A Romance Perfected and Abled through Disability
You don’t get married to be happy, You get married so, you know, you have someone to share your unhappiness with. — Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah
The disconnected relationship between Winnie and Willie in the 2017 UBC Production of Happy Days emphasizes their disabled condition, and thus, theatrically disables the romantic relationship of these married partners through costume, horrific use of light, blocking/proximity, and exaggerated facial expressions. The physical disability and immobility represent the miscommunication between Willie and Winnie, and their inability to connect causes discordance and turbulence in their marriage. The love relationship between the two main characters seems to lack ‘love’ in a general sense, thus my claim to term it as ‘disabled’ and ‘disconnected’; yet this lessening factor and seemingly loveless intercourse are what paradoxically allows the couple’s chemistry to be truly romantic. Winnie and Willie are reflections of each other’s character and share a special bond despite their disabilities since the “display of human intercourse when relations are founded not on the independent agency but on dependence” outshines what is grounded upon independence (Davidson 115). Ability instead of disability may cause separation from one another since then, they would have no use or need for one another.
The need for dependence due to our lack of quality and ability is what forces us not only to be attracted but also drives us to the extent of clinging onto one another. From the outfits of Willie and Winnie, we can perceive an air of unlikelihood between the pair, which also portrays signs of weakened identity and a vulnerable version of the self. When Willie crawls out from his hole at the end of Act II, he is dressed in a white dress shirt with a black suit to top it off. This attire reminds me of what one would wear for a funeral in an extremely somber and destitute mood, completely depleted from joy and happiness. Therefore, the funeral wear accentuates Willie’s weary crawl, forcing it to appear like a groveling gesture for Winnie’s attention, which creates a discordance with his previous cold, nonchalant treatment of her. The death of someone important reminds one of memories and thoughts influenced by the deceased.
There is a symbolic meaning behind Willie and Winnie’s costumes. Unlike Willie’s funeral wear which is suitable for public occasions, Winnie’s slip is for more private situations, more fitting for one’s bedroom rather than the outdoors for others to view. Sleep is an unconscious action (or inaction) where one’s mind is in a realm that transcends time and space; thus, sleep also represents death. This theme of death is connected to both Willie's and Winnie’s outfits. Winnie’s sleepwear is worn as an undergarment underneath a lady’s outer dress, which can be metaphorically interpreted as one’s inner insecurities and what one hides from the public’s view. To sum up, Willie’s funeral wear represents the forlorn outlook on societal stigma of a decaying marriage while Winnie’s lingerie indicates one’s insecurity towards such an apprehensive reality in the form of a broken, no longer functioning, and therefore, disabled relationship.
The couple’s manner of fashion that opposes one another in terms of its purpose ironically results in uniting the pair through its combined meaning, which is displayed in the unity of the costumes’ color: charcoal black. Winnie and Willie are seen as a pair, still a married couple, no matter how dysfunctional their relationship may seem to the audience through the singularity in the color of their costumes. There are numerous contrasting factors that divide Winnie and Willie apart as Beckett intends this since his “disabled characters [are used] as metaphors for alienation and solitude in the modern world” (Davidson 111). However, the costume designers demonstrate the couple’s togetherness despite their dissonance so that the similarities would balance out the differences and show that the two are separate sides of the same coin — a character foil for one another in explaining the thematic idea of an old aged marriage that passed its prime while waiting for its ultimate doom. Winnie and Willie are independent characters from one another, yet their lack of independence due to their disabilities is the reason behind their dependence on each other. The crumbling relationship embodied by their disabled bodies forces each character to hold on more dearly to its disintegrating pieces since they “are disabled and form tenuous alliances for mutual aid” (Davidson 111).
Discordance between Willie and Winnie is portrayed through their costume (and headgear), imbalance in line distribution, and continuous miscommunication, such as the scene when Willie and Winnie laugh for different reasons at Willie’s reference to “formication” (Beckett 30). Winnie puts on a flamboyant 18th-century style headdress decorated with feathers and jewels in Act I as if she is an aristocratic lady and continues to wear it until the end of the play. The hat is imbalanced with her costume since her slip is for indoors while the antique headdress is for the outdoors. As for Willie, he performs a sequence in Act I where he repeats the action of placing a sun hat on and off of his head. A formal headdress mismatched with an informal nightgown and a bright sun hat that is incongruous with a funeral suit creates a parallel with one another. This disoriented costume selection signifies the disorientation from the self since Winnie forces herself to proclaim happiness on a daily basis despite her fixed, unpleasant situation of being buried in the ground while Willie acts brutishly by responding in grunts, thus rejecting any kind of intellectual conversation with his wife, even though he is intelligent enough to read a newspaper: “WILLIE turns page… WILLIE reads” (Beckett 15). The discrepancy in costume, however, is a similarity shared between both Willie and Winnie no matter how ridiculous their appearance may seem to the viewers. Although the couple is wearing mixed-up accessories with their attire, at least, they are disordered together. This togetherness, which creates a sense of communion, is what Winnie strives to achieve during the entire performance, making multiple attempts to communicate with Willie and refusing to accept the fact that soon, there will be no communication except her monologue. Thus, they are both physically disabled and not completely sane either, but still, they are together in the mess and that is what truly counts.
