Concept of Time and Space in Thronton Wilder’s Our Town

I. Introduction

Wilder’s idea of the perfect theater materialized in his essay “Some Thoughts

on Playwriting”. He constructed four principal arguments which set out the essence

of the theater. Especially the arguments of time and space will enter into this analysis

of Our Town. What happens on the theater stage is, according to Wilder, all pretense

and this pretense is supported by the props. As soon as the play is equipped with

props it is inevitably fixed to space and time. This, however, is in stark contrast to

Wilder’s time concept of an eternal present that knows no fixing point.1 Wilder

releases the play that was once “shut […] up in […] a museum showcase”2 and offers

not only the depiction of life, but also a general truth. When a play is staged the way

it is intended to, that is, with a more or less bare stage, the action becomes more

general and transferable to different places, people and times. There is some

universal reality that is inevitably lost, when the world is reproduced meticulously3

and thus the author “wish[ed] to record a village's life on stage, with realism and with

generality.”4

Wilder also distinguishes the time in the novel and the time in the play and

achieves to lift the theater above the novel.5 The reader has to be aware that he is

either confronted with a retelling of the past or an everlasting present. However, this

everlasting present of the play, is broken by the presence of the narrator who includes

flashbacks and forecasts into the narration. The narrative function is usually found in

prose writing and less in dramatic texts. Yet, Wilder manages to incorporate a

narrator in his drama that goes beyond epilogue, prologue and chorus.

1 Cf. Nimax, Manfred. „Jederzeit und Allerorts“. Universalität im Werk von Thornton Wilder. Frankfurt/Main: Haag und Herchen, 1983, 22.

2 Wilder, Thornton. “Preface”. Our Town and Other Plays. London: Penguin, 2000, 7-13:10.3 Cf. Nimax, 22.4Wilder, Thornton. “Preface to Our Town”. Collected Plays and Writings on Theater. Ed.

J.D. McClatchy. New York: The Library of America, 2007, 657-59: 658.5 Cf. Nimax, 21.

3

On the following pages I will analyze how the characters manipulate time and

space in Our Town and to what consequences it leads.

II. Our Town- Manipulating Temporal and Spatial Limits?

2. Definition

Before the actual analysis some general definitions have to be introduced.

The usual perception of manipulation is quite negative although the Concise English

Oxford Dictionary gives various definitions. It defines to manipulate as “1. [to]

handle or control with dexterity 2. [to] examine or treat (a part of the body) by

feeling or moving it with the hand 3. [to] control or influence cleverly or

unscrupulously [or] 4. [to] alter or present (data) so as to mislead”.6 It is important to

see how the figures make use of these definitions to change time and space. We have

to be aware that language is the main constituent to create space7 and that it is also a

way to change it, maybe also change to misuse it. But Wilder’s figures can also

change the space and time they interact in, merely by their way of how they act and

behave in their little world. The following chapters will offer a more in depth

analysis of what manipulation in Our Town looks like.

2.1. Flashbacks and Forecasts – Manipulation of Time and Space

The very first account the reader gets of Grover’s Corners in the exposition of

the play, is a rather precise one, quite contrary to the description of how a perfect

play should be according to Wilder. Readers, and the audience, immediately know

the exact location of the town, namely: “New Hampshire – just across the

6 "manipulate v."  The Concise Oxford English Dictionary, Twelfth edition . Ed. Catherine Soanes and Angus Stevenson. Oxford University Press, 2008. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. 7 July 2011.<http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t23.e34075>

7 Cf. Hönnighausen, Lothar. „Where Are We? Some Methodological Reflections on Space, Place, and Postmodern Reality.” Space in America. Theory History Culture. Eds. Klaus Benesch and Kerstin Schmidt. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005, 41.

