Mourning Becomes Electra theme of Oedipus and Electra Complex: O' Neil OR Discuss the theme of Mourning Becomes Electra
Again, when Christine has killed her husband by giving him poison instead of the medicine, Lavinia's dying father, her incestuous love, has indicated the killer before breathing his last "She's guilty-not medicine!". In the agony of lost love, Lavinia has decided to revenge from her mother and she says her: "You murdered him!". Though the first part of trilogy end here yet in the next part "The Hunted", at first she exposes the truth to her brother Orin who refuses to believe her. Apparently, he seems to be in complete confidence of his mother but deep down he is yearning for her. He has incestuous love for her. Later, when he gets suspicious of the adulterous relationship between his mother and Adam, Orin and Lavinia slay Adam while he has come to meet their mother. This shocks their mother and she commits suicide. Later, Orin's desires direct towards Lavinia and when he find her falling for Peter, he too commits suicide in the 3rd part of the trilogy.
The trilogy reveals how slighted attentions and ignorance of the female child during the age of 3 to 5 would encourage the Oedipus complex to grow crushing the "superego" and all moral as well as growth features of human mind. The case of Lavinia is a neat example to prove this case. Beyond Oedipus or Electra Complexes, it is the parental conditions which help nourish the positive growth of a child's mind. With proper care all psychosexual complexes could be controlled and dissipated in the early years of a child but the rifts within Mannon family merely ignited the complexes to take shape and come into being. All this carved the personality of Lavinia into a pitiable psycho-lover. There seems a lurching shadow of evil over the very building of Mannon house. We may merely pity with the condition of Lavinia who went astray merely because of the ignorance on the part of her parents, especially her mother.
Though in this story of hate, love and revenge, characters have wielded full weight to take away from others whatever they can. They meant this as a kind of punishment. For example, Christine kills her husband as punishment to her daughter and her husband himself. Lavinia killed her mother's lover to punish her mother, to throw her into loneliness; this is the same loneliness which she has suffered in childhood. And Orin punished himself for losing his mother at first and then even Lavinia. But Lavinia appears to have been the bravest of all. Towards the line lines of the third part of the play she says to Seth: "I'm not going the way Mother and Orin went. That's escaping punishment. And there's no one left to punish me. I'm the last Mannon. I've got to punish myself! Living alone here with the dead is a worse act of justice than death or prison! I'll never go out or see anyone!"