The Play
The Subject Was Roses begins on Saturday morning after a welcome-home party for Timmy Cleary. The year is 1946, and twenty-one-year-old Timmy is home after fighting in World War II.
One by one, the three members of the family appear for breakfast. Though they try to hide their differences, it is clear from their conversation that John and Nettie Cleary are uncomfortable with each other and that Timmy is aware of their problems. They discuss last night’s party, which was a success, although Timmy drank too much and was sick during the night.
Nettie and John exchange accusations over Timmy’s drinking, with references to their ongoing disagreements. Money is part of the continuing argument, and the quest for more money sends John out to a business appointment on this Saturday morning, instead of going to a ball game with his son.
Left alone with his mother, Timmy muses about how his father has aged. He is oblivious to his mother’s attempts to change the subject and turn his attention to his favorite breakfast. When Timmy fails to appreciate the waffles and then recoils from a possessive touch, Nettie is hurt. When the waffles stick in the waffle iron, she breaks down. This long-anticipated homecoming is not turning out as she had planned.
Timmy breaks the mood by turning on the radio and dancing with his mother. He promises to go with her to visit her mother and cousin. They are still dancing when John returns to go to the ball game after all, and the two men leave.
Scene 2 begins that afternoon, after the ball game. John and Timmy enter, drunk, carrying a bouquet of roses. Timmy insists that his father tell Nettie that the roses are from him; then he asks, half jokingly, how much money his father has. When John reacts angrily, Timmy asks to hear the story of how his parents met. John is in the midst of a sentimental memory when Nettie enters and again the tensions emerge.
Nettie sees the roses, accepts them as a gift from John, and tries to express her pleasure. The more grateful she seems, however, the more uncomfortable John becomes. He changes the subject, and to keep the mood light, he proposes dinner and a night on the town; the three prepare to leave.
In scene 3 the family returns after their night out. John and Timmy are drunkenly discussing Timmy’s plans to become a writer. When John looks for more to drink, Nettie follows him into the kitchen, where they reminisce briefly, and touchingly, about their courtship. Alone in the living room, Timmy amuses himself with snippets of various vaudeville acts. His retreat to bed leads Nettie to remonstrate with John for letting him get drunk again.
When her attention turns again to the roses, John attempts a clumsy seduction. Nettie, however, will have none of it: “One nice evening doesn’t make everything different.” They fight, and Nettie smashes the vase of roses on the floor. In his frustration and anger, John closes the scene and the act with the revelation that Timmy, not he, bought the roses.
Act 2 opens, like act 1, with breakfast. It is Sunday morning, and John is complaining about the coffee. When Timmy enters, he becomes the object of John’s irritation. He insists that Timmy come to church with him, but Timmy refuses. John leaves alone, giving mother and son another opportunity to talk. Once again, the talk is of John; with his father gone, Timmy is ready to defend him. He blames Nettie for caring more for her retarded cousin than...
(This entire section contains 1027 words.)
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for her husband. Angry, Nettie gathers up her large store of coins and leaves the house.
As the next scene opens, Nettie has not returned. It is now ten o’clock at night, and John and Timmy are worried. Timmy is, however, hiding his feeling by drinking. The two argue, until Timmy reveals that Nettie had fought with him before leaving. John uses this information to absolve himself of blame, but Timmy keeps the argument going until John hits him. At that moment Nettie enters.
She refuses to give a straight answer when John asks where she has been. She does claim, however, that “in all my life, the past twelve hours are the only real freedom I’ve ever known.” Timmy rushes from the room to be sick, and the scene ends with Nettie’s explanation of the argument that morning. She tells John of Timmy’s admiration for him.
Scene 3 is set in the middle of the night. Timmy enters to find his mother sitting in the dark. He tells her that he has decided to leave home the next day. Then, at his prompting, Nettie reveals that she had been thinking about the time she was hit in the eye with an apple core. Embarrassed by her black eye, she had failed to return to her new job and so lost it. The next job she found led to her meeting with John.
Again prompted by Timmy, she recalls what drew her to John: his energy, his determination, his ability to provide her with a good life. Left alone by Timmy, Nettie descends deeper into memory, recalling her need for love from her much-admired father.
The final scene occurs once again at the breakfast table. Nettie tells John that Timmy will leave, and John prepares to argue him out of it. Faced with Timmy’s obstinate insistence, he promises concessions. He even answers the earlier question of how much money he has. Finally he reverts to his usual posture of anger, to which Timmy responds by telling of a dream: “Someone would stop me and ask me why I was crying and I’d say, ‘My father’s dead and he never said he loved me.’” He then speaks the words himself to his father, telling him that he loves him. They embrace.
