Chapter 11(XI) – Mr Carson’s Intention’s Revealed


Chapter Summary
In the start of this chapter we see John Barton regretting his actions towards Esther and wondering whether she could still be saved by religion. This shows Gaskell’s unusually sympathetic attitude towards fallen women because she obviously believes they can be saved. John Barton then goes looking for Esther but does not find her.
His meeting with Esther starts to make him uneasy about Mary because they look so alike and he is worried about her turning out like her Aunt. He starts to ask Mary about whether she is coming straight home after etc. but Mary, who is trying to conceal her meetings with Mr Carson, only becomes defensive. He also questions her about Jem Wilson because he believes that if she marries she will never become like Esther but she tells him that Jem is going to be married to Molly Gibson.
Jem then decides to propose to Mary but is turned down. However soon after he has left Mary realizes that she has always loved him and wishes she had said yes. She decides to tell Mr Carson she will not marry him and to stop meeting him altogether. She also stops talking to Sally Leadbitter at work and avoiding meeting Mr Carson in the street. Then one night Sally brings Mr Carson to Mary’s street and takes Mary to meet him. Mary tells Mr Carson that she wants to stop him but his pride makes him think that she is just being coy. When Mary insists he tells her that, though he did not intend it before, he will marry her. This makes Mary realize that he never intended to marry her and she refuses him once again and runs away. Mr Carson tells Sally that he intends to carry on pursuing Mary but not to offer marriage again

Selected Passage
pg153-4 – “It was as if ….as they might turn up”

• In this passage we see Mary regret her refusal of Jem despite the fact she had been planning it for a long time as a necessary step towards marrying Mr Carson. Her refusal had “convinced her she loved Jem above all things”.
• She also now “felt as if she hated Mr Carson, who had decoyed her with his baubles” and decides to stop seeing him. This is very important because we see her as a better person because she decides to break it off with him even though she still thinks he intends to marry her.
• She also now realizes that she doesn’t care that Jem is poor e.g. “If he were…but the truth”.
• She also sees that she has been heading for trouble e.g. “She had hitherto…and for ever”. This quote also refers to the possibility she might follow in Ester’s footsteps and shows that this will now never happen.
• She also decides not to tell Jem that she has changed her mind but to be patient and try to show him that she has.
• Gaskell also speaks directly to the reader in this extract e.g. “For we have….entirely new light” and “(and true love is ever modest)” telling us that Mary is truly in love with Jem and that we should be sympathetic towards Mary’s sudden realsisations.
1/2/06 Fiona Watson 12.3

Examine the opening speech by Alfieri and comment on what it prepares the audience for.


