Sterility and Decay of Marriage in Eliot’s (The Cocktail Party)

Abstract

T. S. Eliot’s The Cocktail Party (1950) focuses on the failing marriage between Edward and Lavinia Chamberlayne. Based on the play, the prime reason that drives a couple to marry in the 20th century is social pretence and this creates major marriage problems. From a Freudian psychoanalytic view, marriage or its dissolution have deep underlying causes. This paper investigates how unintelligible reasons cause the sterility and decay of this sacred bond. The paper will show how these reasons combined, whether conscious or unconscious, lead to the destruction of marriage. The inexplicable sets of behaviour will be demystified after reading the play from a Freudian psychoanalytic perspective.