A Slight Ache
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A Slight Ache is a tragicomic play written by Harold Pinter in 1958 and first published by Methuen in London in 1961. It concerns a married couple's dreams and desires, focusing mostly on the husband's fears of the unknown, of growing old, and of the "Other" as a threat to his self-identity.
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[edit] Characteristics of the play
Like most of Harold Pinter's plays, A Slight Ache conveys mystery and ambiguity while still being comic. Pinter evokes familiar moods and sentiments in a realistic setting with a style that is simultaneously dark and hilarious.
[edit] Characters
- Edward
- Flora
- a Matchseller
[edit] Themes
One of the main themes involves one's insecurity about threats to one's self-identity embodied in the character of the matchseller, of whom one of the other two characters, Edward, is utterly terrified. Not only does the Matchseller appear to Edward as a threat to his masculinity, as a potential rival who will steal his wife, Flora, but the Matchseller also serves as a reminder of Edward's destiny. As Edward describes him, the Matchseller is old, practically stone deaf, and has a glass eye.[citations needed] Increasingly, throughout the play, Edward clenches his eyes irritably. By spending so long squinting through the darkness of the scullery window, staring at his future self in horror, Edward ultimately becomes that which he most fears: the Matchseller. The play is about the threat of an "Other" and the threat of growing old. It suggests that through spending too long fearing and guarding against these things, paranoia can become a genuine and terrifying reality.
[edit] Plot resolution
In the final moments of the play, Edward transforms into the Matchseller, thus realizing his greatest anxiety – that he will lose his wife and that he will end up on the outside, old, blind and deaf, standing at the back gate, pleading to be let in (like the Matchseller at the beginning of the play).
Although somewhat inevitable from the outset, this outcome is the result of Edward's own actions. It does not occur at the instigation of Flora or the matchseller. Flora's "seduction" of the matchseller is either part of Edward’s wild and crazed fantasy, or a natural consequence of his paranoid and over-protective behavior. Edward himself pushes away his wife out of fear.
[edit] Radio broadcast
A Slight Ache premièred as a radio broadcast in 1959, prior to its first stage production. On radio, because the Matchseller does not speak in the play, he appeared to its audience to be a figment of Edward's imagination.
The radio broadcast also stressed the quality of the sound of Pinter's language: both its "poetic" aspect, for example, when Edward reveals his deepest and most private memories from his youth: "But then, the time came. I saw the wind, swirling, and the dust at my back gate, lifting, and the long grass scything together"; and its rhythmic and comic monotony in Edward's initial conversations with his wife, Flora.
[edit] External links
- A Slight Ache in the "Plays" section of haroldpinter.org. Accessed October 26, 2007.
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