Female bonding: biological or sociocultural?

Getting Out (1977) is a play that tells us the sad story of Arlene (and her younger self Arlie) after getting out of prison where she had been convicted for murder. Arlene is introduced to the spectator as a violent, conflictive child. The first impression we take of her is of a naughty, malignant kid who enjoys watching the suffering of others. In the following passage, we see how she enjoys while performs a cruel act:

Slimy bastard, frogs. We was plannin to let them go all over the place, but when they started jumpin an all, we just figured they was askin for it. So, we taken em out front to the porch an we throwed em, one at a time, into the street. (Laughs.) Some of em hit cars goin but most of em just got squashed, you know, runned over? It was great, seein how far we could throw em, over back of our backs an under our legs an God, it was really fun watchin em fly through the air then SPLAT (clap hands.) (Getting Out: 10)

In this quotation, we observe that young Arlie enjoys a sort of sadomasochist pleasure when she provokes the death of the frogs causing them suffering. Then, after childhood, the spiraling violence increases in her daily life as prostitute until she commits a crime (she accidentally kills a cab driver because he has tried to take sexual advantage from her) and ends up in prison. However, what the spectator does not know yet is that, behind her violent behavior, there is a trauma buried in her early childhood: the sexual abuse perpetrated by her own father and her mother’s abandonment after these episodes.

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The mother-daughter relationship in Getting Out denies Greiner’s statement (1993: 34) about the existence of a stronger bonding between the females, “The pivotal moment in female bonding may be the birth of a daughter; some clinical theorists conclude that mothers bond more forcefully with daughters than with sons (…).” Presumably, this type of bonding appears because mothers were once daughters and that the identity of the mother will be prolonged, to a certain extent, in the daughter. Thus, what Nancy Chodorow calls the process of ‘mothering’ creates a kind of special bond which will sustain a woman throughout her life due to the fact that “[I]n mothering, a woman acts also on her personal identification with a mother who parents and her own training or women’s role.” (Chodorow, 1978: 202).

Therefore, Chodorow implies that daughters identify with their mothers and want to reproduce their skills as mothers with their future daughters. However, this ‘forceful’

biological link between mother and daughter is broken in Getting Out.

The first part of the play explores the necessity of Arlene for being part of her family again. Whereas her mother speaks about general things such as cleaning the house or what is needed to create a good impression, we observe how Arlene tries hard to establish a connection with her mother, for example by subtly asking to go for lunch on Sundays:

ARLENE: (A Clear request) I’ll probably get my Sundays off.

MOTHER: Sunday… is my day to clean the house now. (Arlene gets the message, finally walks over to straighten the picture. Mother now feels a little bad about this rejection, stops sweeping for a moment .)I woulda wrote you but I didn’t have nuthin to say. An no money to send, so what’s the use? (Getting Out: 25-26)

As we can deduce for Mother’s words, Arlene is not welcome into the family again and her mother feels totally detached from her. She has come just in order to make what society thinks it is correct, not because she really feels the need to get closer to her daughter.

Besides, when Arlene asks for her son (a son who was taken away from her in prison) and if he resembles her, Mother answers that “He don’t even know who you are, Arlie (…) You forgot already what you was like a kid.” (Getting Out: 26) We have to notice that her mother stills calls her Arlie, not Arlene, in order to prove that she does not believe in Arlene’s change.

Moreover, when Arlene tries to recall sweet memories from her childhood, her mother can only remember the naughty-dangerous things Arlie used to do:

MOTHER: (...) Little Snotty-nosed kid tryin to kill her daddy with a bologna sandwich.

And him being so pleased when you brung it to him… (Laughing.) ARLENE: (No longer enjoying the memory.) He beat me good.

MOTHER: Well, now, Arlie, you gotta admit you had it comin to you (Wiping tears from laughing.)

ARLENE: I guess. (Getting Out: 24)

As we can see, Mother is incapable of recognizing the true motives for Arlie wanting to kill her father by putting toothpaste in a sandwich. In fact, Mother supports Father’s decision of beating up Arlie because she “was asking for it.” Hence, it seems that Arlene cannot enjoy her child memories because there were plenty of stories of abuse and violence:

MOTHER: You remember that black chewing gum he got you when you was sick?

ARLENE: I remember he beat up on you.

MOTHER: Yeah, (Proudly) and he was really sorry a coupla times. (…) (Getting Out:

19)

Arlene’s mother is incapable, not only of bonding and helping her daughter when she was raped by her father, but she is also incapable of coping and fighting the situation of abuse against her.

The crucial moment when we can appreciate that this biological bond does not exist in this mother-daughter relationship comes when Mother finds a man’s hat in the apartment.

Arlene explains that the hat is from Bennie, the guard who has brought her from prison.

Arlene’s mother immediately gets furious because she thinks that her daughter is working as a prostitute again, that she is living her old conflictive life and she does not give Arlene any chance of believing that she has really changed as we can read in the following quotation:

MOTHER: (…) I knowed I shouldn’t have come. You ain’t changed a bit.

ARLENE: Same hateful brat, right? (Back to Mother.)

MOTHER: Same hateful brat. Right (Arms full, heading for the door) ARLENE: (Rushing toward her.) Mama…

MOTHER: Don’t you touch me. (Mother leaves. Arlene stares out the door, stunned and hurt, finally, she slams the door and turns back into the room.)

ARLENE: No! Don’t you touch Mama, Arlie. (Getting Out: 30)

Arlene has finally understood that she has no possibility of establishing a bond with her own mother because this woman cannot even stand that her daughter touches her. Therefore, it can be seen that this ‘forceful’ link, supposedly created by biology, between mother and daughter is broken in Getting Out. There is no such biological or affective bonding between Arlene and her mother because, apart we can deduce that Mother blames Arlene for the abuses her father perpetrated against her, Arlene’s mother does not believe in Arlene’s rehabilitation after getting out of prison.

