Blood Relations (play)

Blood Relations is a psychological murder mystery by Sharon Pollock. The play is based on historical fact and speculation surrounding the life of Lizzie Borden and the murders of her father and stepmother, crimes with which Borden was charged.

Contents

Historical context: Lizzie Borden

The play is based on the case of Lizzie Borden. On August 4, 1892, Borden's father's body was "discovered" by Lizzie in a downstairs room of the family home. Soon, the Bordens' maid, Sullivan, discovered the body of Borden's stepmother. The subsequent investigation and trial of Lizzie set a precedent for media coverage.

Characters

Themes

Truth

Sacredness of life

Women’s roles

Style

Dream thesis

Historical context: the murder and trial

On the morning of August 4, 1892, Lizzie reported to Bridget Sullivan, the Irish maid, her discovery of the bloody body of her father sprawled on the sofa in the sitting room, and instructed her to fetch the family physician, Dr. Bowen. When the doctor and the police arrived, they also found the body of Abby Borden upstairs, her head similarly crushed by multiple axe blows. Bridget Sullivan testified that she had been in her own attic room, resting from cleaning windows on a very hot day. She had neither heard nor seen anything unusual. Lizzie claimed that she had been in the barn, although the undisturbed dust on the barn floor seemed to indicate otherwise. Emma was out of town visiting friends. Four axes were discovered in the basement, one without a handle, and the head covered in ashes. No evidence of blood was found on Lizzie’s clothes, although her friend, Miss Russell, did discover her burning a dress three days later, which she claimed had been stained with paint. At the inquest, it was also revealed that Lizzie had bought prussic acid from a local pharmacy the day before, and that Abby and Andrew Borden had been ill that morning. Lizzie was arrested for murder and the trial date set for June 5, 1893. The trial lasted fourteen days, and caused a national sensation: it was the first public trial in the United States to be covered extensively by the media. Popular opinion was split on the innocence or guilt of Lizzie Borden, with strong support coming from feminists and animal rights advocates.[1]

Lizzie and Emma hired the best lawyers, paid from their father’s estate. The legal rhetoric of the lawyer for the defense as recorded in the trial transcripts is passionate, persuasive, and very playworthy:

"To find her guilty you must believe she is a fiend. Does she look it? As she sat here these long weary days and moved in and out before you, have you seen anything that shows the lack of human feeling and womanly bearing? Do I plead for her sister? No. Do I plead for Lizzie Andrew Borden herself? Yes, I ask you to consider her, to put her into the scale as a woman among us all..."

Very strong, too, is the possibility that Lizzie's lesbianism was both known in select circles of the community and suppressed in the court record. People of the age were unwilling to acknowledge female homosexuality. If that was the case, then the jury was certainly prevented from knowing the "real" Lizzie—an essential part of judging her at trial. In looking at her, they could scarcely accuse her of murder. Lizzie’s social position, physical appearance, and public performance all militated against a guilty verdict. Although her testimony at the inquest was contradictory and confused, at her trial she was calm, impassive, and inscrutable. She did not testify at the trial, and her only words she spoke were, “I am innocent. I leave it to my counsel to speak for me.” The transcript records only the words of others. And in Blood Relations, Miss Lizzie also evades direct testimony. Her part is enacted by her friend, an actress from Boston, and she assumes the role of the maid Bridget, an observer and director of the replay of the events that culminated in the murder of the Bordens. This framework establishes the possibility of multiple perspectives, as the play argues against convicting her. What “happened” ten years earlier depends on what is remembered, what is re-enacted. The past is played out as theatre, as is the trial. We are the witnesses, and we try to ascertain the “truth”—which proves endlessly elusive and multi-faceted.

Lizzie Borden was acquitted—her lawyers having persuaded the jury that the evidence was circumstantial. She continued to live in Fall River in a fashionable Victorian mansion located on “The Hill” with her sister. However, she continued a life of social circumscription, even more limited than before the murders, since she was understandably shunned by the community. She did travel regularly, however, maintaining a relationship with a young Boston actress named Nance O’Neil, which provoked yet more rumours, and resulting in Emma finding her own place to live. She died in 1927 and was buried in the Borden family plot.

