ABSTRACT
Mr. Eliot’s first attempt to write a popular comedy was naturally an experiment, retaining certain elements from his earlier work. ‘The Cocktail Party’ was a blend of two traditions: the tradition of the comedy of manners, whose subject is the love-game, and the tradition of romantic comedy, in which the fortunes of the characters are manipulated by more or less supernatural powers. The whole conception of the Guardians – comic Eumenides, at first regarded as nuisances, at the end recognised as ‘kindly ones’ – looked back to ‘The Family Reunion.’ It was as if those awkward shapes, whose intrusions into the drawing-room Mr. Eliot has himself mocked, and Agatha, the stern monitress, had insisted on being present, although in comic disguise. In subject, too, ‘The Family Reunion’ and ‘The Cocktail Party’ are closely related. ‘The Cocktail Party’ is the story of a marriage that breaks down and then comes right, as ‘The Family Reunion’ is the story of a marriage with a tragic issue. Harry discovers, in the wreck of his human relationships, that he should never have married at all. His is a different calling. That calling – to solitude and suffering – is present also in ‘The Cocktail Party,’ in the story of Celia. At the heart of both plays lies the doctrine of atonement, of vicarious suffering, the idea that there is a bill which someone has to pay. It is treated differently in the two plays. Harry is guilty; it is his own account as well as his family’s that he is called upon to settle. Celia does not suffer from a sense of guilt; she has no feeling that she has wronged Edward or Lavinia. Her story is, therefore, not tragic. She is conscious of sin; she becomes aware of a burden which has to be picked up and carried. But with all their differences, Thomas, the murdered Archbishop, Harry, the destroyer-saviour of his family, Celia, the self-offerer, stand in a line. Each is apart from the rest of the characters, called to a favoured lot, an ‘exaltation to afflictions high.’
