39 pages • 1 hour read
A View from the Bridge
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Themes
The Role of Work and Performance in Constituting Masculinity
After ordering Catherine to remove her high heels, Eddie says that “all actresses they want to be around here” (397). His comment highlights the ways Eddie defines femininity versus masculinity. To be the object of aesthetic attention is to be feminine. Any form of performance, such as singing or dancing, is feminine in Eddie’s eyes, as are things that draw attention, such as flashy or attractive clothes. In contrast, in Eddie’s Red Hook community, masculinity is defined by work, particularly physical labor. Work is antithetical to performance in that it is practical rather than aesthetic. The kind of work Eddie does at the piers is a means to support a family; the work does not draw attention to itself. Marco, for instance, is described as a “regular bull” who works hard with his hands to provide for his family without seeking praise or attention (400). Likewise, Eddie talks about how he “worked like a dog twenty years” (409), and how “in the worst times […] didn’t stand around lookin’ for relief” (409).
It is for these reasons that Eddie regards Rodolpho as unmanly. What raises Eddie’s suspicions about Rodolpho, in contrast to Marco, is that Rodolpho’s aspirations involve performance. Rodolpho talks about buying a blue motorcycle which makes “a great noise” so that he can become a messenger at expensive hotels (394). Similarly, he does not just sing, but sings, as Marco says, “too loud” (395). From the way he makes others laugh to the “pointy pair [of] new shoes” and “snappy new jacket he buys” (403), Rodolpho eschews serious “manly” work in favor of aesthetic presentation.
Yet A View from the Bridge also questions this dichotomy between work and performance by demonstrating that Eddie’s form of masculinity is itself performed. Eddie responds to the threat of Rodolpho and Catherine dancing by suggesting that the men go and see a boxing match. He then boxes Rodolpho in front of the others on the pretext of “teaching” Rodolpho, before Marco challenges Eddie to lift a chair and then does so himself. All of these are exhibitions of the traditionally masculine traits of physical strength and competition performed for the benefit of an audience. Likewise, in the fight between Marco and Eddie, both men play their roles in a pre-established public ritual which becomes the ultimate performance of masculinity. As with Eddie’s denial of his attraction to Catherine, it is the denial of this truth that condemns both. Unwilling to see what they are doing as a mode of performance, Marco and Eddie pursue the presentation of masculinity to its tragic end.
The Conflict Between Official and Natural Law
Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses a man’s quasi-incestuous desire for his surrogate daughter.
At the play’s start, Alfieri comments on how Louis and Mike nod uneasily to him as he walks past. This is because, says Alfieri, “in this neighborhood to meet a lawyer or a priest on the street is unlucky. We’re only thought of in connection with disasters” (379). On one level then, hostility to lawyers and the law is a matter of superstition. Just as one stays away from doctors and priests as they are associated with death, so too one avoids lawyers because they are linked with personal discord and tragedy. Yet there is also a deeper reason for the suspicion of lawyers in A View from the Bridge. As Alfieri says, “a lawyer means the law, and in Sicily, from where their fathers came, the law has not been a friendly idea since the Greeks were beaten” (379). The law represents an outside authority that can both control and destroy people’s lives. This is especially the case for the Red Hook immigrant community of the play. US immigration services and the laws that they enforce are a constant threat to the play’s characters, some of whom are not in the US legally. When Eddie says to Catherine and Beatrice, “you don’t see nothin’ and you don’t know nothin’” (388), he is articulating his community’s moral opposition to the official law of the land. The moral law dictates that they stay as far away as possible from official law and avoid helping or engaging with its representatives at all costs.
