The Intruder by Maurice Maeterlinck

First produced:L’Intruse, 1891; first published, 1890 (English translation, 1891)

Type of work: Drama

Type of plot: Tragedy

Time of plot: Early twentieth century

Locale: A dark room in an old château

Principal characters

• The Grandfather, who is blind
• The Father, who is weary
• The Uncle, who is rationalistic
• The Three Daughters, who are obedient
• The Sister of Charity, a nurse
• The Maidservant, who is defensive

The Story:

Six characters feel enormous tension one Saturday evening between shortly after nine o’clock and midnight in a somber sitting room of an old château surrounded by gardens and a lake. Together with their father, uncle, and grandfather, three young women hopefully await the visit of the father’s and the uncle’s eldest sister, a nun who is the mother superior of her convent, and of the doctor who is to check on their sickly mother in the room on the left and the silent baby in the room on the right.

The family enters the sitting room, disagreeing. The father and the daughters want to sit outside while the uncle, because it rained for one week, prefers to remain inside. The grandfather resolves the dispute by saying that it is better to stay in since one never knows what might happen. The father declares that his wife, who was sick for several weeks, is out of danger from her illness. The grandfather disagrees, since he heard her voice. The uncle supports his brother and recommends that they all relax and enjoy the first pleasant evening they have had in a long time.

The uncle remarks that sickness is like a stranger in the family, and the father notes that one can count only on family members, not outsiders, for help. The men ask Ursula, the eldest daughter, if she can see anyone in the avenue. She sees no one yet, but reports that the avenue is moonlit and the weather fine, that the nightingales can be heard, and that the trees stir a little in the wind.

The mood changes when the grandfather announces that he no longer hears the nightingales. Ursula believes that someone has entered the garden, although she sees no one. The men disbelieve her, but she persists, since the nightingales suddenly fell silent and the swans became frightened. The father agrees that “there is a stillness of death,” but the mood changes again when the uncle asks disgustedly if they are going to discuss nightingales all night.

The conversation turns to the cold room. Ursula and her sisters try to obey their father by shutting the door, but it will not close entirely. The father promises to have the carpenter fix it the next day. The family is then disturbed by the sound of the sharpening of a scythe outside, although the gardener should not be working on a Saturday evening. Ursula again tries to soothe fears by suggesting that perhaps the gardener is occupied in the shadow of the house.

Everyone’s attention turns to the lamp, which did not burn very well that evening, although its oil was filled that same morning. One daughter notes that, after not sleeping for three nights, the grandfather finally has dozed off. While he sleeps, the father and the uncle discuss his blindness and his irrationality. When the clock strikes ten, the grandfather awakens, saying someone is standing by the glass door leading to the terrace. Although Ursula reassures him that she sees no one, he thinks someone is waiting there. When he asks the father and the uncle if their sister has arrived, the uncle peevishly remarks that it is now too late for her to come and that it is not very nice of her.

Everyone hears a noise as if someone is entering the house, and they believe it is finally the long-awaited nun. After the father summons the maidservant, the grandfather notes twice that she is not alone. When the father asks the maidservant who entered the house, she replies that no one came in. The father accuses her of pushing open the door to the sitting room, although she is standing three steps from it. Although blind, the grandfather announces that suddenly everything seems to be dark in the room. The maidservant’s exit is marked by eleven strokes of the old clock.

The grandfather thinks the maidservant entered their room and is now sitting at their table. His anxiety grows, and he begs Ursula to tell him the truth. He urges his children to tell him who is sitting beside him, who entered the room, and what is happening around him. He is amazed that they see no one besides the six of them. He announces that he probably will not live much longer and that he wishes he was at home. The father protests that he already is at home. The grandfather wishes to be with his daughter because he wants to know the truth. He reassures the daughters that he knows they would tell him the truth if they were not deceived by the men.

