John Steinbeck’s The Pastures of Heaven and the play, Molly Morgan
John Steinbeck is a famous American author, winning the Nobel Prize for Literature “for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humour and keen social perception” (1961 Nobel Prize committee). The author of classic books from The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, Travels of Charley: In Search of America to his short story collections, he earned this award through bringing his fictional characters to life, and received praise for his work of “realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social perception.”
John Steinbeck’s impeccable work has been a classic inspiration to several writers seen through their adaptations of his plays, films, from Broadway’s stages to major marquee Hollywood films staring Elizabeth Taylor, Henry Fonda, and James Dean. As recently as October 2007, California Shakespeare Theater launched a community-based venture in several week-long workshops with the playwright Octavio Solis’s adaptation of John Steinbeck’s The Pastures of Heaven.
The project partnered Cal Shakespeare with Solis to adapt the short story cycle for the 2010 production on the main stage featuring the Word for Word Performing Arts Company. In his short story cycle, The Pastures of Heaven, Steinbeck meticulously arranges a variety of characters from different ages and personalities, intertwining them into each other’s lives. Furthermore, out of the twelve short stories in the Pastures of Heaven, the recurring and important protagonist, Molly Morgan appears in the lives of several of the Pastures of Heaven’s denizens. From little Tulericito, to Robbie Maltby, from Whitesides to the Munroes: Molly Morgan interacts and affects them deeply, undergoing dramatic changes herself in the process. Molly is significant, too in that as a character, she has been adapted and expanded into a stage version, John Steinbeck’s Molly Morgan by Reginald Lawrence. This play highlights and elaborates her effect on other characters, and her contributions in the Pastures of Heaven short story cycle. Indeed, one of the 20th century’s greatest American writers created a fascinating heroine, explored more fully in the play adaptation: a “young teacher whose job affects her own life, the lives of those around her and, in particular, the life of the man she loves.”
Rivers, trees, and the spacious green lands of the Pastures of Heaven filled the rustic village: “… a long valley floored with green pasturage on which a herd of deer browsed. Perfect live oaks grew in the meadow of the lovely place, and the hills hugged it jealously against the fog and the wind” (Steinbeck 3). The farms and dwellings were spread out, from the old Battle house to the Banks’ farm. Years before the Pastures of Heaven is set, which is at the turn of the century, it had been inhabited by families of squatters, and the descendants of these families were mostly white, taking the place of Native Americans; they made their mark on the land by building fences and planting fruit: “Since no one owned the land, they squabbled a great deal over its possession.”
The villagers of the Pastures of Heaven owned their own farms and tended to their gardens: “The families at last lived prosperously and at peace. Their land was rich and easy to work. The fruits of their gardens were the finest produced in central California.” The village contained an aesthetic beauty filled with fruitful lands and a bucolic essence: “And the air was a golden gauze in the last of the sun. The land below them was plotted in squares of green orchard trees and in squares of yellow grain and in squares of violet earth. From the sturdy farmhouses, set in their gardens, the smoke of the evening fires drifted upward until the hill breeze swept it cleanly off” (Steinbeck, 199). The Pastures of Heaven has a collection of unique characters with quite a few hardworking farmers. Whether they were farmers or teachers, all had something in common; they were there to build a legacy, a family, a foundation, as we see from the Munroes to the Whitesides. Several residents come and go, but the community has always been closely knit with news traveling quickly. However, this close community is sometimes blinded and certain concepts such as capital punishment or being ostracized, like when the Lopez daughters are rejected, because ideas have formed and festered behind closed doors.
Although The Pastures of Heaven is a short story cycle, a genre type that introduces new characters in each chapter, Molly Morgan associates and revolves through several stories. “It was seriously doubted that a teacher so young and so pretty could keep any kind of order… The school was astounded, for it had been used to aging spinsters whose faces seemed to reflect consistently tired feet. Miss Morgan enjoyed teaching and made school an exciting place where unusual things happened” (Steinbeck, 47). In order to escape from her tormented past, Molly Morgan comes to the Pastures of Heaven to set anew her own foundation. Despite her abusive father, she suffers no more, and becomes a teacher developing an impeccable character. She becomes passionate about her job and becomes a significant figure to several of her students, like Tulericito, a student who was labeled as an outcast and who exhibited abnormal behavior. However, Ms. Morgan finds potential in his talent for drawing. As a teacher and a new resident of the Pastures of Heaven, she becomes an active voice within the school board and community. Throughout The Pastures of Heaven, Molly Morgan impacts the community, and can be found as irreplaceable heroine in American literature. Not only is she a recurring original character filled with compassion and ambition, she was also seen by Reginald Lawrence as a commendable character with the adaptation Molly Morgan.
