Picnic

“When I hear that train coming into town, I always get a feeling of excitement… in here.”

Madge is headed toward a life trapped within the confines of a small town. She would be safe and comfortable for the rest of her life, but her life would also be predictable. Unlike Millie, Madge has not formulated any kind of plan for escaping small-town life; she has vague fantasies of being rescued but expects to follow the path her mother has set out for her. However, the train represents freedom and the unknown. Later in the play, when Hal leaves on the same train, she will embrace the unknown and seek her own exciting life.

“It doesn’t hurt what names I call her! She’s pretty, names don’t bother her at all!”

Millie sees the benefits of being a pretty girl, but she doesn’t see that Madge is human and has her own fears and insecurities. She can only see the way it hurts when someone makes fun of her own appearance. Millie also doesn’t understand that words like “slut” hurt and degrade beautiful girls just as much as calling Millie ugly hurts and degrades her.

“Well… pretty things… like flowers and sunsets and rubies… […] and pretty girls, too… they’re like billboards telling us that life is good.”

When Madge asks her mother, “What good is it to be pretty?” (14), Flo fumbles to give an adequate response. What Flo is really saying in her attempt to cheer Madge is that beauty is objectifying. She likens Madge to a sunset or a billboard—something that gives others pleasure and optimism, but not someone who gets to choose who enjoys her beauty.

“I don’t like him or dislike him. I just wonder what he’s like.”

Hal immediately intrigues Madge. Certainly, she is taken with him (and he with her), but what makes Hal interesting to Madge is that he represents life outside of the smallness and safety of the small town. He is unsheltered and worldly. Flo insists that she knows what he’s like because her experience has left her jaded about men who seem like free spirits. Nevertheless, Madge is still curious and wants to learn for herself.

“Pictures don’t have to be pretty!”

Millie is intelligent and artistic, but she has always felt overshadowed by her sister’s beauty. She is frustrated that the people around her can only see beauty superficially instead of seeing beauty in substance, as in the book she is reading or the Picasso prints by her bed. She wants others to value her own substance and find it just as beautiful as her sister’s prettiness.

“I didn’t want to walk into your palatial mansion lookin’ like a bum.”

Hal may have come to town to find Alan and ask for help, but he is not a freeloader. Hal has always been poor. He came from poverty and neglect and worked his way into a football scholarship. Hal is embarrassed to ask for assistance, just as he was uncomfortable asking Helen to feed him breakfast.

“I’ve always had the feeling, if I just had the chance, I could set the whole world on fire.”

Hal isn’t content with the life he was born into and believes that he can be special, even if he has not yet managed much personal success. Alan, who has never had to work hard, doesn’t have the same kind of faith in Hal’s dreams. He lent Hal some money to become an actor based on his attractive face, but he doesn’t put enough stock into Hal as a person to help him get a job that offers upward mobility. Alan also admits to having always envied Hal, so he isn’t willing to be the one who gives Hal the chance to set the world on fire.

“Madge cooks and sews and does all those things that women do.”

Millie likes to mock her sister for her femininity. Her comment to Hal is sarcastic and followed by a boyish arm punch, but it also shows that Millie can’t separate womanhood from traditional feminine gender roles.

“I want to see if you look real in the moonlight. […] I don’t care if you’re real or not. You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

Alan is attempting to compliment Madge and be romantic, but his statement falls flat. He demonstrates that he only loves her for her beauty and sees her as a beautiful “thing” that may or may not be real. Madge wants to be treated as someone with substance rather than just an object to look at.

“It just seems that when I’m looking in the mirror that’s the only way I can prove to myself I’m alive.”

Madge is only praised for being pretty. She becomes upset when her mother jokes about her spending too much time in front of the mirror, because her looks are all she’s ever learned to value. People notice her because she is attractive, and she wonders if anyone would see her at all if she weren’t.

“I never knew Millie could look so pretty. It’s just like a movie I saw once with Betty Grable… or was it Lana Turner? Anyway, she played the part of a secretary to some very important businessman. She wore glasses and did her hair real plain and men didn’t pay any notice to her at all. Then one day she took off her glasses and her boss wanted to marry her right away! Now I tell Millie—all the boys are going to fall in love with her!”

When Millie dresses up for the picnic, she experiences the unwanted attention that Madge gets for being feminine and beautiful. Helen’s account of the movie suggests that beauty is what makes a woman visible. Millie is uncomfortable with traditional femininity, and the sudden attention makes it difficult for her to dip her toe into discovering the kind of woman she wants to be.

“Clothes don’t make the man.”

