book has been half hidden by the wastebasket. She picks it up and carries it around the table toward MABEL.] Here, dear, is one of the simplest statements of psychoanalysis. You just read this and then we can talk more intelligently. [MABEL takes volume and staggers back under its weight to chair rear center, HENRIETTA goes to outer door, stops and asks abruptly.] How old is Lyman Eggleston?
Mabel
[Promptly.] He isn’t forty yet. Why, what made you ask that, Henrietta?
[As she turns her head to look at HENRIETTA her hands move toward the upper corners of the book balanced on her knees.
Henrietta
Oh, nothing. Au revoir.
[She goes out. MABEL stares at the ceiling. The book slides to the floor. She starts; looks at the book, then at the broken plate on the table.]
The plate! The book! [She lifts her eyes, leans forward elbow on knee, chin on knuckles and plaintively queries] Am I unhappy?
(CURTAIN)