The Homecoming (1965)

Reception
Harold Pinters cleverest play [] I am troubled by the complete absence
from the play of any moral comment whatsoever []. We have no idea what
Mr Pinter thinks of Ruth or Teddy, and he refers to the plays moral vacuum
(Harold Hobson, Pinter Minus the Moral, Sunday Times, 6 June 1965)

The Homecoming still shocks because of the absence of a conventional

moral framework (Michael Billington, The Life and Work of Harold Pinter.
London: Faber, 1996, p. 168)

If a work is pornographic because it toys with the most easily manipulated

human emotions those of sex and (more especially) violence without
pausing to relate cause and effect, then The Homecoming can even be said to
fall into such category (Simon Trussler, The Plays of Harold Pinter. London:
Gollancz, 1973, p. 118)
Dramatic shape

Pinter: I think I can say that I pay meticulous attention to the shape of things, from the shape of a
sentence to the overall structure of the play

Act I
1. Max and Lenny / Silence (pp. 1-10)
2. Max, Lenny and Sam / Silence (pp. 10-19)
3. Max, Lenny, Sam and Joey / Blackout (pp. 19-25)
4. Teddy and Ruth / Silence (pp. 25-35)
5. Teddy and Lenny / Silence (pp. 35-41)
6. Lenny and Ruth / Silence (pp. 41-54)
7. Lenny and Max / Blackout (pp. 54-57)
8. The London family and the American family / Curtain (pp. 57-70)

Act II

9. The two families / Pause (pp. 71-86)

10. Teddy and Ruth / Pause (pp. 86-90)
11. Lenny and Ruth / Pause (pp. 90-93)
12. Ruth/Lenny and the rest of the family / Blackout (pp. 93-101)
13. Teddy and the London family / Silence (pp. 101-24)
14. The proposition / Curtain (pp. 124-38)
 In the wake of the close examination of the
opening conversation between
Max and Lenny
1. Language/dialogue and its reverse, pauses/silences, as the
main tool of defamiliarisation and the key to the plays radical
nature

A language [] where under what is said, another thing is being said []

The speech we hear is an indication of that which we dont hear. It is
a necessary avoidance, a violent, sly, anguished or mocking smoke screen
which keeps the other in its place [] We have heard many times
that tired, grimy phrase: Failure of communication [...] and this phrase
has been fixed to my work quite consistently. I believe the contrary.
I think that we communicate only too well, in our silence, in what is
unsaid. (Pinter, Writing for the Theatre (1962))
 In the wake of the close examination of the
opening conversation between
Max and Lenny
2. Pinters non-referential understanding of language: referential
function of language (truth value of characters statements) vs.
pragmatic function of language (interrelational/interpersonal/
performative) speech act theory and the Cooperative
Principle as key analytical tools.

Austin Quigley, The Pinter Problem (Princeton,

NJ: Princeton UP, 1975)
 Austin Quigley (1975)

A widespread agreement [among critics] that Pinters language is doing

something new. (Quigley, p. 33)

Pinter criticsm continues to be dominated by a misleading attitude

towards the ways in which language funcions. (Quigley, p. 45)

Language may be used for an infinite number of purposes, one of which

is to refer to things [or concepts]; this function is not, however, the central
function of language, and neither is it the one upon which meaning is
centrally based. (Quigley, p. 40)

The language of a Pinter play functions primarily as a means of dictating

and reinforcing relationships. (Quigley, p. 52)
 Speech act theory
Put forward by J.L. Austin (1911-60), developed by J.R. Searle
(1932-).
Language, besides being used to communicate propositions
that may be semantically/referentially described as true or
false, has another key dimension: the pragmatic, performative
or interrelational function.
Linguistic utterances are used to perform actions: give orders,
make promises, make requests, insult, congratulate, ask
permission, warn, advise, challenge, etc.
A speech act will be described as either direct or indirect, and
as either successful or failed (in terms of whether it achieves
the intended effect on the addressee).
 The Co-operative Principle and
implicatures
H.P. Grice (1913-88).
Conversation normally takes place according to a Co-
operative Principle which speakers obey so as to further
communication rather than impede it.
The principle is divided into four maxims:
Maxim of quantity: contributions should be as informative as
required, neither more nor less;
Maxim of quality: contributions should be true;
Maxim of relation: contributions should be relevant;
Maxim of manner: contributions should be clear, brief and orderly;
they should avoid obscurity and ambiguity.
 The Co-operative Principle and implicatures
The Co-operative Principle refers not only to the
willingness on the part of the speakers to be mutually
helpful in linguistic terms, but also to their implicit
agreement to bring to the interpretation of utterances a
body of shared knowledge (ideology, belief systems,
etc.).
Whenever a certain maxim is violated, it gives rise to
implicatures: what is said between the lines.
 Austin Quigley (1975)