However, Eddie ends up transgressing his community’s moral laws by enlisting representatives of the official law. His jealousy of Catherine’s feelings for Rodolpho is so strong that he visits Alfieri, imagining “there must be some kinda law” against Rodolpho’s behavior (409). When he discovers that there is not, his frustration leads him to take matters into his own hands, informing on Rodolpho to the immigration bureau. The conflicts and ambiguities among official, moral, and natural law in Eddie’s behavior are complex. Eddie’s core motivation is his love for Catherine. Because Catherine is a part of Eddie’s family and raised her as a father figure, his sexual attraction to her transgresses the natural law against incest. Eddie seeks to prevent Rodolpho from getting in the way of his incestuous love by appealing to official law through Alfieri, but Alfieri explains to him that his issues with Rodolpho are not a matter of the laws of the land, but rather of the laws of his community. When Eddie turns Marco and Rodolpho in to the immigration authorities, his appeal to official law violates the laws of hospitality that demand that he accommodate and protect fellow immigrants.
Other characters struggle with the distinctions between official law and what they instinctively feel ought to be against the law, as well. Marco questions the disconnect between the official law and natural law when Alfieri explains that the condition for his bail is that he not retaliate against Eddie: “he degraded my brother. My blood. He robbed my children […] there is no law for that?” (434) To Marco, the law appears hostile to justice not only because it threatens him with deportation, but also because it prevents him from enforcing his own ethical code. In this sense, the conflict between official and natural law also represents a clash between traditional Sicilian and liberal values. The latter is not interested in vaguer ideas of “honor” or “blood” but only in, as Alfieri says, “what’s provable” in court (407). By bringing traditional values into conflict with the official laws of the US, Eddie and Marco guarantee their own destruction.
Immigration and the Dynamics of Hospitality
Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses anti-immigrant sentiment.
When Eddie and Beatrice are discussing the imminent arrival of her cousins from Italy, Eddie says, “suppose my father didn’t come to this country, and I was starvin’ like them over there […] The man would be honored to lend me a place to sleep” (383). By helping his extended family, Eddie connects himself to a noble lineage of Italian immigrants who help and look after one another. Being a good and generous person in Eddie’s community entails offering hospitality and protection to anyone connected with it, a fact that is reinforced when Beatrice tells him “you’ll get a blessing for this!” (383). Hospitality was also a key virtue in ancient Greek society; in classical tragedy, a breach of hospitality is often the crime that kicks off the events that lead to the downfall of a tragic hero. Such is the case with Eddie Carbone.
The arrival of Rodolpho disturbs the established equilibrium of Eddie’s house. Eddie is jealous of Rodolpho’s burgeoning relationship with Catherine and disturbed by the softer version of masculinity that he performs. These feelings compound the ambivalence Eddie had already expressed about the demands hospitality has placed on him in the past, such as when he gave up his bed to accommodate Beatrice’s mother after a house fire. Eddie starts projecting his sense of jealousy and resentment into a sense that his hospitality is being exploited. This resentment then bursts out when Eddie goes to see Alfieri. He says about Rodolpho, “he came out of nowhere! […] I take the blankets off my bed for him, and he takes and puts his dirty filthy hands on her like a goddam thief!” (410). Eddie descends into anti-immigrant tropes about Rodolpho to explain his rage, accusing him of not just abusing his hospitality but of actively stealing from him. Eventually, his resentment leads him to commit the ultimate violation of immigrant hospitality: turning in his guests to the authorities.
At the same time, Rodolpho gives voice to the frustrations of the guest and the immigrant in this situation. Expected to be endlessly grateful for the right to simply work and survive, he is nonetheless repeatedly insulted, and his motives continually questioned. He still loves his home country and resents the expectation that he should venerate America: “[Y]ou think I would carry on my back the rest of my life a woman I didn’t love just to be an American? It’s so wonderful? You think we have no tall buildings in Italy?” (420). Rodolpho here challenges the dehumanizing assumption that he would do anything to get a passport. He also resents the patronizing idea that just because there is work in the US, he must see the US as somehow awe-inspiring. Thus, A View from the Bridge is a comment not just on the dynamics of the guest and host relationship; it is also a metaphor for the troubled relationship between the US and the immigrants which the country historically celebrates and has come to fear.
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