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Ruth as prostitute is all part of an elaborate, erotic role-play on the part of Ruth and Teddy to “spice up” their marriage. During the final scenes of the play, Teddy, in his cruel sarcastic way, “takes the piss” out of his entire family. Ruth, however, remains independent, cold, yet nurturing while she sits in the chair with Joey’s head in her lap and Max kneeling beside her, trembling for a kiss. Lenny just stands, watching. “Ruth stays, but she retreats into silence and a faint smile, her new stoic attitude to a male world which, despite her efforts, will never be able to conceive her actual reality.” (Sakellaridou, pg. 118.) Here, Ruth becomes the queen of the household and the fertility goddess offering the mysteries and bounties of the earth for the sustenance of a new generation.

Much has been written about Pinter’s aesthetic and contribution to Western drama. In his early career he was considered misogynistic, and always remained ambiguous about any political views being apparent in his plays. Biographer Michael Billington, when describing The Homecoming as part of a pivotal change in his works, writes: “He had defined his own particular world: one to do with power, territory, dominance and subservience, resistance to authority, the politics of private relationships, the magic and mystery of women.” (Billington, pg. 180) This “magic and mystery” inherent in his work, from analysis shows a deep respect for women as they navigate through the harsh jungle of masculine brutality, forcing to change shape and identity and to survive on instinct and intellect.

Looking for a moral stance in Pinter’s work is difficult because he consistently moves his characters through a non-realistic sea of ambiguities. Characters are constantly saying one thing, but meaning something else completely different in subtext.

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Characters such as Ruth and Sarah move through the plays making seemingly irrational decisions until the game is revealed. “Pinter is not a naturalistic dramatist. This is the paradox of his artistic personality. The dialogue and the characters are real, but the overall effect is one of mystery, of uncertainty, of poetic ambiguity.” (Esslin, pg. 30) Within this non-realistic framework, oftentimes characters are not fully psychologically motivated, such as Ruth’s behavior upon first entrance into the house, but the audience is slowly let into clues in regards to the nature of her relationship with her interior self and others. The moral framework is an interesting one, where power is gained through ritual and intelligence. Harold Bloom, professor of literature at Yale University writes: “Implicit in the world of Pinter’s dramas, however remote, however hopelessly inaccessible, are the normative values of the Jewish tradition: rational, human, trusting in justice and the Covenant, naturalistic without being idolatrous, and at the last hopeful, above all hopeful.” (Bloom, pg. 2.)

Both The Lover and The Homecoming husband and wife undergo elaborate sex rituals in order to gain power and sexual autonomy in the midst of codified traditional roles. Ruth is the intellectual, urban, sophisticated wife of an academic socialite who enjoys playing games in her open relationship. Sarah is the repressed suburban housewife who fantasizes about her own degradation, but at the same time humiliates and emasculates her husband. In both plays, the bounds of marriage and gender roles within these marriages are examined.

In the The Homecoming, female power is taken to such an extreme that Ruth, by the end of the play takes on an androgynous quality and becomes the archetype of the fertility goddess Lilith who, according to Camille Paglia is “Adam’s first wife, whose

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name means ‘of the night.’ Harold Bloom says Lilith, originally a Babylonian winddemoness, sought ascendancy in the sex act: ‘The vision men call Lilith is formed primarily by their anxiety at what they perceive to be the beauty of a woman’s body, a beauty they believe to be at once, far greater and far less than their own.’ Like Aphrodite, Circe and Lilith are the ugly made beautiful.” (Paglia, pg. 52)

In pagan cultures, the “whore” had an iconic or holy status, and represented the priestess or the gateways to mysterious worlds. In both plays, the metaphor of the whore appears again and again. In mythology, the mother/whore concept is all-powerful. Camille Paglia continues: “The Great Mother’s main disciple is her son and lover, the dying god of Near Mystery religion. Neumann says of Attis, Adonis, Tammuz, and Osiris, ‘They are loved, slain, buried and bewailed by her, and are then reborn through her.’ Maleness is merely a shadow whirled round in nature’s eternal cycle. The boy gods are ‘phallic consorts of the Great Mother, drones serving the queen bee, who are killed off as soon as they have performed their duty of fecundation.’ Mother-love smothers what it embraces. The dying gods are ‘delicate blossoms, symbolized by the myths as anemones, narcissi, hyacinths, or violets.’” (Paglia, pgs. 52-53)

