Desire Under the Elms (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters)
At a glance:
- Author: Eugene O’Neill
- First Published: 1925
- Type of Work: Play
- Type of Plot: Tragedy
- Time of Work: 1850
- Setting: A farmhouse in New England
- Genres: Drama
- Subjects: Parents and children
- Locales: New England
Characters Discussed
Ephraim Cabot, a greedy, harsh, old New England widower. He has taken over his second wife’s farm and worked her to death. He has brutalized his three sons, working them like animals on the farm until they hate him bitterly. At the age of seventy-six, he marries thirty-five-year-old Abbie Putnam, a deed intended to cheat his sons of their inheritance. The two older sons have left the farm, but Eben, the youngest, remains. Abbie, whom Eben hates, cleverly seduces him, and he fathers a child that Ephraim, duped by flattery, believes is his own. Taunted by...
[The entire page is 744 words long]
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