The Philadelphia Story (Criticism)

Criticism

Helena Ifeka

Ifeka is a Ph.D. specializing in American and British literature. In this essay, she analyzes Barry’s treatment of class issues in The Philadelphia Story.

Barry’s comedies are almost all set in the world of “high society” and feature characters who are rich, privileged, and educated. This does not mean, however, that he sets out to celebrate the upper-class; in fact, Barry subtly explores class conflict in many of his comedies, including The Philadelphia Story.

Barry is no radical, however, and while he presents his audiences with hints of the conflicts that underscored the myth of American egalitarianism, he never moves beyond this gentle thematization of class conflict. In fact, his endings usually reinforce rather than challenge the status quo.

The Lords, as their surname boldly asserts, are so firmly entrenched as leaders of Philadelphia society as to almost be American aristocrats. Pennsylvania, the home of so much revolutionary activity during the American Revolution, is home to an established social hierarchy that would have made the American Loyalists proud.

Barry emphasizes this ironic twist of history in a tense exchange between Sandy and Mike early in the play. The two men discuss the present Democratic Roosevelt administration, and Mike asks — assuming the Sandy is a conservative — “I suppose you’re all of you opposed to the Administration.” Sandy wittily responds, “No — as a matter of fact we’re Loyalists.”

Sandy’s word play hints that the Lords may be liberal supporters of the Roosevelt Administration, but also suggests that their sympathies would have been “Loyalist” (or pro-British, anti-Revolutionary) during the American Revolution.

The same exchange between Mike and Sandy is critical to Barry’s development of the theme of class conflict. In it, Sandy reveals himself to be sensitive about his family’s wealth and privilege: “I think you ought to give us a break... in spite of certain of our regrettably inherited characteristics, we just might be fairly decent.” Mike, however, is not so quick to set aside his suspicions.

These suspicions are confirmed when Sandy admits that although he, like Mike, does work in the newspaper industry, the two men are on opposite sides of the divide: Mike, a journalist, represents the working man, whereas Sandy, an editor, organizes and dictates policy and is therefore management. Mike announces brusquely that he is “opposed to everything” Sandy represents, but Sandy responds coolly that Mike’s magazine “is hardly a radical sheet,” and asks him snidely, “what is it you’re doing — boring from within?”

A moment later, he adds that Mike’s idol, Thomas Jefferson, was never a man of the people, but rather, like the Lords, came from a background of wealth and privilege: “Have you ever seen his house at Monticello?”

The two men’s opposing interests and perspectives are only reconciled in their joint — and somewhat underhanded — decision to collude in the blackmailing of Mike’s editor, Sidney Kidd. Sandy acts in the interests of the Lord family to reveal Kidd’s own dirty past; Mike, only half-aware of what he is doing, reveals the necessary information, because he believes that Kidd is degrading his creative talent. Their action is hardly one of class resistance: rather, each man is inspired to strike out at Kidd for his own reasons, and each man joins forces with the other only in order to achieve this goal. However, it suggests that they have reached a rapprochement.

Barry’s ambivalent attitude towards class difference is most apparent in the characterization of George Kittredge. George, whom Tracy describes as an “angel,” was once a dirty angel: a coalminer who worked in the mines and rose through the ranks to the head of the company. Early in the play, Sandy asks Tracy whether George was “sore” about a recent newspaper article about him, in which he was identified as a “former coal miner.” The audience never hears Tracy’s response to this question, but they are alerted to George’s nouveau riche status and to the possibility of tension arising in the family about his recent shift from miner to boss.

Mike seems to share Sandy’s somewhat snide attitude to George’s social elevation, albeit in a different way. He describes George as “up from the bottom,” a word choice that perhaps inadvertently links the low depths of the mine shafts with poverty’s negative associations. Sandy’s response shows that he, for once, is aware of the word’s dual meanings: “Just exactly — and of the mine.”

Mike then makes plain why he is suspicious of Kittredge: “National hero, new model: makes drooping family incomes to revive again.” Kittredge may

well have done a tremendous job of reorganizing the failing mines, but at what cost? The mine may well run better in its “new model,” but the only people whose fortunes seemed to have revived in the wake of its reorganization are the owners, “the drooping family.”

No mention is made of the workers — the miners themselves — and the question hangs in the air: who suffered, who benefited, who was laid off in order to revitalize the mines? This ominous question is answered a short time later, when Kittredge announces that his plans to reform the mines extend to reforming the unions: there is a lot, he says, that is “yet to be done with Labor relations.”

Kittredge is crucial to the overall plot development — in particular to Tracy’s developing ambivalence about her impending marriage — and it is worth examining his character in more detail. The first time he appears on stage, Tracy introduces him as “my beau,” Liz compliments him on his appearance, and Kittredge himself announces that “I’ve shaken quite a lot of coal-dust from my feet in the last day or two.” Tracy, who firmly believes her fiancee is angelically handsome, responds to Kittredge’s self-conscious attempt at a joke with one herself, but one that comes out sounding a little patronizing: “Isn’t he beautiful? Isn’t it wonderful what a little soap and water will do?”

