Initally, the play reminded me of this old Waylon Jennings song: “I've spent a lifetime looking for you
Single bars and good time lovers, never true
Playing a fools game, hoping to win
Telling those sweet lies and losing again.

I was looking for love in all the wrong places
Looking for love in too many faces
Searching your eyes, looking for traces
Of what.. I'm dreaming of...
Hopin' to find a friend and a lover
God bless the day I discover
Another heart, lookin' for love

When I was alone then, no love in sight
And I did everything I could to get me through the night
Don't know where it started or where it might end
I turn to a stranger, just like a friend

I was looking for love in all the wrong places
Looking for love in too many faces
Searching your eyes, looking for traces
Of what.. I'm dreaming of...
Hopin' to find a friend and a lover
God bless the day I discover
Another heart, lookin' for love”

Sophie Treadwell’s 1928 drama Machinal is a sensational tale of murder, mischief, and man-hating. First and foremost, the sensation of the work isn’t the murder, nor the mischief: it is the man-hating. The work centers on the life of a young woman, Helen Jones, who is desperate to escape her nag mother and more desperate to marry. Her desperation is not what drags her into her loveless marriage – it is her isolation. In certain parts of the play, the Young Woman delivers long monologues that sound utterly senseless but are imperative to understand the nature of her thoughts. This stream of consciousness delivery is indicative to the interworkings of the troubled mind. She is burdened by a nagging mother and anxious to find a man to love and take her away from her problems. Once she finds a man, though not the prince she sought, and is married, she can not tolerate him. She has a child to him, and does not even want to hold the child. A child was a person she once talked about wanting, a boy with curls on his head. She got a girl, and was not satisfied. Is the beginning of this play a tale of man-hating or a tale of isolation? How would one characterize the Young Woman?

Another interesting aspect of the play, is the contant work going on in the background. Is this play suggestive that we are all slaves to machines and incapable of maintaining human interactions without changing our minds? Time, action, and place are some of the key points to look at in these first scenes.

I finally got my blog working. So everyone can start posting their thoughts about the text or me (hopefully nothing bad!). See you all soon.

Does anyone know where the I can find an online text for this?

Andy, I don't think you are likely to find a copy of this text online. Unlike the other full-length plays we've read so far, this one is still protected by copyright.

Grrrr, I think these blogs have a mind of their own..someday they are going to take over the world! I'm sorry my entry got posted 3 times...they are the same, I have no idea why that happened.

Don't worry Lorin, I deleted the extra trackback entries. Hey, at least we know they work!

Remember folks, click on "MT Quickpost" right here on this page, in order to simultaneously create a new entry for your own blog, and also post a message here sending readers directly to your new blog entry.

(Couldn't post on Lorin's Blog. So hear my response)

I agree, but I also think that unlike Karen the Young Woman is the one who misunderstands herself. Let me explain. Throughout Machinal, she tried to do everything that other people think is right. On the hand, Karen doesn't care what anybody else think.

Kevin, I think you are right. They are very different in that way. Karen is misunderstood because she knows what she wants and will do whatever she has to, but the others (aka Lee) can't understand what she wants (at least at first) because they are in the dark about certain parts of her past. And you're right, she doesn't care what anyone else thinks.
The Young Woman on the other hand, is confused about what she wants and so she turns to others to try to figure out what she should want. And because of her own confusion about who she is, the others also are unable to interptret her, so she is also misunderstood.

I posted my entry last night 2 times and it never posted. This is really making me angry!!

Okay, I'm really confused, maybe someone can help me. I posted my comment last night on my blog, and hit post, but when I looked today, it didn't post. So I went into my site and looked at my recent entries, and it's in there and it says that it was posted, but it's not on my site. What's going on?

Chera, I just posted on your blog... the problem was the entry you posted had its "Post Status" set to "draft," which means you saved a private copy of what you wrote, but didn't actually publish it.