| In this dissertation, a family systems (fs) analysis is performed on five plays---The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, Long Day's Journey Into Night by Eugene O'Neill, Sticks and Bones by David Rabe, Buried Child by Sam Shepard, and Painting Churches by Tina Howe. The fs approach supplements the Freudian method of psychological criticism, which has come under scrutiny from mental health professionals for the idea that behavior can be traced to one cause. While psychologists have continued to modernize methods of patient intervention and therapy, psychological literary criticism has largely clung to a methodology many mental health professionals consider outdated. Family systems terms emphasize circular, rather than linear, causation: each character's behavior affects, and is affected by, the behavior of someone else in the system. The fs approach sees the individual as one element of a larger group, a dynamic and constantly evolving family where all members play a role in the identity formation of its members. Members of the family are so interconnected that an experience affecting one will affect all. An fs approach sees the family at the play's center, an approach that is inherently dramatic.; In advocating the fs approach as suitable for dramatic literature, this dissertation explores the effect of a disability on five families. An fs approach is effective because the disability creates tension and alliances among members, represented by faulty communication patterns as the family unknowingly colludes in the furthering of their collective dysfunction. As such, the fs approach is suitable for the analysis of drama because it is attentive to the communal nature of the characters onstage, characterized by external conflict. There is dramatic tension as family members try to move the family towards normalcy, when in reality their efforts pull the family in the opposing direction. The tension created by the ensuing conflict is the essence of drama, an energy system running through each of the families as the members resist the changes that the disability has engendered. |