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Massachusetts line: latitude 42 degrees 40 minutes; longitude 70 degrees 37

minutes.”8 The stage manager, who opens the play, invites the reader into a

seemingly real American town that is according to its inhabitants “[l]ittle better

behaved than most [towns]. Probably a lot duller. ” (34) He accurately describes

Grover’s Corners and thus creates an imaginary map with his words that opens up

even more as the play progresses.9 As a homodiegetic-extradiegetic narrator, the

stage manager is clearly involved in the action and interaction of the figures and

functions like a human time machine throughout the play. The time lapses he creates

are glimpses into the lives of the other characters. Some parts of the characters’ lives

would have been hidden, if the stage manager did not jump back and forth in time

causing a disruption in the chronology of Our Town. The audience would have been

uninformed that “Joe was awful bright – graduated from high school here, head of

his class” (25) and that “Editor Webb’s boy, Wallace, […] appendix burst while he

was on a Boy Scout trip to Crawford Notch” (76). Later on, it will be clearer that

time operates in many ways in the play and is subjected to a constant change

culminating in the transgression of death in Act III10 and a walk between two spaces.

Yet, the manager is not merely a narrator, he is also an impersonator and at

some point the audience perceives him as some kind of magician. He is able to cause

a change of scenery and miraculously creates new spaces, which is only possible

through the use of the bare stage and his abilities to act as a pantomime.11 All of the

characters lack the props for acting so they pretend to do the things around the house.

The families’ kitchens turn into a counter, the counter turns into a wedding chapel

and the chapel turns into graves and headstones. For this almost magical

transformation to take place there is the need to enhance the stage and let the 8 Wilder, Thornton. “Our Town”. Town and Other Plays. London: Penguin, 2000, 21. All

parenthetical references follows this edition.9Cf. Porter, Tom. Myth and modern American drama. Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State

University Press, 1969, 209.10Cf. Fletcher, Anne. “Thornton Wilder’s “Eternal Present”: Ghosting and the Grave Body in

Act III of Our Town”. Death in American Texts and Performances. Corpses, Ghosts, and the Reanimated Dead. Eds. Lisa K. Perdigao and Mark Pizzato. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010, 81.

11 Cf. Lifton, Paul. „Vast Encyclopedia“. The Theater of Thornton Wilder. Contributions in Drama and Theater Studies, 61. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press: 1995, 203.

5

audience see what’s happening on stage. The enhancement happens through the

literal and figurative breaking of the “fourth wall” of the theater by communicating

with the people in the audience. However, it is not the unique ability of one character,

namely the manager (35), to break the limits. Editor Webb (34-36) and Professor

Willard (33) at some point also address the audience to convey their messages.12 The

reader and the audience have to be aware that the people in the audience are also

actors; the seating becomes part of the staging arrangement and the audience

becomes part of the town.

The stage manager not only constructs and manipulates space and time

through his actions, he also manipulates the structures through language. He almost

seems to stand above the temporal structure of the play when he addresses the

audience before George and Emily show their affection for each other:

George and Emily are going to show you now the conversation they had

when they first knew that…that…as the saying goes…they were meant for

each other. But before they do it I want you to try and remember what it was

like to have been very young. And particularly the days when you were first

in love […] You’re just a little bit crazy. Will you remember that, please? (60,

emphasis mine)

In the last two sentences the manager changes from the past tense to the present, and

encourages the reader and audience to activate their memory.13 At this point the love

confession of George and Emily is no longer some, still important, conversation held

in the past, it happens now or rather it is going to happen in a few moments in front

of witnesses.

In addition to the creation of time lapses, the stage manager can stop and

restart time at any point convenient for him; the power transferred to him by being a

“presenter”. He connects the time of the play with time of the audience when he for

example states that “Bryan once made a speech from these very steps here” and that

12 Cf. Lifton, 55-56. See also: Nimax, 39-40.13 Cf. Nimax, 55.

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the “[f]irst automobile’s going to come along in about five years – belonged to the

Banker Cartwright our richest citizen…lives in the big white house up on the hill”

(22, emphasis mine). Historical data is moved to a point in the present and the

audience sees the past, present and future woven together.14 The audience is taken on

a journey through time, where there is no need to leave the present situation. The

scrambled syntax also offers a look into Wilder's ideas of the stage of an eternal now.