When Nettie enters, Timmy announces that he has changed his mind and will stay. His father intervenes, however, to tell Timmy that he must leave. Then he turns his attention to his coffee, complaining about it as the curtain falls.
Dramatic Devices
The Subject Was Roses is a realistic play, thoroughgoing and consistent in its use of the devices of realism. It takes place in a Bronx apartment, and the stage set is meant to be completely functional. The toaster and waffle iron must work; the radio must play; the kitchen cabinets must be fully stocked. The play is probably more successful in an arena theater than on a proscenium stage, where the intimacy of the apartment is harder to achieve.
Within the realistic set, Frank Gilroy provides realistic characters, plot, and dialogue. The three characters are very ordinary, so much so that John Chapman, reviewing the Broadway opening for The Daily News, found them “uninteresting.” There is nothing exceptional about the Clearys; their conflicts, ambitions, and disappointments are all very normal. In them, audiences see people whom they know very well.
The plot is similarly low-keyed: small, ordinary, familiar. The dialogue is realistic. Chapman complained of the “naturalistic exchanges,” citing lines such as “I couldn’t sleep last night.” “Neither could I.” However, it is Gilroy’s ear for real speech, along with his refusal to write artificially “dramatic” scenes, that gives the play its strength. The Subject Was Roses stands as a model of realism, combining all the techniques of realism in a single play.
Significantly, this realistic play includes a substantial element of symbolism. The apple core that Nettie remembers in act 2, scene 3, comes to stand for the accidents that led her to her present condition. The waffles that stick during Timmy’s first breakfast at home symbolize the failure of all Nettie’s plans for their new life together. The “Welcome Home” banner sags. Nettie hoards coins, and she cannot make good coffee for her husband, a coffee salesman. Objects, actions, and words take on significance beyond themselves, yet they acquire this significance naturally and realistically, as they do in everyday life.
Even the roses do not become an obtrusive symbol. Like any object that carries emotional significance because of past associations, the roses are valued. As a gift to Nettie from John, they may stand for a renewal of their relationship. When John violates that new relationship with a crude pass, the roses, the symbol of her hopes, must be destroyed. Then with the revelation that it was Timmy who bought them, they again take on value. Nettie’s relationship with Timmy still seems possible. She forgets that the flowers will fade.
Historical Context
American Realistic Drama
Realistic drama strives to create the impression that what the audience sees on stage mirrors real life. Typically, it features regular, everyday characters navigating the typical ups, downs, and challenges of daily existence. In the 1930s, realism began to dominate American theater. Playwrights of that era found that middle-class domestic plays set in contemporary times served as an effective means for exploring psychological themes. These plays were often staged in living rooms and focused on the personal lives of family members dealing with issues like finances, careers, and marriage. Some playwrights used this intimate setting to comment on broader societal issues, such as the Great Depression, while others believed that domestic themes were substantial enough for drama.
Realism maintained its influence on theater until the early 1960s. By then, Broadway was losing some of the prestige it had enjoyed during its so-called golden age in the 1950s. This change was partly due to the rising significance of new venues like off-Broadway for staging plays in New York. Off-Broadway theaters, and later off-off-Broadway, were less constrained by the need for major commercial success, providing young playwrights such as Edward Albee and Sam Shepard the chance to experiment with innovative dramatic forms and content.
The Subject Was Roses did not belong to the new wave of American drama that emerged in the 1960s. Firmly rooted in the earlier tradition of domestic realism, it continued a type of drama familiar to audiences and did not challenge their fundamental ideas about the potential of stage plays.
Irish and Jews in the Bronx
Although the play does not specify when John Cleary’s Irish father immigrated to the Bronx, one of New York City's boroughs, it might have been during the boom years that began around 1890. Between that time and 1925, the Bronx transformed from a collection of small villages and farms into a city with over one million residents. Cleary may have arrived even earlier, as the Bronx had long been a destination for the Irish escaping famine in Ireland during the early and mid-nineteenth century. Many of these Irish immigrants found work as laborers, contributing to the construction of landmarks such as the High Bridge over the Harlem River, the New York and Harlem Railroad, and the Croton Aqueduct.
Other ethnic groups also joined the influx of people settling in the Bronx in the early twentieth century. Many sought better living conditions than those in nearby Manhattan, including Yugoslavians, Armenians, and Italians. However, the largest group consisted of Jews from central and eastern Europe. This influx sometimes led to tensions, misunderstandings, and conflicts between the newly arrived Jewish community and the more established Irish residents.