Finally, the father invites the grandfather to enter his daughter’s room, but the old man refuses; the uncle remarks that he is not being reasonable. Suddenly the lamp goes out completely, and the men decide to remain in the dark rather than enter the sick woman’s room. Now the clock seems very loud. Ursula is asked to open the window a bit. All notice that there is no sound outside. The silence inside and out is extraordinary. The uncle begins to pace in the darkness, after declaring that he does not like the country. The grandfather asks Ursula to shut the window.

Suddenly an odd ray of moonlight penetrates the room’s darkness. The clock strikes midnight; someone unidentified seems to rise from the table, the uncle calls for the lamp to be lit, the baby wails in terror, and heavy steps are heard in the mother’s room. Then all fall silent. The door to the sick woman’s chamber opens. There stands the sister of charity, dressed in black. Her bow and the sign of the cross announce silently that the mother has died. All enter the bedroom except the grandfather, who is left alone to grope about the table in confusion.

Bibliography

Bass, Ruth. “Backstage at the Guggenheim.” Review of The Intruder, by Maurice Maeterlinck. Art News 85, no. 6 (Summer, 1986): 16, 18. In this review of Hanne Tierney’s staging of Maeterlinck’s play with puppetlike figures at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in January, 1986, Bass shows how the play lends itself to creative revival and aesthetic innovation. Tierney designed her expressionistic figures, controlled them at a keyboard by invisible fishing lines, and spoke all of their parts in a monotone.

Block, Haskell M. Mallarmé and the Symbolist Drama. Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press, 1963. Block provides a broad view of Symbolist drama and discusses in depth the aesthetic theory of its precursor, Stéphane Mallarmé, and its masters, of whom Maeterlinck was the most outstanding. Block includes a discussion of The Intruder.

Daniels, May. The French Drama of the Unspoken. Edinburgh: University Press, 1953. After discussing the positivistic mind-set of the end of the nineteenth century, Daniels devotes two chapters to Maeterlinck’s plays, all of which are a strong reaction to naturalistic theater. Analyzes the nature of spectator response to Maeterlinck’s theater of the unexpressed in The Intruder and Pelléas et Mélisande (1892; Pelléas and Mélisande, 1894).

Finney, Gail. “Dramatic Pointillism: The Examples of Holz and Schlaf’s Die Familie Selicke and Maeterlinck’s L’Intruse.” Comparative Literature Studies 30, no. 1 (1993): 1-15. Finney describes George Seurat’s pointillistic neo-Impressionistic painting style and shows how “temporal or linguistic pointillism” occurs in Johannes Schlaf’s Die Familie Selicke (1890) and Maeterlinck’s The Intruder. She indicates that many of the dramatic techniques found in Maeterlinck’s play are used by such later twentieth century playwrights as Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Eugene O’Neill, Samuel Beckett, and Harold Pinter.

Heller, Otto. Prophets of Dissent: Essays on Maeterlinck, Strindberg, Nietzsche, and Tolstoy. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1918. Reprint. Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1968. Includes one essay devoted to Maeterlinck. Heller in 1918 already understood that the dramatist’s secular mysticism represented a retreat into the “central ego” and an effort to express the unknown internal forces that motivate individuals. Maeterlinck’s theater communicates humankind’s frustration before the invisible, uncontrollable forces, both internal and external, that no longer fall under the old categories of fate and religion.

Ingelbien, Raphael. “Symbolism at the Periphery: Yeats, Maeterlinck, and Cultural Nationalism.” Comparative Literature Studies 42, no. 3 (2005): 183-204. Compares the works of Maeterlinck with those of William Butler Yeats, pointing out the similarities in the national, sociological, and linguistic contexts in which their work developed at the end of the nineteenth century.

McGuinness, Patrick. Maurice Maeterlinck and the Making of Modern Theatre. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Traces the development of Maeterlinck’s vision of and theories about the theater, including his Symbolist plays and other dramas.

Maeterlinck, Maurice. “The Tragical in Daily Life.” In Theatre/Theory/Theatre: The Major Critical Texts from Aristotle and Zeami to Soyinka and Havel, edited by Daniel Gerould. New York: Applause, 2000. This essay, written in 1896, expresses some of Maeterlinck’s theories about the theater.