Aside from a reader’s initial reaction to Harold Pinter’s “The Homecoming” akin to visiting a Freudian fun-house, one must consider whether they ought to read it as a literal story or more as something figurative.
The decade in which the story was written and first staged is important to its interpretation. The 1960s was a decade in which women’s liberations was a prominent movement. Movies and art reflected it, protests were made, and bras were burned.
Was Harold Pinter making a statement about women’s liberation in writing “The Homecoming?” It might not have been the only theme, or even the most pronounced theme, but it was certainly there. The entire plot line seems a tennis match of power between the sexes.
Ruth comes from America, and her life with Teddy there reflects the ideal of the perfect life for a woman; they live calmly (we have no reason to believe they don’t) in the suburbs with their three sons. Ruth’s husband Teddy is a philosophy professor, and well established and accomplished. In the traditional way of thinking, Ruth has all she could ask for.
Then Teddy takes Ruth (sans the three sons) to London for the first time to meet his family. His mother Jessie is deceased, leaving behind his father Max, his uncle Sam, and his brothers Lenny and Joey. Readers see another side of a misogynist family structure. Lenny is a pimp. Joey is a would-be boxer. The running of the household is conducted under threats of violence and a constant struggle for power. The men insult each other with feminine like insults, like calling each other ‘bitch.’ Max speaks of his deceased wife saying that even though he often couldn’t stand the sight of her face, she wasn’t a bad old ‘bitch.’
Lenny and Joey speak openly about being rapists. No matter the mental capabilities they show in their functioning in the walls of the run down family apartment and in making their way (the way they know how) in the outside world, their level of thinking hardly rises about that of a Neanderthal – by taking what they want or need by force, or by the threat of force, and that women have a particular role or function existing solely for the use of the man. The reader has to wonder why Teddy really brought his wife home to meet the family; they begin to plot how to turn Ruth into a prostitute not only to support the family, but as also in this role within the family.
It becomes evident, too, that the men are yearning for a female presence in the home not only for sexual use but also as a mother, which Ruth fills well, and as Jessie filled well before too. The missing wall in the home is symbolic, one might think, of a woman missing in the family structure. Ruth falls into her role, as if she seemingly wants to, but finds herself in a position in which she has power of a house of men, and uses what she knows to use in order to get what she wants. This portrayal of events and human behavior is that which concerns the reader as to what exactly Pinter is saying about Women’s Liberation.