Historical context: women’s rights

By 1898 women in most states could own or control property, but inequalities of civil status remained. Upper-class women still wore confining corsets and had long trailing skirts, flounces and bustles. Although improvements in domestic conveniences liberated middle-class women from household drudgery, allowing more time for a wider participation in society, the traditional prejudice against self-support remained strong.

The historic Lizzie Borden acted out her frustration by fabricating break-ins committed against her own home and the barn behind.

Production history

The play premiered professionally at Theatre 3, Edmonton, Alberta, March 12, 1980, directed by Keith Digby, with set by J. Fraser Hiltz, costumes by Kathryn Burns and lighting by Luciano Iogna, featuring Janet Daverne as Miss Lizzie, Judith Mabey as the Actress, Barbara Reese as Emma, Wendell Smith as Dr. Patrick/Defense, Brian Atkins as Harry, Paddy English as Mrs. Borden and Charles Kerr as Mr. Borden.

Awards

The published version of Blood Relations won the Canadian Governor General's Award in 1981.

Critics' response

Pollock’s early plays quite clearly were focused on making a comment about society, earning her the label of social playwright. “With Blood Relations people who don’t like social comment plays seem to think I’ve ‘moved’ considerably and I’m finally beginning to concentrate on character, that I’ve learned a few character traits and maybe they can expect some ‘better’ work from me,” Pollock once said in an interview in The Work: Conversations with English-Canadian Playwrights.

Although not well known in the U.S., Pollock has a reputation in her native Canada. Jerry Wasserman and Paul Knowles have praised her for developing a significant body of work.

Some critics have been disappointed in what they perceive as a lack of clear feminist focus in Blood Relations. According to S. R. Gilbert, the play “does not adequately explore issues of women in Victorian (or modern) society.”

Pollock has commented that male reviewers fail to see any connection with feminism in this work, with some seeing the play as a mystery while others as a psychological study. Pollock herself has not commented on whether Lizzie's reputation as a lesbian, not just a woman, influences these more limited associations between women in general and the 1890s murderess named Borden.

Pollock’s claim that Blood Relations does have a feminist message, though, has been echoed by some academic feminists. “In many ways the play epitomizes the strengths and originality of theatre about women imprisoned in a man-ordered universe,” says Ann Saddlemyer in Rough Justice: Essays on Crime in Literature. A few critics find merit in her use of the dream thesis; others find the technique clumsy, overwrought, and closer to embroidery than to polished technique.

The structure of Blood Relations allows for the ambiguity that is interwoven throughout the play. Nowhere does the play state in absolute terms that Lizzie is guilty (although the Actress's perception, playing Lizzie in the dream thesis, seems to indicate so). And the court acquits her. But then there's the Actress who arrives at the conclusion, after playing the role of Lizzie, that she is guilty.

The play remains ambiguous and never really fully answers the question. According to Saddlemyer, Pollock successfully reframes that question by pointing the finger (and ultimately the hatchet) at the viewer and asking, in Lizzie’s shoes, what would you do? However, some will regard that as a dodge, suspecting that Saddlemyer and other feminists excuse Lizzie's crime out of solidarity and thoughtless identity with the criminal.[2]

Mary Pat Mombourquette has noted in the International Encyclopedia of Theatre that Pollock is not one to let the audience off the hook. Passivity is not allowed. “Instead she demands that the audience acknowledge that the act of judging makes them active participants in the theatrical event.”.[3] If this is accurate, Blood Relations is not the best exemplar of Pollock's work or of audience participation. The play seems to adore Lizzie at every turn, and demands very little, if any, judgment of this celebrated lesbian murderess.

References

  1. ^ Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia
  2. ^ Saddlemyer, Ann. “Crime in Literature: Canadian Drama” in Rough Justice: Essays on Crime in Literature, edited by M. L. Friedland, University of Toronto Press, 1991, pp. 214-30.
  3. ^ Mombourquette, Mary Pat. “Blood Relations” in the International Encyclopedia of Theatre, Volume 1: The Plays, edited by Mark Dady-Hawkins, St. James Press (Detroit), 1992, pp. 71-72.