This context helps explain John Cleary's expressions of anti-Semitism in the play. Initially, he uses a derogatory term to refer to Jewish people and accuses them of causing World War II. However, he later takes back his statement and informs Timmy that he once assisted a Jewish man who was being assaulted by a group of Irish troublemakers in the area. (John specifically mentions the group as "those bums from St. Matthew’s," indicating that it might be a parish name, hinting at their Irish background.)
Literary Style
Setting
The play is a realistic drama, and the set significantly enhances the theme. The stage directions describe it as a middle-class apartment, noting that the heavily upholstered sofa and chairs, adorned with antimacassars (small covers meant to prevent soiling), were fashionable in the 1920s and 1930s. This implies that the Clearys are not affluent and must make do with their existing possessions. In the play, Nettie highlights the sofa's poor condition by stating it is on its last legs and also points out the worn rugs. This shabby, genteel environment underscores the theme of financial struggle introduced in the first scene. Nettie explicitly states she needs ten dollars to replace the worn curtains in Timmy’s room and another five dollars for housekeeping. John gives the money reluctantly.
Dialogue
In this family, open communication is difficult, so Gilroy employs a technique where conversations often involve characters talking past each other. This means one person barely listens to the other, continuing with their own thoughts. For example, in the beginning of act 2, scene 2, Timmy shares his emotions from when he was six and his baby brother passed away, but John doesn't hear him because he's preoccupied with wondering aloud about Nettie's whereabouts and why she left. John similarly avoids direct responses when conversations with Nettie become uncomfortable, opting instead to recite nonsense phrases like ‘‘Bless us and save us said Mrs. O’Davis.’’ The dialogue effectively conveys the lingering impact of old arguments between John and Nettie. Act 1, scene 1, exemplifies this, as both characters excel at making sarcastic, petty remarks that reveal their disdain for each other while concealing any lingering love beneath the surface.
Dramatic Conflict
The essence of drama is conflict, where characters in a scene have differing wants, expectations, or demands, leading to clashes. A skilled dramatist uses these contrasting needs and expectations to generate tension and climaxes. They manage the rhythm of the buildup, both within individual scenes and throughout the drama, to achieve the desired dramatic effect. In this play, most scenes escalate to an outburst of anger or frustration, whether between husband and wife, mother and son, or father and son.
The opening part of the first scene skillfully unveils the tension between the husband and wife, yet without any raised voices. It conveys a sense of resignation, suggesting a long-standing issue that has become habitual. In the latter half of the scene, the focus shifts to the mother and son as they struggle to understand each other. Tension surfaces with Nettie's emotional outbursts and tears, ultimately finding a temporary resolution through their dance, only to flare up again over the planned visit to Willis.
The subsequent scene offers a quieter and more hopeful atmosphere, serving as a necessary contrast to the previous one. The tension here lies more with the audience, who are aware of the deception regarding who actually purchased the roses and anticipate the repercussions. However, these consequences don't unfold until the next scene, where the drama intensifies once more. Although the family's outing is successful, Nettie's discomfort with the men's drinking introduces a foreboding element. John’s unwanted advance and Nettie’s intentional destruction of the vase, followed by a tense silence, mark the climax of the first act (husband-wife conflict). This moment has been meticulously set up. Whenever the conflict surfaces directly, rather than simmering beneath like an iceberg, it is often accompanied by physical movement or another stage action that leaves a lasting visual impression.
The second act follows a similar pattern. In scene i, John's foul mood escalates inexorably into a full-blown argument over Timmy's refusal to attend mass (father-son conflict), and then reignites into a mother-son disagreement about how Timmy was always forced to do things he disliked on Sundays. Scene ii gradually builds toward a father-son confrontation that culminates in an act of physical violence. The subsequent scene provides a necessary pause for reflection, and the final scene introduces change. Instead of conflict, there is reconciliation (father-son), culminating in a heartfelt embrace, before the old pattern of suppressed tensions resurfaces at the conclusion.
Compare and Contrast
1940s: During World War II, automobile manufacturing was halted, leading to a scarcity of vehicles. By 1945, the United States had 25 million registered vehicles, though more than half were over a decade old. However, a post-war production surge occurred, and by 1950, the U.S. was responsible for two-thirds of global automobile production.
1960s: Studebaker-Packard became the first U.S. automaker to offer seat belts as standard on all models. Ford launched the Mustang with an initial price of $2,300. Despite these innovations, the U.S. auto industry faced increasing global competition, producing only 45 percent of the world's cars by 1965.