If the possibility of this natural, biological bonding is questionable, we cannot deny, however, the possibility and necessity of establishing a sociological female bonding. In this respect, we support Janice Raymond’s theory that

Women bond (…) not because of biological needs but because of cultural conditions. (…) biological differences between the sexes are not an issue, and male dominance is not an unredeemable given inherited by humanity since the early moments of the race when the sexual division of labor resulted in the contrast between man-the-hunter and woman-the-gatherer. Culture is a construct. Constructs can be changed. (Greiner, 1993: 41).

As it can be read, for this critic, the friendship or bonding among women, would be useful for neutralizing the cultural power of heterosexual relationships, therefore, female bonding will help to empower women and fight the established patriarchal system which commonly victimizes them.

We have proved that, in this play, biological bonding does not exist. However, we cannot say the same about the sociocultural bonding proposed by Raymond. In fact, in order to reconcile with herself, in order to join together the new Arlene and the old Arlie, Arlene needs the help and the unselfish friendship of another woman. This woman will be her upstairs neighbor: Ruby.

When Ruby appears on stage, looking for Candy (Arlene’s younger sister), Arlene feels an immediate distrust towards this stranger who is offering her help. Arlene is even incapable of extending her hand for greeting her neighbor as it is said in the stage directions: “RUBY:

(…) It’s Arlie, right? / ARLENE: It’s Arlene (does not extend her hand.)” (Getting Out: 46).

It is important to take into account how Arlene highlights her new identity pointing out to the fact that “you [Arlene] don’t seem like Candy said.” (Getting Out: 48). Ruby knows about Arlene’s situation and offers her a job as a dish-washer, a job which will be more decent that

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prostitution although not so well paid, which Arlene is thinking to come back to after her pimp Carl comes to visit to tell her the amount of money she will get turning back to prostitution. However, Ruby forces her to confront reality because she is bluntly sincere when she says to Arlene that “(…) you can wash dishes to pay the rent on your own ‘slum’, or you can spread your legs for any shit that’s got ten dollars.” (Getting Out: 60). In this option, we implicitly see the conflict between past and present which is surrounding Arlene’s life.

The problem is that Arlene cannot trust anybody as she recognizes to Ruby in the quotation we have used for the title of this paper (“can’t trust anybody”). She rejects the offer of having lunch with Ruby, her kind offer of bringing some groceries from the shop and she even rejects an offer of playing cards together.

Nonetheless, Arlene’s opinion about Ruby’s intentions changes as soon as Ruby comes and defends her from the pimp, who comes again to try to force Arlene to be a prostitute again. Ruby is really worried about her and Arlene sees that. After this, Arlene eases her pain and explains that she cannot go on unless she reconciles with her old, hateful self: Arlie. Ruby explains that “You can still love people that’s gone.” (Getting Out: 62). Both share an intimate moment of conversation and Arlene finally finds out that there is some chance for her in life and she finally accepts Ruby’s friendship learning the importance of being together to survive in her new present.

3. Conclusion

Bonding among women is not only necessary to survive in a patriarchal society which does not forgive women when they act wrong. Female bonding is also necessary to help women to reconcile with themselves when they do not see that there is always a real possibility of getting out.

The examples analyzed in this play prove that joining with a fellow woman not only helps Arlene to recover from a traumatic experience. It is also a way of (re)discovering her true self and proving that she can survive in a society which is constantly trying to constraint and repress her.

Thus, although the existence of a natural or biological bonding between mother and daughter may exist, we can say that, in this particular case, it is broken, being supreme the existence of the sociocultural bonding. All in all, we cannot forget that mother - daughter relationships have been conflictive throughout literary history.

Summing up, we can say that, with respect to female bonding, this play adapts to what feminists and sociologists affirm when they insist on the importance of bonding with your fellows. In this case study, ‘female bonding’ proves to be the only possibility of renewal and redemption for the protagonist and opens her eyes to new chances in life outside prison which preclude a return to her old sordid and traumatic existence.

References

Chodorow, Nancy 1978. The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender. Berkley: University of California Press.

Cline, Gretchen 1996. “The Impossibility of Getting Out: the Psychopolitics of the family in Marsha Norman’s Getting Out”. Linda Ginter Brown ed. Marsha Norman: a Casebook.

New York, London: Routledge. 3-26.

Greiner, Donald J. 1993. Women Without Men: Female Bonding and the American Novel of the 1980s. Columbia: South Carolina Press.

Hernando-Real, Noelia 2012. “My Home, My Battleground: The Deconstruction of the American Family”. Bárbara Ozieblo and Noelia Hernando Real (Eds.) Performing Gender violence: Plays by Contemporary American Women dramatists, New York:

Palgrave Macmillan. 39-60.

Krasner, David (Ed.) 2007 A Companion to Twentieth- Century American Drama. Malden:

Blackwell Publishing.

Murphy, Brenda (Ed.) 1999. Cambridge Companion to American Women Playwrights.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Narbona-Carrión, María Dolores 2012. “The Role of Female bonding on the Stage of Violence”. Bárbara Ozieblo and Noelia Hernando Real eds. Performing Gender violence: Plays by Contemporary American Women dramatists. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.61-69.

Norman, Marsha 1978. Getting Out. New York: Dramatists Play Service.

Raymond, Janice G. 1986. A passion for Friends: Toward a Philosophy of Female Affection.

Boston: Beacon Press.

Savran, David (Ed.). 1988. In Their Own Words: Contemporary American Playwrights. New York: Theatre Communications Group.

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