During her career as a teacher, she builds her empathy and sees things that the closed-minded residents of the Pastures of Heaven cannot. This characteristic of hers can be seen in her interaction with Junius Maltby and her student Robbie. Junius and his son Robbie have become social outcasts of the town but it is only Molly Morgan who can see them in their own light and empathize with them. Junius settled into the Pastures of Heaven with the same mindset as all the other settlers: to start over and become prosperous. However, idleness possessed him and he became enraptured with his books, neglecting his work and wife: “The people of the Pasture of Heaven recoiled from Junius Maltby after the death of his wife and his two boys… here in the fertile valley he lived in fearful poverty” (Steinbeck 81). Although his neighbors sneered at his idleness and the degenerate that he, Maltby, had become, he was ignorant of his neighbor’s dislike, gloriously content with his unreal life. “His life was as unreal, as romantic and as unimportant as his thinking.” The neighbors pitied Junius’ only son, Robbie: “Although the people almost hated Junius, they had only pity for the little boy Robbie. The women told one another how horrible it was to let the child grow up in such squalor” (Steinbeck, 81).
Although the town council gives clothes to the poor family because they pitied them, Molly Morgan has a different view about the Maltby house, understanding that the receiving of clothes would cause embarrassment. The council is ignorant of the embarrassment this may have caused the Maltbys. While the village pitied the household and wanted to act by giving clothes to the poor family, ignorant of the embarrassment it may cause the Maltbys, it was only Ms. Morgan, who understood that Junius wasn’t a deadbeat, and the embarrassment it would have caused him, who was able to succeed. Contrasting with the villagers, who seemed quick to judge, Molly Morgan went out of her way to see who Junius and his son really were. Molly’s open and engaging mind is one commendable characteristic evident in the short story cycle and expanded by the adapted play.
Although the play Molly Morgan is adapted from John Steinbeck’s short story cycle, the play deviates from reiterating the original plot. However, the play accentuates Molly Morgan’s heroine characteristics through innovative plot situations highlighting the same character from the short story cycle. The play highlights Morgan as a mediator between the children and their parents through the example of Alice Wicks and her father. Alice Wicks is a new character incorporated in the play adaptation and she played the role of Molly Morgan’s student. Due to Alice’s beauty, her father is a little too over-protective and always hovers over her. However, Mr. Wicks’ concern begins to overwhelm Alice when he begins to accompany Alice to school every day until even at age fifteen. Molly Morgan, Alice’s teacher, begins to step into place trying to mediate between the two to resolve their minor conflict:
Molly: That’s plenty old enough to come to school without her father, Mr. Wicks.This is 1921. (To Alice.) You’re lucky to have a father to worry about you. Now go get your lunch with Ellie.
As one can see, Molly chooses her words well in the consideration of both sides of the conflict. Not only is she young enough and mature enough to play the mediator of both sides, she applies this heroic characteristic of understanding and openness throughout her teaching and daily life.
The play expands upon Molly Morgan but also cuts some scenes from the book: excluding several characters and scenes that revolve around her. For example, her interactions with a student who was labeled as an outcast and who exhibits abnormal behavior (Tuleracito), is cut in the play, as well as other key scenes with Junius Maltby and his son. What is it about Molly’s heroine identity that both Steinbeck and Lawrence respected? I believe it was her overcoming her traumatic childhood in order to use her past to help others and show them compassion.
Molly still has to deal with the horrific memories of her alcoholic father, who left her family. This can be found in both the short story cycle and play. Steinbeck uses italics for flashbacks, going into Molly Morgan’s past, while Lawrence places this conflict at the beginning of scenes, in order to depict her past. The play emphasizes the significance of Molly Morgan’s past this way. Lawrence uses Molly’s past and memories of her father to build her character, as she is seen holding on to her love for her father:
Molly: It was-different. He loved us.
Bill. Loved you? If you ask me, your father sounds like an irresponsible old cuss. (MOLLY turns to him, in anger.)
Molly: Don’t say that about my father! He was a wonderful man. He was the best father anyone ever had! (Turns and runs D R, sobbing).
In doing this, Lawrence keeps to the original backstory of Molly Morgan’s in order to frame and hold true to the foundations of her original character. From the beautiful scenery and setting used in both the playwright and short story cycle, the scene brings depth and volume to the character. Molly Morgan is ruthless in moving forward with her new innovative ideas, breaking down the walls, using compassion, and mending families. One can look up to her as an ideal American character from literature, from her smoldering looks, her wit, her compassionate heart. The play and short story cycle reveal Molly Morgan to be almost tangible, a great character in American literature.
