30 pages • 1 hour read
Sophie TreadwellMachinal
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1928A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Episodes 8-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Episode 8 Summary: “The Law”
These final episodes present Helen’s trial and execution. Helen learns her lover has betrayed her, is bullied into confessing, and relinquishes her life. She tells the court that she killed Jones “to be free” (1636). The final episode further emphasizes that her life is not her own. She can’t even die as she wishes or spend herremaining minutes in peace. Nagged by the priest and the guards, she is executed, killed by “the machine,” as she cries out for “somebody.”
In Episode 8, Helen has been arrested and we see her in court. Everyone in the court—the reporters, the lawyers—speaks mechanically and virtually ignores Helen, who is being sentenced to death. A stay of execution is summarily denied. The lawyers tell her story, getting her to agree or restate what they say as a question. One reporter offersa completely opposing view of what transpires from another: “a clear statement, a rambling confused statement” (1587).
Helen’s story suggests that much of what she says is what she learned from others, such as the police. A year has passed since she met her lover in the bar. The prosecution tells the court that he was able to get a signed statement from her lover, who was in Mexico, about their affair. The lawyer reads it out aloud and this betrayal forces her to admit that she killed her husband. She cannot bear the publicity or social pressure. Helen says she killed Jones “to be free” (1636). The lawyer asks her why Helen didn’t just divorce him. Helen says, “Oh I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t hurt him like that!” (1639-1640).
Episode 9 Summary: “The Machine”
It is the day of Helen’s execution and still she must obey society’s demands. The priest is praying loudly. The offstage voice of a black man begins to sing a spiritual. A jailer yells to stop the singing but Helen asks that the singer be allowed to continue, saying, “He helps me” (1676). When the matron tells her that she can’t hear the priest, Helen says again that the singer helps her. The Priest responds, “Don’t I help you daughter?” (1674).Helen, speaking about the singer, says, “I understand him. He is condemned. I understand him” (1676).
The singing voice grows louder and drowns out the voice of the priest chanting in Latin. Two barbers come in to shave Helen’s hair. She refuses to let them. She gets pressured to do this: “the rule”; “the regulations”; “routine” (1690-1692).She tells them not to touch her: “I will not be submitted [to] this indignity, No! […] Leave me alone. Oh my God am I never to be let alone! Always to have to submit, to submit! No more, not now, I’m going to die, I won’t submit” (1694-1696). This powerful statement,like all her refusals, falls on deaf ears. The barber succeeds in cutting off a patch ofHelen’s hair.
Because of this treatment, Helen becomes unnerved and starts asking the priest why she was born, if she will find peace.The priest is too busy chanting prayers to hear her. To each of her outcries in which she ardently tries to understand her fate, he responds with a stock phrase from the Bible. Helen notices an airplane past the window and thinks that the pilot can fly but “is not free” (1721).Helen says that she has been free once in her life, when she killed her husband: “When I did what I did I was Free! Free and not afraid” (1722). Helen begs the priest to offer a prayer that she understands.
Helen’s mother tries to visit her, but Helen refuses to see her, saying, “She’s a stranger, take her away” (1735-1736),and yet Helen reaches her arms through the bars to hug her mother. Further, she remembers her child. She wants her mother to tell the child something, but she doesn’t get the chance to say it, asboth the mother and priest fade into darkness and the stage is filled with the sound of the offstage voices of reporters. Among other things, they say, “Suppose the machine shouldn’t work,” and “It’ll work, it always works” (1736). Helen’s final act of rebellion is to pull her hair out from under the cap she is forced to wear. Just as she did on her honeymoon, she cries out “somebody, somebody” (1775-1776). Her last “somebody” is cut off, however, by her death.
Episodes 8-9 Analysis
The concluding episodes remove Helen entirely from the personal and place her in one of the most mechanical aspects of society: the justice system. Helen, per stage directions, is tiny and surrounded by the high walls of the courtroom. Amid the words of the lawyers, the priest, and the reporters, her own words and pleas are scarcely heard. That Helen connects with the singing of a black man is because she recognizes in him someone else who has been condemned by larger society. Helen is torn between her desire for freedom and her need for some of society’s conventions. She hugs her mother, and she seems to regret not knowing her child. Treadwell suggests that this is the fate of women: being torn between condemnation and need. Treadwell, through Helen, shows us how women, in a mechanized and stultifying world, possess only the most severe modes for freedom from bondage, and do so at their own peril. The power of the law encompasses her completely. All who are in the court, all who are executioners, wield complete power over the “criminal,” who in many cases is simply the one who has been the most powerless through their life.
