Summary

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Episode 1: “To Business”

Machinal begins in an office building in an unspecified American city. The atmosphere is frantic, abuzz with the sounds of typewriters and telephones. The office workers issue an endless stream of meaningless words, phrases, names, and numbers. Into this industrial cacophony walks the protagonist, Helen, known only as “Young Woman.” She is late. Her coworkers immediately begin to criticize her, which only deepens her flustered feeling. As the stenographer, telephone girl, and adding clerk pepper Helen with questions and admonishments, it is revealed that their supervisor, Mr. George H. Jones, is infatuated with Helen and wishes to marry her. George emerges for a brief chat with Helen, behaving affectionately toward her. As the scene comes to a close, Helen engages in a fraught interior monologue, expressing her dread at the thought of marrying the repulsive George. Her inner thoughts are a reflection of her outer world: clipped, fragmented, and disjointed.

Episode 2: “At Home”

The evening after the first episode, Helen has returned to the apartment she shares with her mother. The two eat dinner together. Helen wishes to discuss her potential marriage to George. However, Helen’s mother, spewing her train of inane chatter, will not let Helen get a word in edgewise. Outside in the apartment court, more voices ring out, adding to the din. As in the first scene, Helen is overwhelmed and cannot hear herself think. Helen finally speaks, weighing practicality and romance. George is wealthy but repulsive. Helen wishes to know whether her mother married for love; her mother cannot recall. Helen reveals that her search for love is really a search for a way out of her life. Her mother fails to affirm her concerns, repeatedly calling her daughter “crazy.”

Episode 3: “Honeymoon”

The third episode begins after the wedding of Helen and George, whose character name has shifted to “Husband.” The two are on vacation by the sea for their honeymoon. Helen’s discomfort in the presence of George is deep and apparent. She refuses his sensual advances. She tries to silence him as he shares a distasteful joke. She responds to his enthusiasm with terse phrases. Most of all, she desires to leave his presence, to escape to the sea. As the episode draws to a close, Helen emerges from the bathroom in her nightgown. The thought of going to bed with her new husband fills her with dread, and she cries out, “Ma! Ma! I want my mother!” She realizes with sudden clarity the loneliness of her life.

Episode 4: “Maternal”

As with many of the play’s episodes, episode four begins after a significant jump in time. The previous episode ends just before Helen and George consummate their marriage. Episode four features Helen in a hospital bed, having just given birth. Her mother and George are there to offer cheer and encouragement. Helen, however, is despondent. She is sorrowful and subdued. When faced with the possibility of meeting her baby, Helen descends into a nervous breakdown, muttering “God Mary Mary God Mary.” Motherhood represents yet another imprisonment for her.

Episode 5: “Prohibited”

Episode five takes place in a speakeasy, a Prohibition-era bar. There are three tables at the bar, each with its own unfolding scene. At the first table, a man and woman discuss the pros and cons of abortion, a theme that points to the unsettling events of the previous scene. At the second table, a man attempts to seduce a boy. The man is referred to as a “fairy” in the text, an antiquated and derogatory term for a homosexual. At the third table, two men wait...

(This entire section contains 1300 words.)

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for two women, who turn out to be Helen and her friend, the telephone girl. Helen’s friend has set up a double date, pairing Helen with a man named Richard Roe. Helen and Richard are left alone, at which point Richard makes sexual advances toward her. Despite his rough demeanor, Helen finds him charming and agrees to go home with him.

Episode 6: “Intimate”

Episode six takes place late at night at Richard Roe’s apartment. Richard and Helen lie in bed together, presumably after spending an intimate evening together. The dynamic between the two becomes increasingly clear. Helen hopes for a deeper emotional connection with Richard. Though he offers physical intimacy, Richard is otherwise completely noncommittal. After Helen exclaims, “We belong together! We belong together! And we’re going to stick together, ain’t we?” Richard replies, “Sing something else.” Richard talks more about his past, about the time he recently spent “South of the Rio Grande,” by which he means Mexico. After being imprisoned, he escaped by attacking his captors using a bottle filled with pebbles. Despite the gruesome nature of the story, Helen feels wistful when thinking about a place as exotic as “South of the Rio Grande.” When she leaves, Helen takes with her Richard’s lily plant.

Episode 7: “Domestic”

In the seventh episode, Helen and George sit at home, both reading newspapers. Despite George’s attempts to engage Helen in conversation, the two remain locked in their respective realities. The news items the two of them read reflect their internal worlds. George reads business headlines, reflecting his interests in the realm of economics. Helen reads about a prison break and then about a sale on jewels and precious stones. The combination of these stories sends Helen into a reverie about Richard’s prison escape, in which he used bottled stones to kill his captors. As the scene comes to an eerie conclusion, a chorus of disembodied voices begins to rise around and overwhelm Helen, murmuring about stones. In this moment, the image of stones takes on a number of metaphorical meanings: stones as jewels (and thus as signifiers of marriage), stones as weapons (as used by Richard Roe), stones as tools to attain freedom, and finally stones as headstones (a symbol for death).

Episode 8: “The Law”

Once again, there is a significant jump in time before the eighth episode begins. The episode opens in a courthouse. George H. Jones has been murdered, and Helen has taken the stand as the primary suspect. As the judge presides over the court, a prosecuting attorney and a defense attorney argue back and forth while reporters offer a stream of commentary from the side. The events of the murder are revealed in bits and pieces. According to Helen’s account, while she and George were lying in bed, an unidentified man struck George over the head using a bottle filled with pebbles. The defense attorney finally presents a troubling piece of evidence: the potted lily Helen recently brought back from Richard Roe’s apartment. The stones in the pot had been removed. The attorney then presents another piece of evidence: a letter from Richard Roe describing the nature of his relationship with Helen, along with the truth that he gave her the lily. As the letter moves into more intimate subject matter, Helen requests that the attorney cease reading it. She confesses to the murder.

Episode 9: “The Machine”

The final scene shows us Helen on death row. A priest chants prayers to her in Latin. An African American man in a nearby cell sings a Negro spiritual. The priest orders the man to stop, but Helen pleads for the man to be allowed to continue. Barbers are ordered in to shear her head, which Helen finds horrifying—“Is nothing mine?” she shrieks. In the terrifying final moments, Helen refuses the presence of even her mother, accusing her of being a stranger. As Helen is placed in the electric chair, she is surrounded by men: the guard, three reporters, and the priest, who recites the names of numerous saints, all of them men. The play’s central theme—the subordination of American women—reaches its most intense expression in the final moment.

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