Beth Henley was once asked what was the driving force for her when writing this play to which she replied, "I became fascinated with the idea of writing a play about a woman who attempts to kill her husband and yet have her character portrayed in such a way that the audience can not find fault in her despite what she had done"
Do you think Beth Henley accomplished her goal?
Crimes of the Heart
Beth Henley did a fantastic job making Babe easy to love despite the fact she had shot her husband in what some might call cold blood. I keep coming back to our class discussion, when you asked “should all people who shoot someone or even commit crimes deserve to be locked up and have the key thrown away” and Amy said “YES!”. She truly sounded as though she believed that, I wonder if she found Babe to be a hardened criminal who was a terrible threat to society and should be locked away forever. Based on her statutory rape comment (although I was curious about that too) probably, still, I hope she was able to see beyond the black and white spectrum of the issue (no pun intended) at hand and realize there is always more to the story than the facts presented. My dad always said “there are three sides to every story, his, hers, and the truth!” and so far as I can see FACTS rarely leave any room for the reality of all three to exist simultaneously.
As a product of an abusive environment I understand all to well just how complex people are, not to mention the situational paradigms they find themselves in. Life is as convoluted and messy of an adventure one can find themselves in. It dips and curves, speeds up and slows down, throws things at you with less than a moments notice to respond, beyond that, it allows you the mis-perception that YOU have the ability to control any of it.
My father was both verbally and physically abusive with my mother and with me. Never my brother, he was the “golden child.” Later on with my step-family, I again bore the brunt of his angry episodes. He never broke any bones or anything that drastic, but I had a black eye or two and more then one welt to show for it over the years (my big mouth sure didn't help any either).
As twisted as it is, he sincerely thought that he was doing these things to benefit me. He truly loved me. Every day of his life he loved me. No matter what he did or what he said I never for one moment thought he didn't. He was terribly affectionate and easy to love back despite everything he put me through. My father wasn't a bad man! He was a good man. Fundamentally down to his core he was an amazing dynamic human being. Does that mean he was infallible? Not by any means. He was, after all, human.
The heartache I carried was insurmountable. It was never the beatings that got to me though, it was more the things he would say like, “you'll never amount to anything! Your mother is a mooch and a leach and your gonna end up just like her!” It broke me. I even spent a long time believing him.
Somehow I came through it all stronger and more independent. When leaving my fathers home at sixteen I took along with me his core values. Respect, honesty, integrity, activism, personal growth, and a vigorous love of humanity with all of it's diverse idiosyncrasies were just some of the ideals imparted to me, through him. My godfather described him once as “a man of grand principles....who didn't always know how to follow them himself.”
