Desire

Desire Desire Under the Elms and The Childrens Hour can both be considered to be plays that exploit a sexual taboo of their time. In the case of Desire Under the Elms adultery would be the issue, with lesbianism being the main focus in The Childrens Hour. In both of these works there is a strong theme of sexual repression. How does this sexual repression play a role in who the characters are. In Desire Under the Elms it is necessary to explore the sexually repressed character Eben. Eben seems to be repressed due to the death of his mother and his feelings surrounding this event. Eben is not able to foster a healthy relationship with a female, with early evidence of this being his trips to the town prostitute known as Min. Eben has such a strong dedication to his mother that it is impossible for him to allow himself any relationship with a woman that could potentially be a part of his life, such as Abbie. The symbolism of Eben is constantly very dark and uneasy throughout the book, and this illustrates his character as sexually reperessed, through detailed description. Eben is nearly always described as if he were abbie, eben, mother, eben’s, desire, under, elms, parlor, sexual, able, oppression, relationship, denial, woman, very, throughout, through, strong, seems, says, same, mothers, mind, min, himself, herself, example, connection, character, try, time, stage, sing, sexually, repression