The audience doesn’t need to worry whether there is something from the past of from

the future presented on the stage because it is all acted now and thus becomes a part

of the present.

Moving from the stage manager to the other characters the reader is

confronted with manipulation by language rather than action. George’s sister

Rebecca, for example, shows that the town they live in is within a greater system of

subordinated spaces where “the Mind of God” (49) is the limit. Rebecca cites the

address on Jane Crofurt’s letter as follows: “Jane Crofurt; The Crofurt Farm;

Grover’s Corners; Sutton County; New Hampshire; United States of America. […]

Continent of North America; Western Hemisphere; the Earth; the Solar System; the

Universe; the Mind of God […]” (48-49). The total subordination works in two

ways. On the one hand, it makes the space the characters interact in seem very small,

compared to what is around them. But on the other hand, Wilder offers a look

through a telescope15 or a microscope and the once so small space opens up for the

outside observer. It is possible to examine the details of everyday life in “our town”

meticulously in all its shades of grey. Yet, the space does not open up so far that

characters are freed in their way of thinking. Dr. Gibbs’s question whether there was

“[a]nything serious goin’ on in the world since Wednesday?” is answered by Joe

Crowell with the following statement: “Yessir. My schoolteacher, Miss Foster, ‘s

getting married to a fella over in Concord.” (25) The world is still restricted to the

borders of Grover’s Corners and the vastness of “the Mind of God” seems very small

again. The characters appear to be bound to the town and “[n]inety per cent of ‘em

14 Cf. Porter, 211-212.15 Cf. Lifton, 59.

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graduating from high school settle down right here (Grover’s Corners) to live – even

when they’ve been away to college” (34-35).16 They are actually right not to leave

their “assigned space”, as there is potential danger outside (Rebecca’s mother dies on

a visit, Joe Crowell dies in war). As his father Dr. Gibbs, George is bound to

Grover’s Corners and can’t even manage to go away to attend a school for higher

education to expand his knowledge because he thinks the town might not be

interesting anymore.17 Having seen what ways the characters use to change time and

space, I am now going to analyze the effect the temporal and spatial alteration has on

the audience as well as on the characters themselves.

2.2. “Why should that be painful?”- The Effect of Manipulation

The surrounding of the town, with its extensive past creates a “temporal

frame of references and places Grover’s Corners in a context of vast dimensions of

time and space […].”18 The dimensions are not only represented by the living

inhabitants of the town but also by the dead in general and the dead man in particular

who states that “it [takes] millions of years for that speck o’ light to git to the earth.”

(90) Especially the “vast dimensions” of time evoke a sense of eternity. The audience

has the feeling that Grover’s Corners has a long history that mankind can’t fathom.

This extensive historical background is supported by Professor Willard’s speech on

the geographical situation and thus giving the town some million years of history; the

inscriptions on the tombstones also made a positive contribution to the historical

background of Grover’s Corners. The characters walk “on the old Pleistocene granite

of the Appalachian range. […] [S]ome of the oldest land in the world. […] A shelf of

Devonian basalt crosses it with vestiges of Mesozoic shale, and some sandstone

outcroppings; but that’s all more recent: two hundred, three hundred million years

16 Cf. Lifton, 44.17 Cf. Bunge, Nancy. “The Social Realism of Our Town: A Study in Misunderstanding.”

Thornton Wilder: New Essays. Ed. Martin Blank, Dalma Hunyadi Brunauer and David Garrett Izzo. Locust Hill Literary Studies, 26. West Cornwall, CT: Locust Hill Press, 1999, 360-361.

18 Lifton, 54-55.

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old.” (33) Prehistoric references, but also more references to more recent events like

the Civil War (32), the Versaille Treaty (41) and in general the description of the

genealogical roots of the Grover’s Corners families (33) show a compressed

depiction of time where the past becomes integrated into the present. The integration

turns “all time [into] one time and space [becomes] universal; the action occurs in an

immutable “now” and a universal “everywhere”.”19

The play itself, furthermore, functions as a metahistorical work.20 The stage

manager is “going to have a copy of this play put in the cornerstone and the people a

thousand years from now’ll know a few simple facts about [them]-more than the

Treaty of Versaille and the Lindbergh flight.” (41) Future generations should be able

to know more about “our town” than just the names of rich or important inhabitants.