Today: Unlike in 1946 when owning a car in America was a status symbol, today it is viewed as essential. Modern cars are significantly better in safety, reliability, and performance compared to those from previous generations. They also represent a smaller portion of most workers' incomes than they did in 1964. (The base price for a 2002 Ford Mustang ranges from $17,475 to $28,645.) However, the U.S. is no longer the top automobile producer, trailing behind Japan.
1940s: Post-World War II, America saw a revival in religious life, encompassing both Catholicism and Protestant Christianity. The idea of church and family as core societal elements became more ingrained.
1960s: The social upheavals of the 1960s led to a questioning of traditional Christian beliefs and practices. The number of young men entering the Catholic priesthood began to drop, a trend that persisted for thirty years, until 1997.
Today: The United States is home to 63 million Catholics, making it the largest religious group in the nation. The Catholic Church is also the biggest provider of private education, with 2.7 million students in Catholic schools. Despite this, the Church faced significant scandals in 2001 and 2002 involving sexual abuse by priests.
1940s: With World War II concluded, America was experiencing prosperity. Having developed and deployed the atomic bomb to end Japanese resistance, the U.S. stood as the only nuclear power globally. However, tensions with the Soviet Union were on the rise, signaling the start of the Cold War.
1960s: The U.S. military engagement in Vietnam escalated after the Gulf of Tonkin incident, where North Vietnamese patrol boats allegedly attacked U.S. ships.
Today: In the aftermath of the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the United States is involved in a fundamentally different conflict compared to World War II or Vietnam. The adversary is not a nation but a terrorist group that operates across international borders.
Media Adaptations
The film adaptation of The Subject Was Roses was produced by MGM in 1968, featuring performances by Patricia Neal, Jack Albertson, and Martin Sheen. Ulu Grosbard directed the movie, and the screenplay was written by Gilroy. This movie is presently accessible on VHS videotape.
Bibliography and Further Reading
Sources
Berkowitz, Gerald M., American Drama of the Twentieth Century, Longman, 1992.
Bradshaw, John, Bradshaw On: The Family, Health Communications, Inc., 1988.
Brooks-Dillard, Sandra, "Timing Bad for Outdated ‘Subject,’" in Denver Post, January 19, 1996, p. G–11.
Filichia, Peter, "Gentle Touch Revives Roses; Theater Restores Play’s Bloom by Emphasizing Comedy over Its No-Longer-Thorny Social Issue," in Star-Ledger (Newark, N.J.), March 29, 2000, p. 33.
Gilroy, Frank D., About Those Roses or How Not To Do a Play and Succeed, and the Text of ‘The Subject Was Roses’, Random House, 1965.
———, The Subject Was Roses, in Best American Plays, Sixth Series 1963–1967, Crown Publishers, Inc, 1987, pp. 567–594.
Monji, Jana J., "Theater Beat; Looking for Old Family Patterns in Roses," Los Angeles Times, January 12, 2001, p. F–44.
Scanlon, Tom, Family, Drama, and American Dreams, Greenwood Press, 1978, p. 4.
Simon, John, "Three by Three," in New York, June 24, 1991, p. 52.
Taubman, Howard, Review of The Subject Was Roses, in The New York Times Theater Reviews, 1920–1970, Vol. 7, Arno Press, 1971, 1964 Je 7, 11:1:1.
Further Reading
Lewis, Allan, American Plays and Playwrights of the Contemporary Theatre, rev. ed., Crown, 1970. This is an accessible overview of plays and playwrights from 1957 to the late 1960s. Lewis offers it as a guide to the complex variety of theater during his era. Gilroy is briefly noted.
Murphy, Brenda, American Realism and American Drama, 1880–1940, Cambridge University Press, 1987. Although this analysis concludes before Gilroy’s time, it provides a valuable examination of how domestic realism became the prevailing form in American theater.
Reynolds, Catherine, "Recommended: Frank D. Gilroy," in English Journal, Vol. 75, October 1986, pp. 71–72. This article appreciates Gilroy’s overall work, with a focus on The Subject Was Roses, his one-act play Present Tense, and the novel, Private.
Roudané, Matthew C., American Drama since 1960: A Critical History, Twayne, 1996. Roudané examines approximately two dozen dramatists who have shaped American drama post-1960, highlighting African-American and female playwrights as well as notable male figures like Edward Albee, Sam Shepard, David Mamet, and Arthur Miller.