At the end of Act II, when Willie and Winnie gaze at each other for the first time in front of the audience, I sensed love that transcends physicality. Seeing each other for who they truly are is a noble revelation beyond compare no matter how dire the situation may be. Davidson claims that Beckett’s characters’ “personal interrelationships seem based less on love and affection than on contingency and survival” (113). Yet, I argue that ‘love’ and ‘survival’ go hand in hand with one another instead of being separate entities; we love as a method for survival. Winnie’s mundane daily routines and constant endeavors to strike up a conversation with Willie are her way of loving Willie and herself, holding on to a sense of normalcy by accepting the day-to-day tasks as a series of ‘happy days’ when she obviously has the option to commit suicide by using Brownie the revolver during Act I. As a result, the eye contact scene in Act II must have been a long-awaited moment for Winnie. When observing Willie crawl up the mound, he is overly exerting himself to reach Winnie. Even though Willie’s physical disability prevents him from sharing any direct physical touch with his wife, Winnie is not disappointed by this lack of skinship because what she truly “seeks [is] to maintain the illusion that she is still being seen — and thus that she still exists” (Davidson 117). Making eye contact is just as precious, if not more than sharing a kiss. “The more Winnie seeks verification that someone is watching, the more we realize that we, as the audience, are sustaining the illusion that she takes for reality”, and this is why Willie’s strenuous attempts to hold Winnie’s gaze despite his failing body is that much more emphasized and thus, romanticized (Davidson 117).
Funeral, sleep, and black are all keywords that are linked to death, which indicates termination for everything that is alive, including the sacred bond between a husband and wife. The performance throws this ultimatum at the audience by using glow-in-the-dark skeleton face paint on Winnie’s visage at the end of Act II. According to the script, the ending is only depicted as “WINNIE…turns her eyes, smiling, to WILLIE, still on his hands and knees looking up at her. Smile off. They look at each other. Long pause” (Beckett 64). There is no stage direction that Winnie’s face should resemble that of a skull after a black-out. This unique aspect of the UBC Production not only represents a relationship’s demise but signals a complete end of Winnie and Willie’s lives. The skull figure clears up the ambiguities behind the ending of the play of whether or not Willie’s last utterance of affection for Winnie, “Win,” will be a definite closure of his emotions by ending on a positive note. If another day will commence after for the couple to repeat the daily sequence of their mundane existence, Winnie will have to forcefully persuade herself that “this is a happy day” (Beckett 64). As a result, the skull gives a sense of finality that removes all potential animosity and anxiety that Winnie might have in the future of continuing meaningless rituals and endeavors of gaining Willie’s waning attention.
In conclusion, UBC Production’s decision to re-create Happy Days by implementing oddity in costume choice, stressed actions of Willie to reach Winnie while maintaining eye contact, and the ominous skull at the ending are all combined to create a performance that supports the theme of love along the cliche phrase: ‘mind over matter.’ Winnie and Willie’s relationship is one that has passed its prime, its climax, and their bodies continue to decompose with time, as proven by a higher level of soil that strips Winnie from the agency of her upper body in Act II as well as Willie having a harder time moving in and out of his hole. Despite this limited physical situation and disability, the play stresses the importance of the quote, “to decompose is to live too” (Davidson 113). I would like to alter the quote for it to be more befitting to the tale of Winnie and Willie by stating: ‘To decompose is to love too.’
Works Cited
Beckett, Samuel. Happy Days a play by Samuel Beckett. Grove Press, 1961.
Davidson, Michael. “Chapter 5: “Every Man His Specialty”: Beckett Disability, And Dependence.” Disability Theatre and Modern Drama: Recasting Modernism, Bloomsbury Methuen, 2016, pp. 109–127.