In giving [the pragmatic function] such extensive scope,

Pinter has simultaneously achieved his own individual
form of stage dialogue and made his work unavailable to
any critical analysis based on implicit appeals to the
reference theory of meaning. (Quigley, p. 52)

This is Pinters revolutionary contribution to

contemporary British drama/theatre, his major
legacy
 In the wake of the close examination of the
opening conversation between
Max and Lenny
3. Consequences of the prominence of the pragmatic function

a) The importance of sequence: One component of what is said in

any utterance is the factor of when the words are spoken. In
language dominated by the interrelational function the importance
of the when factor is unusually high (Quigley, p. 72)

b) A new form of audience address: A considerable burden is placed

on the audience (Quigley, p. 73) meaning can only emerge
through the spectators active engagement with the play.
 In the wake of the close examination of the
opening conversation between
Max and Lenny
4. Pinters plays (up to the early 1980s) and postmodernism

a) Pinter as a postmodernist avant la lettre, like Beckett, but in

his own indiosyncratic way.
b) Pinter vs. the Angry Young men and other politically-
committed, naturalistic playwrights (re. Bigsby): language not
conceived by Pinter as a transparent window onto reality, but
rather,
c) Language as discourse, the site where power relations are
negotiated, produced and reproduced in an ongoing process.
d) Access to reality is mediated through language/discourse and
hence through power relations.
 In the wake of the close examination of the opening
conversation between
Max and Lenny
5. The Homecoming focuses on language as discourse in the context of
the patriarchal family, family relations and gender roles:

a) The opening conversation between Lenny and Max reveals that, far from being
a stable, pre-given, harmonious unit, the London family is a patriarchal
structure where gender roles and power relations are constantly being
negotiated, constructed and reconstructed through language/disourse.
b) The Homecoming is a 1965 play that questions (perhaps even deconstructs?)
patriarchal notions of family and gender that were presented as natural,
fixed, immutable in the conservative 1950s, but were beginning to fall to
pieces in the early 1960s.

Read Sarbin and Aragay

 Patriarchy
A social system in which males hold primary power in terms of political
leadership, moral authority, social privilege and control of property. In the
domain of the family, fathers or father-figures hold authority over women and
children. Patriarchy, though hierarchical, establishes interdependence and
solidarity among men that enable them to dominate women.

Male homosocial bonds (Eve Sedgwick)

Homosocial is a word occasionally used in history and the social sciences, where
it describes social bonds between persons of the same sex; it is a neologism,
obviously formed by analogy with homosexual, and just as obviously meant to
be distinguished from homosexual. In fact, it is applied to such activities as male
bonding, which may, as in our society, be characterized by intense homophobia,
fear and hatred of homosexuality.

[T]he whole spectrum of bonds between men, including friendship, mentorship,

rivalry, institutional subordination, homosexual genitality, and economic
exchange within which the various forms of the traffic in women take place.
 The traffic in women (Claude Lvi-Strauss, Gayle Rubin)

[A] shorthand for expressing that the social relations of a kinship system
specify that men have certain rights in their female kin, and that women do
not have the same rights either to themselves or to their male kin. In this
sense, the exchange of women is a profound perception of a system in which
women do not have full rights to themselves. (Rubin)

[] it is the men who give and take them who are linked, the woman being a
conduit of a relationship rather than a partner to it [...] If women are for men
to dispose of, they are in no position to give themselves away. (Rubin)

Patriarchal heterosexuality can best be discussed in terms of one or another

form of the traffic in women: it is the use of women as exchangeable, perhaps
symbolic, property for the primary purpose of cementing the bonds of men
with men. (Sedgwick)
 The male gaze (Laura Mulvey)

In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has

been split between active/male and passive/female. The
determining male gaze projects its fantasy on to the female
figure which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist
role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with
their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so
that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness.

The Homecoming, Act II, pp. 82-86 and final tableau

 Nota sobre drets dautor

Ats el carcter i la finalitat exclusivament docent i eminentment illustrativa

de les explicacions a classe daquesta presentaci, lautor sacull a larticle 32
de la Llei de propietat intellectual vigent respecte de ls parcial dobres
alienes com ara imatges, grfics o altre material contingut en les diferents
diapositives.