Natural Affection. [Paperback]

William Inge (Author), William Inge (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 72 pages
• Publisher: Dramatists Play Service, Inc. (January 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0822208059
• ISBN-13: 978-0822208051
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #476,938 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Behind the Wall, April 30, 2009

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Kevin L. Nenstiel "omnivore" (Kearney, Nebraska) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Natural Affection. (Paperback)

The magnitude of distrust and anger bound up in William Inge's Natural Affection is shocking, but perhaps not surprising. In his preface, Inge mentions widespread news coverage of youth violence in the late 1950's and early 1960's as his chief motivation, but the violence in this play is not limited to youth. Juvenile delinquency, Inge implies, is the product of a corrupted society in which violence is what teens on the cusp of adulthood have modeled for them in the home and in their communities.

Donnie is a disaffected teen, and it's easy to see him as a leather-jacketed punk with a ducktail 'do and two-tone shoes. But this image is unjust to how his inner turmoil reflects that of his world. His mother admits he's bounced from orphanage to work camp all his life. Now he's home on conditional release--a situation which implies that the law expects him to offend again. He's a bomb waiting to explode, so he fits in nicely with the "home" to which he returns.

Sue Barker and Bernie Slovenk are about as far from a "traditional" couple as Chicago's white working class can probably stand in 1962. She's older than him, makes more money than him, has a child out of wedlock, and the two of them live together without having exchanged rings. Why the law, always a staid institution, would entrust a kid to this household beggars description, but Sue and Bernie's unconventionality thinly conceals a rich vein of anger, and not just at each other or the world. They hate themselves with Homeric scope, and express that self-hatred through easy violence.

In the early 1960's, women's roles are in flux. Neither Rosie the Riveter nor Harriet Nelson are sufficient role models anymore, as women return to the workforce, but without the acclaim that made them heroines during the war. Sue Barker has to cram her traditional role as a mother into her life alongside the more hard-bitten demands of a modern business woman. But because stodgy wartime attitudes never let her learn to be a mommy, she displaces appropriate maternal impulses into the same kind of affection she feels for Bernie. And just as her love for Bernie vacillates between lust and warfare, that's what manifests in her make-do relationship with her son.

During his time in the work camp, a guard named "Stubby" left Donnie with flaming scars from repeated beatings and, it is implied, probably sexually victimized him too. Since Donnie has never known his father nor been nurtured by his mother, his perfectly reasonable aversion to authority manifests in an inability to get along. He subtly challenges his mother by spending her money recklessly, cranking the music up to loud, and refusing to get along with Bernie. In other words, he throws down the gauntlet in the passive-aggressive way teens have at least since the end of World War II. No longer a boy but not yet a man, he takes power the only way he can, by being sullen and disobedient.

As if all this unresolved attention weren't enough, Sue and Bernie, clueless what else to do, pull Donnie into their friendship, if you can call it that, with Vince and Claire Brinkman. These two seem to have frighteningly elastic sexual standards in which Vince's demonstrative appetites and Claire's transparent infidelities collude. The remarkably blasé attitude that not only the Brinkmans but Sue and Bernie have to this orgiastic excess is stunning at first blush. But on further consideration, perhaps this approach shouldn't be so surprising. If the role of women, and of men in relation to women, is in flux, then marriage itself is also up in the air. Vince and Claire aren't immoral or sexually careless; they're just at the vanguard of what marriage will be about in coming years.

Whole books could be drafted deconstructing the elaborate sexual politics tying Sue, Bernie, and the Brinkmans together. The intricate balance of what is said and what remains unsaid between them puts Donnie in the awkward position of standing insimultaneously for Vince with Claire, and for Bernie with Sue. When Bernie accuses Sue, saying "It looks to me like you had the hots for him yourself," the language may be provocative and harsh, but that doesn't make it any less so. Sue only knows one way to relate to men, and to people in general, so if she relates to her son that way, repulsive though that may be, it's tough to blame her.

Of course there's no earthly way Donnie can comprehend all this and remain healthy. His whole life has been described by the privations of the orphanage and the work farm, where he has a specific role and his actions are defined for him. That may not be much of a childhood, but it's surely more comprehensible than the minefield he's now required to walk. Who can blame him, then, for lashing out with appalling violence when everything comes to a head? There's no way he could not know the consequences for his actions, but maybe he's courting those consequences because they're better than the alternative. He can't go back to the work farm and Stubby, but he can't stay where he is--behind the wall may be the easier way.

Inge was castigated for his level of violence when this play debuted, and no doubt this play is very reactionary in its distrust of change and the dawning era. But in a world where old ways are constantly falling away, most people feel themselves to be in a nightmare world like Inge's, at least from time to time. The violence that buffets us from all sides make us want to hit back. Donnie does so, and leaves us stunned. But perhaps he stuns us because we know how close we are to his place at any moment, and we fear he's closer to us than we care to admit.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent introduction to Inge's work, January 28, 2004

By 

alex bushman (Michigan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Natural Affection. (Paperback)

This play is about a single mother who has had her juvenile son taken from her and has started a new relationship with a man who doesn't know too much about him. The son is sent back to her without the woman's knowledge and what happens is heartbreaking. It's sad to know that Inge based this story off of something that he read in the paper and things like this happen. It's an extreme introduction to the harsh realism of his other plays, but it prepares you for the other plays and makes them seem like a cakewalk considering most of them are leavened with humor and this one has very little if at all.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Much underrated play by William Inge, May 15, 2007

By 

D. Jonnes (Washington, D. C., USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Natural Affection. (Paperback)

Anyone with interest in American drama of the postwar era will want to read Inge's now almost-forgotten "Natural Affection." Despite a string of Broadway hits (including "Picnic" and "Bus Stop," which live on to some degree in their film versions) and much critical acclaim, Inge was target of broadside by Robert Brustein in Harper's which effectively--and unjustly--torpedoed Inge's career as playwright, or at least produceable playwright. Brustein, whatever his accomplishments--he went on to found the Yale Repertory Theater--, did American drama grave disservice with his comments about Inge's "emasculated" males and formulaic plots. Inge was a "realist," but with a twist. He was in tune with much of what was happening to America culturally in the Cold War years, in particular in terms of the impact movies, radio, television and popular music were having on the collective mind. This sensitivity to what preoccupied Americans is again on display in "Natural Affection."