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The Square Root of Wonderful | Introduction

Carson McCullers’s The Square Root of Wonderful opened to very poor reviews on Broadway on October 30, 1957. It closed a little over a month later, after only forty-five performances. In 1958, an edition of the play was published in the United States and Britain. In this edition, McCullers notes in the ‘‘Personal Preface’’ that, of all the various versions of the play, ‘‘the one which follows . . . is the most nearly the truth of what I want to say.’’

Today, the play is valued primarily as a window offering a view into the author’s unusual personal life. In the ‘‘Personal Preface,’’ McCullers writes that the play’s origins can be found in the difficult relationship she had with her husband, Reeves McCullers, before he committed suicide in 1953. According to McCullers, the play also deals with her beloved mother, who died suddenly in 1955. ‘‘So, unconsciously, the life-death theme of The Square Root of Wonderful emerged,’’ she writes.

The story takes place in a small town outside New York City during the 1950s. Phillip Lovejoy is an alcoholic writer whose early successes and more recent failures weigh heavily on his mind. He leaves the sanatorium where he has been recuperating from an attempted suicide and arrives at the house of his ex-wife, Mollie Lovejoy. Phillip is needy and in emotional pain. He soon discovers that Mollie is falling in love with John Tucker, an architect she recently rescued from car trouble, who is now living at the house. Phillip’s mother and sister are also visiting; their characters provide background inforT mation about Mollie and Phillip’s two marriages to each other as well as information about Phillip as a child in Georgia. Phillip, overcome by the probability of a life without Mollie, commits suicide by driving his car into a nearby pond. Mollie is now free to love John.

The Square Root of Wonderful Summary

The play is presented in three acts over the course of about ten days in May, at a small apple farm in New York state, twenty miles from New York City.

Act 1
Act 1 begins after midnight in the living room. Mollie Lovejoy awakens and comforts her thirteenyear- old son, Paris, who has been having a nightmare in which his father, Phillip Lovejoy, is a burglar. Paris is sleeping on the couch because his grandmother, Mother Lovejoy, and his aunt, Loreena Lovejoy, also known as Sister, are visiting.

Mollie and John Tucker, an architect who is living at the house, have been in the kitchen talking and drinking tea. Mollie says that she will be ‘‘desolate’’ when John leaves. When Paris asks the architect, ‘‘Why do you keep your arms around my mother? Why do you look at her in that zany way?’’ John admits that he loves Mollie. Mollie has been divorced twice from Paris’s father.

Mollie has received a phone call from Phillip and is worried that he is going to show up at the house, having checked himself out of a sanatorium after attempting suicide. Paris brags that his father is a famous author and warns that he is going to tell Phillip about John. John is defiant, countering that he himself will tell Phillip that he loves Mollie. Mollie notes that Phillip’s most recent work, a play, opened and closed very quickly. Mollie and John reminisce about how they met ten days earlier, when she picked him up on the road as he was repairing his car. Mollie brought him back to the house and, to his surprise, offered him room and board. He had assumed that she was offering him sex.

Mollie tells John that one of the things she loves about him is that he is interested in her for her mind and not for her body. She recalls meeting Phillip at a peach festival in her hometown when she was fifteen. They immediately had sex, and the next day they were married. Even though she is no longer married to Phillip, she admits to John that he has always cast a sort of spell over her. Even when Phillip was verbally and physically abusive during their two marriages, ‘‘he had a lot of charm,’’ she says. They also talk about Sister and the disappointment the Lovejoy family feels about the fact that she was once a debutante but is now an old maid and a librarian.

Sister enters the room, and John leaves to fix a noisy garage door. Sister warns Mollie that Phillip is probably going to show up at the house soon and ask her to marry him for the third time. Mollie says she does not want to marry him again but expresses concern that she will be swayed by Phillip’s charm. Answering Mollie’s question as to whether she has ever been in love, Sister admits to numerous loves in places around the world, but these are men and events that live only in her imagination.

Mother Lovejoy enters the room looking for milk of magnesia, disappointed that Sister has already told Mollie about Phillip. Sister and Mother Lovejoy leave the room just as John comes back from fixing the door. He and Mollie discuss Phillip, John’s numerous love affairs, and the possibility of their getting married.

After John goes to bed, Phillip appears holding a bouquet of flowers for Mollie. Phillip tries to get Mollie to remember what it was like... » Complete The Square Root of Wonderful Summary