sinister maternity in their aspect, a crushing, jealous absorption. They have developed from their intimate contact with the life of man in the house an appalling humaneness. They brood oppressively over the house. They are like exhausted women resting their sagging breasts and hands and hair on its roof, and when it rains their tears trickle down monotonously and rot on the shingles.

So, it is immediately apparent that O’Neill intended for his main antagonist, Ephraim, to be of a nasty disposition, the better to make the actions of his sons all the more understandable. Indeed, in scene 2 of this opening act, the dialogue between brothers hints at the nature of the father who controls the environment in which all exist. As the three young men discuss the future, Simeon and Peter talk about leaving, and all three consider their mother’s passing and the hard life she lived under a roof with their father, Eben notes, “Why didn’t ye never stand between him ’n’ my Maw when he was slavin’ her to her grave—t’ pay her back fur the kindness she done t’ yew?”

The image of Ephraim as an austere individual is further provided in O’Neill’s description of the character upon the old man’s first appearance in scene 3:

Cabot is seventy-five, tall and gaunt, with great, wiry, concentrated power, but stoop-shouldered from toil. His face is as hard as if it were hewn out of a boulder, yet there is a weakness in it, a petty pride in its own narrow strength. His eyes are small, close together, and extremely near-sighted, blinking continually in the effort to focus on objects, their stare having a straining, ingrowing quality. He is dressed in his dismal black Sunday suit.

As Desire Under the Elms progresses, Ephraim’s austerity, arrogance, and demeaning nature are all revealed, providing continuing justification for the infidelity and betrayals that occur—namely, Eben and Abbie’s affair and the subsequent birth of a baby boy.

Why did O’Neill make Ephraim a mean character? Because Ephraim has lived a hard, brutal existence and has never known better. He was cruel, if primarily through neglect, to his first wife, and his willingness, at the age of seventy-five, to essentially adopt a much younger wife (Abbie is thirty-five) despite the conflicts certain to arise between father, wife, and grown sons regarding the farm’s future all point to an individual who thrives on domination of his environment, including all those within.

The character of Ephraim is something of an enigma when we begin to think of the root reasons for his nastiness and his stern and vengeful disposition. There is nothing in the play that we are told that would help us to understand his background and the kind of person that he is and has become. The only clues we can glean from the play relate to the way in which he is a very religious man. For example, he constantly recites Bible passages and, in response to the tragedy in the play, says nothing more than "God's hard," perhaps reflecting his religious faith and trust in God's sovereignty.

I imagine therefore that Ephraim was raised himself by some extremely strict and religious parents that never brought him up to enjoy life and constantly quoted scripture themselves to explain how life is actually an extremely bleak and joyless place. He would have been brought up with a very strong work ethic and also unable to truly love or take joy in those around him. This would help to explain his excesses as a character.