The opening speech by Alfieri acts as a prologue to the play and introduces the main themes as well as the main character. It also introduces Alfieri as a character and shows us that he will not only be a character in the play but also the narrator and our guide and bridge to the play. This role is helped by Alfieri’s non-judgmental attitude towards the characters and his experience of both cultures represented in the play; “I was born in Italy…I only came here when I was twenty-five”. Also the fact that Alfieri, though he is a character in the play, is “powerless” to affect the events taking place helps the audience relate to him as he is seen as a fellow spectator.
This leads me to talk about Miller’s choice to model the play on a Greek Tragedy. Alfieri fulfills the role of the chorus. The chorus is a dramatic device, with that character traditionally powerless to affect the story but narrated events, both off and on-stage, commented on the characters and sometimes told the audience what to think. The chorus also sets the time and the place of the action of the play. Alfieri tells us that “this is Red Hook…This is the slum that faces the bay in the seaward side of Brooklyn Bridge” and from the detail of the speech it is obvious the play is set in the present day. The chorus is the only character in a play that talks directly to the audience, for example “You wouldn’t have known it but something amusing has just happened”. Miller’s choice to give his chorus a face and personality helps us to relate to him and accept his opinions as truth. The chorus has also been used in plays other than Greek Tragedies, for example Shakespeare who in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ he even uses a character as his chorus e.g. Puck. A chorus would also sometimes tell the audience what was going to happen which increased the sense of inevitability and destiny.
Another characteristic of Greek Tragedy was the use of a protagonist whose fate was sealed from the beginning of the play. In ‘The View from the Bridge’ this character is Eddie who is fated to betray everything he believes in and betray some of his family to the Immigration Bureau; part of the much ‘mistrusted’ law. Eddie’s important role as the protagonist is emphasized by the circular structure of the opening speech which starts with Eddie and finishes with “This one’s name is Eddie Carbone”. This means that by the end of the speech the audience has been introduced to the protagonist and is prepared to follow him through the play.
There is also an interesting contrast of language between the introduction and the rest of the play. The introduction uses relatively complex and formal language with complex sentence structure. It also requires a relatively high level of knowledge especially concerning ancient history and Italian-American immigration. Alfieri also does not explain all the things he says fully and this is echoed by how the audience is expected to understand the sub-text in the rest of the paly. In contrast the rest of the characters speak in colloquial language, for example “you been givin’ me the willies”. This shows us that while the play is about uneducated people it is still aimed at people with a high level of general knowledge and it will take a reasonable level of intelligence to follow the play.
The opening speech introduces one of the key themes of the play. This is “mistrust” of the law and the conflict between Sicilian and American justice systems is one of the key themes of the play and echoes the suspicion of the legal system in Italy ever since it was taken from the Greeks by the Romans . This is embodied in the phrase “justly shot by unjust men” and captures perfectly Alfieri’s, and therefore our own, confusion over which system is better. This is also illustrated when Alfieri refers to Al Capone as “the greatest Carthaginian of all”, Carthage was historically one of Rome’s greatest enemies and this could refer to Al Capone being one of the American legal systems greatest enemies. The line refers to the vigilantism that occurred at the start of Italian-American immigration and more particularly under the rule of Al Capone. We are shown how this conflict and the efforts of the American system to punish the attempts at carrying Sicilian justice have created a deep-seated mistrust of the law and anyone to do with it. This mistrust and conflict creates dramatic tension and ironically American law becomes the weapon Eddie uses to carry out his revenge on Rodolpho and the backlash from Sicilian justice is what causes his death. It remains unspoken that this suspicion is partially what prevents Alfieri, who can see what will happen from the beginning, even attempting to top the events happening.
The main group carrying out this vigilantism was the Mafia but while the American legal system only saw this group as a criminal organization it also symbolized family and gave ordinary Italian –Americans someone to go to if they had a problem. The Mafia offered protection in return for money and excluding violence they themselves committed did actually make communities more peaceful. The Mafia embodied the Italian idea of the importance of close-knit family groups and this is another important theme for the play which Alfieri introduces in the introduction. This also includes the harsh, yet deemed fair, penalties for anyone who betrayed either ‘the family’ or their biological family. In the opening speech we are given the example of Frankie Yale who opened his mouth about Mafia dealings and was “cut precisely in half by a machine gun” and Vinnie Bolzano a child who “snitched to the Immigration” and was thrown out and “spat on” by his family. The fact that this is talked of in the opening speech when Eddie will later give up his family is proleptic irony which is another similarity to Greek Tragedy. The topic of being ‘snitched’ upon would have been a sensitive one to Miller who was accused of communist sympathies by McCarthy and ‘blacklisted’ as a playwright during the Cold War.
Instances like this which are described in the prologue by Alfieri help set the scene and show the audience that the play is going to be about conflict and violence which is illustrated when Alfieri says “run its bloody course”. There is also the fact that the play is narrated for us by a lawyer who we are told are “only thought of in connection with disasters” and this does not bode well for the outcome of the play. Alfieri also states that he works in a “slum” with people who “lack elegance, glamour” telling us what to expect the characters to be like. He describes Red Hook as “the gullet of New York swallowing the tonnage of the world” which is an un-romanticized and probably very accurate description of the area and teaches us not to expect the story or the way it is told to be sugar-coated but for it will be true to life.
However Alfieri goes on to talk about how the odd case like Eddie Carbone’s makes his job worth it. His usual work is the “petty troubles of the poor but Eddie’s timeless problem of jealousy and loving “too much” is unlike these and makes Alfieri feel connected to the past and other lawyers who were “as powerless as I” this sense of change is emphasized when he describes his drab office under-going a transformation; he says “the flat air in my office suddenly washes in with the green scent of the sea” which is both visual and olfactory imagery and the confusion of the two in “green scent” emphasizes the dreamy transformation between the dreary Red Hook and Syracuse.
Lastly in The opening speech we are shown how Alfieri will be our bridge to the world in which these people are living in. However Alfieri bridges the gap between more than just the audience and the characters. For example he is an Italian by birth but works for the American legal system thus bridging the gap between the two notions of justice. He says, about justice, “now we settle for half, and I like it better…..and my practice is entirely unromantic.” This shows that while he is satisfied with the safer American legal system part of him still longs for the romance of the old ways. Also as a lawyer and a powerless spectator on timeless problems he bridges the time gap between now and “Caesar’s day” and as a lawyer working in a slum he bridges the gap between the longshoremen and richer people. In many ways Alfieri is the ‘bridge’ mentioned in Miller’s title and so we, as the audience receive ‘a view from the bridge’.