Family and sexuality in Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party and The Homecoming

Abstract

This dissertation seeks to explore the themes of family and sexuality among the characters in Harold Pinter‟s The Birthday Party (1922) and The Homecoming (1965). Harold Pinter is a modern British dramatist (1930-2008) whose works fall under the category of the Comedy of Menace for their dark and disturbing portrayal of human relationships and interactions. They are also famous for absurdist and post-war elements which are commonly discussed by critics and scholars. Instead, I have chosen to look at the elements of family and sexuality in the two plays by Pinter because I have found that less work has been done in this area. I think these topics can prove interesting areas of study which can lead to new findings about Pinter‟s works. I will do a textual analysis of the plays and, especially, look at the characters and their interactions with each other. In doing so, I will argue how Pinter gives us an illusion of family while hinting at the fragility of traditional family structures which can be easily threatened and broken. Also, I will show how sexuality is used by both genders, male and female, as a tool of power to dominate each other in the false family structures shown in his plays. For my discussion, I will use theoretical references of Freud‟s and Lacan‟s psychoanalytic theory as well as feminist criticism.