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British Drama

Notes waiting period Beatie is full of Ronnie’s thoughts and words. To greet him the family gathers for a
huge Saturday afternoon tea. He doesn’t turn up. Instead comes a letter saying he doesn’t think the
relationship will work. The family turns on Beatie. In the process of defending herself she finds, to
her delight, that she’s using her own voice.
Her stern but hospitable mother gathers the family to meet him. An event of great importance is
about to take place: Beatie’s lover is coming to meet the family. He has been described, imitated,
quoted, talked about, made fun of and eagerly awaited. He doesn’t turn up. Instead, the postman
brings a letter from Ronnie saying he doesn’t think the relationship will work. The effect upon
Beatie and her family is at first numbing, then humiliating. They are incensed to have been left
standing like fools. The ensuing anger with which they turn on Beatie, her self-defence, her halting,
hesitant stumble upon fluency, the discovery of her own voice deliriously reaching high as she uses
her own words instead of Ronnie’s all take up the last 15 minutes of the play. He had been wrong;
the gap could have been bridged. “I can stand on my own two feet,” she cries.

Rather than turning up of Ronnie, a letter is brought from him saying he doesn’t
think the relationship will work. Illustrate the aftermath of this scene.
At the end of Roots there is a good example of the way this three-fold pressure is applied. The
elementary theatrical situation is that of a heroine ditched by her fiancé and alone with a family she
has outgrown. From the current sociological angle, Beatie Bryant is a working-class girl, newly
awakened to the joys of abstract painting, classical music, and extra-marital love. From Wesker’s
angle she is all that, and also a creature with a choice between self-realisation and absorption by the
greedy mass of spenders corrupted by advertising; from her own, she is a woman in love who has
done her best to reconcile her boy-friend’s view of life with that of her mother. By the end of the
play she has been let down by everybody, yet she chooses that moment to assert herself with all the
zest of a woman who at last knows her own mind. It works, because the commonplace events on
stage register a series of pressures beyond those undergone by the characters.

Self Assessment

Multiple Choice Questions:
1. There were three sources of pressure in the play the play Roots, they are
(a) current affairs, author’s attitude and the characters
(b) feudalism, admiration and power struggle
(c) feminism, social class, and author’s attitude
(d) pride, characters, and current affairs.
2. Which of the following depicts the elementary theatrical situation in the play Roots?
(a) heroine outgrown alone with the family
(b) heroine ditched by her fiancé
(c) fiancé revolted against the heroine’s family
(d) heroine’s extra marital love.
Fill in the blanks:
3. Arnold Wesker has tried his best explores the theme of ...... .
4. The elementary theatrical situation is that of a ...... ditched by her fiancé.

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