Word: lavinia
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...upper reaches of the Colonial Theatre, the applause of the audience sounded like rain on the roof. Two attendants, discussing the play outside the door of the dressing room number, parted hastily to admit Alice Brady, the Lavinia Mannon of O'Neill's long but not tedious "Mourning Becomes Electra." Miss Brady manoeuvred around adeptly in her black hoop skirts. Questioned about her agility she replied...
...Mannons are a strange lot, proud, rich, a family 200 years old. They hate well, too. Ezra, general and judge, and his son Orin are expected home from the Civil War. One who wants Ezra back is his stark daughter Lavinia (Miss Brady). One who does not want him back, hates him, wishes him in his grave is his wife Christine (Miss Nazimova). Beautiful, full-blown, she has fallen in love with a seaman, Brant. It does not take long to find out that Brant is a Mannon, too. His father was Ezra's uncle, who got a hired...
When Orin comes home a struggle between the two Mannon women waxes bitter. Orin is not a little attached to his mother, Oedipus-wise. He never liked his father. But when Lavinia makes him track down their mother's rendezvous with Brant on his ship, Orin's eyes open. He shoots his mother's lover. His mother returns home, commits suicide. That accounts for Parts I and II, "Homecoming" and "The Haunted...
...Hunted," which winds up the play, finds Orin in sorry shape. He mourns his mother's death, blames himself for it. Lavinia has taken him on one of the Mannon ships to China. The trip does only one of them good. Lavinia, having tarried on a Pacific isle long enough to have had a sentimental interlude with a native chief's son, has grown as beautiful as her mother. Orin's mind has become deranged. Peter Niles wants to marry Lavinia, his sister wants to marry Orin. But Orin threatens to air the family's bloody...
...gloomy verandah, Lavinia, aware that "the damned don't cry," speaks her elegy to faithful Seth, the gardener: "I'm bound here-to the Mannon dead! Don't be afraid. I'm not going the way mother and Orin went. That's escaping punishment. . . . I'll never wear anything but mourning again. Life doesn't fit the Mannons. Only death becomes them...