Play - Santa Monica Courthouse

“At two o’clock they met Carter and the lawyers outside the courtroom in Santa Monica, and at two-thirty Maria swore and Helene confirmed that the defendant, Carter Lang, had repeatedly struck and in other ways humiliated the plaintiff, Mrs. Maria Lang. The charge was mental cruelty, contested. This Mrs. Maria Lang, to whom the lawyers referred seemed to Maria someone other than herself, an aggrieved wife she might see interviewed on television” (108)

Maria is a passive agent in her own life. Her story is told for her, as things happen to her, rather than by her. At the same time though, the story is a false one—Maria is constantly playing a role due to the artificiality she is surrounded with. While Maria is letting others dictate her life, all Maria is capable of is movement, and lacks the ability of speech (articulating her needs, wants and emotions). Thus, Maria is an underdeveloped person, in that she exists, in a semiotic (pre-verbal) state, rather than a symbolic (her hypnotist, for instance, says she wishes to return to the womb). By lacking speech, and relying solely on movement for self expression, Maria drives. The movement, however, is into the past and lacks any real development.