Both Sarah and Ruth, take on, metaphorically the role as mother/whore at the end of both plays. All the aggression by the males and the patriarch (the dying gods) is made impotent once the goddess takes the mantle. Ruth is Isis, replacing Max as Osiris as the new cycle begins. Sarah disarms her husband’s aggressions by assuming the role of whore as part of the ritual. Ruth disarms every man in the house, easily. Ruth and Sarah do not view love as possession of others, they view it as something more free, more dangerous and exciting. In reference to the The Homecoming, Penelope Prentice writes

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of Ruth: “No one in the play can equal or match her strength, wit, or wisdom. She returns attack with understanding and tempers assertions of power with compassion and some affection. Drawing attention to Ruth’s virtue does not negate her already wellmapped darker side but points to strengths which have been ignored and to the final ambiguity which as been overlooked. If Ruth fails to achieve dominance and complies with the family’s proposal, as is commonly assumed, then she cannot be admired, and the power and complexity of the play is greatly diminished.” (Prentice, pg. 148.) Here, it could be speculated that Pinter’s plays are the illustration of a welcomed breakdown in the Jewish family traditional structure where women are allowed greater autonomy. Ruth and Sarah both find autonomy and power by testing the sexual bounds of their relationship. What is nascent in The Lover in regards to the acceptance of multiplicity in female sexuality becomes fully developed in The Homecoming.

In the 1960’s more opportunities for women were emerging, and traditional roles were being questioned. Feminism, civil rights, anti-war protests were at the forefront in the Western world. Also, due to changing economic conditions, women like Sarah would have to bring home monetary income for the household. The 1960’s were also the time of the sexual revolution and the cavalier attitude displayed by Sarah and Ruth to sex, and the lack of shame that accompanies their fantasies and their actions are indicative of changing attitudes that tended toward a more liberality in those regards. “There is an overt dramatic clash between the male and the female principles in The Homecoming as a result of Ruth’s drastic moves for the recognition of her feminine existence. Pinter makes her into a creative and progressive element in the play. She is the image of the modern woman, which was tentatively and sketchily conceived in Virginia, Flora, Sally,

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Stella and Sarah in his earlier works. Ruth belongs to those women’s progressive world.” (Sakellaridou, pg. 115.)

In The Lover, Sarah has the ability to engage in sexual intercourse with men other than her husband, and it is not kept secret. Richard, in the beginning of the play seems almost emasculated by his role in the relationship. Even though he attempts to gain power, he cannot win as she changes the game, playing the Lilith archetype to suit her own desires. Here, we see that she avoids the dominance that the male tries to force upon her. When Richard tries to “rape” Sarah at the end of the play, she disarms him and pulls him down to the floor, and to close the ritual and signify the arrival of Lilith, Richard remarks, “Change your clothes. Pause. You lovely whore.” (Pinter, pg. 196.) Here, Sarah, a chameleon changes again as part of the game. “By occasionally initiating change in order to preserve the relationship, Sarah can at other times accept a subservient role without losing dignity. (Prentice, pg. 121.)

Many would remark upon The Lover’s ambiguity, accusing it of being “misogynist,” but if one looks at it as a ritual with ambiguities within the subtext, one sees the facade of chauvinism and patriarchy being destroyed by the feminine archetypes. What is seen black comedy and satire on the nature of male and female relationships in the modern world, where women become the victors in comedic games of darkness and power.

What is a sketch in the character of Sarah becomes a fully articulated character in Ruth. She is the modern woman without shame, the mother and the whore without a master. She can use men as she wants, and she slowly, throughout the play, finds her sense of identity and power within the family and social structure. “The results of Ruth’s

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feminist campaign are rather equivocal at the end of The Homecoming. Her own gain has been unarguable because she obviously escapes victimization.” (Sakellaridou, pg. 115.) To make a firm commitment to an overtly feminist message in the play would limit its power to audience, but instead Ruth’s rise to power works in ambiguities that provide a disturbing upset to the viewer. Ruth’s character carries a brutality within her that is primal and stronger than the males around her. She defies description and categorization and in this is where her power lies.

In conclusion, both The Lover and The Homecoming are metaphors for the decline of patriarchal power in the modern world and the characters of Sarah and Ruth represent the rise in power of the new modern woman. This power is replaced by the feminine mystique and is also representative of changes happening in the society of the 1960’s and a new liberal attitude toward women and their roles in the culture. In The Lover we see female sexual desire upset the equilibrium in a repressed bourgeois household. In The

Homecoming a traditionalist working-class Jewish household has its patriarch dethroned by his gentile daughter in law. Art is a reflection upon the world, and these two plays reflect drastic changes taking place within the structure of the family and society itself in regards to both power and sexuality.

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