This early suggestion that Kittredge is self-conscious and perhaps uncomfortable about his recent rise from rags to riches, and that their different backgrounds could cause problems between the couple, is evident later in the play. Kittredge, in a long conversation with Tracy, displays a concern about appearances and good taste that marks him as nouveau riche: as aspiring to the respectability and status of the upper classes. Dexter, on the other hand, who is born to wealth, “never concerns himself much with taste.”

The difference between the two men comes down to being born into a certain class, and consequently being certain of one’s station in life. For Kittredge, this means cutting certain “unimportant people” out of his social calendar, and establishing a circle which others will aspire to join, just as he, too, once longed to join Tracy in her golden shadow. “Our little house on the river up there... I’d like people to consider it an honor to be asked there We’re going to represent something, Tracy — something straight and sound and fine. — And then perhaps young Mr. Haven may be somewhat less condescending.”

Kittredge’s social insecurity leads him inevitably into the disastrous trap of comparing himself with someone who is inherently secure and confident. While this study in contrasts might be of interest simply in itself, it becomes significant because Kittredge has pursued and won someone who is from Haven’s background, and who consequently shares his easy confidence and contempt for such nouveau riche concerns.

The play’s ending is foreshadowed in these early scenes. It is also, however, something of a foregone conclusion that the couple are not suited, for in Barry’s somewhat conservative worldview, like must marry like, and the great, the talented, the creative, must join forces with their equals.

The conclusion that like must marry like is inherently a conservative one. No one could fault Barry’s characterization of Tracy Lord or Dexter Haven: both are charismatic, smart, witty people, and are clearly suited. But Haven’s merits are contrasted with those of two working-class men: one of whom labors industriously in a socially acceptable (and hardly radical) profession, writing, and the other of whom rises from dirt to wealth.

The first, Mike Connor, seems at first glance the more radical and challenging of the two men: he identifies himself as a liberal in the Jeffersonian tradition, and is hostile to upper-class interests. Yet Mike’s threat is considerably softened as a result of his romantic entanglement with Tracy: he proves himself a “true gentleman” by refusing to “take advantage” of her and offering, with an almost Victorian attitude, to marry her since he has been implicated in her damaged honor. Finally, he makes the “funny discovery” that “in spite of the fact that someone’s up from the bottom, he may be quite a heel. And that even though someone else’s born to the purple, he still may be quite a guy.”

Kittredge, the “heel,” may have raised himself by his bootstraps, but he disturbed Philadelphia’s tranquil social hierarchy by aspiring above his class, and, moreover, by clinging to what are essentially middle-class moral values, rather than embracing the more accommodating liberal values of the upper class.

Barry’s The Philadelphia Story is for the most part a frothy social comedy, but its sweet exterior masks darker themes — not least of all amongst them the tensions between the social classes in the 1930s. Barry explores this tension firstly through the presence of Mike, an intruder with a chip on his shoulder, and secondly through the play’s central event, the impending marriage of Tracy Lord and George Kittredge.

The lesson that affects Mike — appearances can be deceiving — conceals a real undercurrent of conservatism in Barry’s plot. Tracy’s rejection of Kittredge for Haven is certainly a rejection of idealization and of constrictive middle-class morality, but it is also a rejection of the social infidel, and a confirmation of the rigidity of the existing class hierarchy.

Source: Helena Ifeka, for Drama for Students, Gale, 2000.

What Do I Read Next?

• Paris Bound (1927) is one of Barry’s most successful comedy of manners. It concerns the fashionable and rich Jim and Mary Hutton. On their wedding day, the couple decides that they will be tolerant of extramarital affairs. Their bohemian ideals come under pressure when Mary learns that Jim has visited an old sweetheart when traveling abroad.
• Barry’s Holiday (1928) is an enjoyable comedy that depicts the relationship between Julia Seton, a millionaire’s daughter, and Johnny Case, a hardworking young man. The Seton family cannot tolerate Case’s determination to enjoy life when young and try to force him to join the family firm.
• John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939) displays Steinbeck’s characteristic social realism and his determination to depict the lives of rural people with sympathy and understanding. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his epic novel about the struggles of an emigrant farming family who leave the dust bowl of the Midwest for the promised land of California.
• Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion (1913) remains a popular comedy. It is about a professor, Henry Higgins, who decides that he can pass off a young Cockney flower-seller, Eliza Doolittle, as a society lady. Shaw’s depiction of Eliza’s rise to social acceptance allows him to comment upon the British class system while also providing his audience with light-hearted entertainment.
• Roy all Tyler was one of the first major American playwrights. His best-known play remains The Contrast (1787), a social comedy that contrasts the simply dignity of American mores with the foppery and pretensions of British fashion. Tyler drew upon Restoration comedy to create one of America’s first comedy of manners.