From the start, Helen sees past Hal’s dirty, worn-out clothes to identify the man underneath. Perhaps her trust in the men she brings home to work for her is naïve, but Flo immediately dislikes him for his ragged appearance. In this play, clothes do very much make the man (and woman), as they determine the way people view, categorize, and treat each other.

“He gave me these boots and he said, ‘Son, the man of the house needs a pair of boots ‘cause he’s gotta do a lot of kickin’.’”

Hal’s boots represent the burden of his rough and ill-mannered upbringing, which continues to follow him and impede his efforts to advance his life. To his father, the boots represented masculine authority—something to which he believed that any man was entitled no matter what else he had or did.

“Mind your manners, Hal.”

Hal feels out of place with Alan and his friends because he never learned how to be reserved and tactful. Hal is never rude or disrespectful in any way that might cause any real discomfort, but he is rough around the edges. While Alan reassures him in some moments, he also occasionally reminds Hal that he thinks of him like a dog who hasn’t been housetrained.

“I write poetry, too. I’ve written poems I’ve never shown to a living soul.”

When Millie puts on a dress and receives compliments and attention for her appearance, she is self-conscious and feels exposed. But instead of trying to be her sister, Millie finds her own confidence by showing Hal the things about herself that make her proud—her art, her intelligence, and her writing. She also lets him know that she has depths that she keeps hidden even as she feels exposed.

“Seems to me, when the good Lord made a girl as pretty as she is, He did it for a reason, and it’s about time she found out what that reason is.”

Howard is staring at Madge, who is half his age, and speaking frankly about his attraction to her because he is alone with Hal. While the men might avoid such overtly lascivious statements when women are around, Howard’s assertion shows that he, like many of the other characters, sees beauty as an excuse to objectify a woman. Her beauty makes her community property, and he suggests that she should act like it.

“He’s dancing with Madge. They’re young people.”

When a drunk Rosemary tries to force Hal to dance with her, she is embarrassed when he politely declines. Howard has to pull Rosemary away from him so firmly that Rosemary rips Hal’s shirt. What leads her to cruelly humiliate Hal is that Howard tries to tell her what he thinks she should already know: that Rosemary isn’t as young and carefree as Hal and Madge, and that she should be mature and step aside.

“Women like Miss Sydney make me disgusted with the whole female sex.”

Madge comforts a dejected Hal, who has taken Rosemary’s insults to heart. Rosemary only lashed out at Madge and Hal because their existence makes her more conscious of her own insecurities.

“Then what’s the next thing in store for me? To be nice to the next man, then the next… till there’s no one left to care whether I’m nice to him or not. Till I’m ready for the grave and don’t have anyone to take me there.” 

Earlier in the play, Rosemary claims that she was just as beautiful as Madge when she was young. As a more mature woman, Rosemary shows what happens when youth fades and beauty has yet to pay out. Rosemary has been passively waiting and saving herself while convincing herself (and others) that she is fine alone. When she has sex with Howard, she accepts that she has aged and needs to reconsider her life choices.

“I’m really happier with a job like that, one I can really handle, than I would pretendin’ to be a big-shot.” 

Hal has big dreams for his life, even if none of those dreams have any specificity. He wanted Alan to get him a job, but he didn’t really know what kind of job beyond suggesting that it might be in an office. Connecting with Madge has helped Hal to become more grounded: He can feel important because Madge cares for him while being realistic about his goals and abilities.

“Oh, Mom, what can you do with the love you feel? Where is there you can take it?”

Flo once allowed herself to be carried away for the sake of passion and love, and it ended badly for her. She has tried to protect her daughters from that kind of overwhelming romance, pushing Madge toward a man who is stable but for whom her feelings are tepid. However, now that Madge is feeling love for the first time, she can only give into it, no matter how much practical advice her mother gives.

“Madge is beautiful. Did I think I could spend the rest of my life just looking at her?”

Alan’s assessment of Madge is cruel. It shows that his love for her had no more depth than her beauty, and he never bothered to consider her as a full and complex person.

“With just Mama and me in the house I’d got so used to things as they were—occasionally a hairpin on the floor… and the smell of Mama’s medicines. Then he walked through the door and clomped through the tiny rooms as if he was still outdoors. There was a man in the house, and it seemed good. […] And that reminded me, I’m a woman. And that seemed good, too.”

Helen’s obvious infatuation with Hal often makes her seem comical. She is generally a cheerful woman who seems to be happy. However, her explanation to Flo reveals the loneliness and lifelong pain that her mother caused by keeping her from the man she loved. She shows what could become of Madge if she doesn’t pursue love and passion.