The play becomes valid anthropological data within the time continuum of ancient

Greece and Babylon.21 The text of the play is also something immortal, in contrast to

the people who will inevitably die and whose memories might be lost forever if it

were not for the dramatic text. The integration of the past moves forward at a steady

pace and the audience has the impression that there is an unusually mobile time

structure22 that can be used to almost jump between the years. The arrangement of the

time structure seems deliberate but consistent as well, and Wilder shows that the play

does not follow a historical and therefore more or less chronological time line, yet

the characters have to “submit to the tyranny of that historical time.”23 However, it

seems that is not always easy to keep track of the time in the play; even the stage

manager is confused about the accurate time (36).

The timeframe of the play is itself something special. It compasses an entire

lifespan and simultaneously the audience gets the impression that only a day has

passed and Wilder presents a slice of life.24 In the stage directions at the beginning of

19 Porter, 208.20 Cf. Nimax, 43-44.21 Fletcher, 84-85.22 Cf. Nimax, 54.23 Haberman, Donald, The Plays of Thornton Wilder. A Critical Study. Middletown, CT:

Wesleyan University Press, 1967, 58.24 Cf. Porter, 201.

9

the play the rooster crows (21) in the morning and in the end the stage manager

wishes the audience a “Good night” (91). It almost seems as if the three acts are

individual miniature slices of life looked at through a microscope or telescope.

Wilder gives exact dates for the temporal placement of the play, which is 11 th

February 1899 (Emily’s twelfth Birthday) until the summer of 1913.25 Emily’s return

from the grave causes a nostalgic feeling, as well in the character as in the audience,

elevating the memory of this day to an ideal. As Emily says, she “won’t live over a

sad day. [She]’ll choose a happy one – [She]’ll choose the day [she] first knew that

[she] loved George. Why should that be painful?” (83). She is only reliving the past,

although it might be an ideal and beautiful past, that cannot last because a future is

ahead that is clearly visible for her. Although Emily tries to transcend death, there is

permanence and forgetting in it and it is impossible for her to turn back the time.26 It

becomes clearer that the value of memory is greater than the value of experience

when a simple word count is done: in Act III, “[f]or example the word “know” is

utilized by Wilder no fewer than twenty five times […] “remember” and “forget” (or

“forgotten”) a total of eight times”27. There is no need to learn or experience

something new, as long as there are memories. This is also seen in the refusal of most

inhabitants to venture outside of the town limits. It is possible, though, to look at the

past nostalgically (Emily herself becomes the audience of an ideal part of her life)

but there is no possibility to change anything, whereas in the future that is still ahead,

there waits “the anguish and inadequacy of life.”28 There is no way to escape this life

and only in death it becomes evident that “[t]hey’re sort of shut up in little boxes

[…]” (81) and that the fear of change cannot be overcome. Dr. Gibbs prefers to stay

in town because “it might make him disconnected with Grover’s Corners to go

traipsin’ about Europe […].” (31)29 although there are characters, like Mrs. Gibbs and

25 Cf. Nimax, 43.26 Cf. Porter, 219-220.27 Fletcher, 88.28 Haberman, 58., see also: Londraville, Richard. “Our Town: An American Noh of Ghosts”.

Thorton Wilder: New Essays. Ed. Martin Blank, Dalma Hunyadi Brunauer and David Garrett Izzo. Locust Hill Literary Studies, 26. West Cornwall, CT: Locust Hill Press, 1999, 372-373.

29 Cf. Bunge, 358.

10

Mrs. Webb who would like to break out of the town limits and “see a country where

they don’t talk in English and don’t even want to.” (32)

The language of Wilder’s characters, moreover, reveals a repetitive pattern

within the play. There is a linear structure given by the birth until death theme that

affects the each individual and a cyclical structure that affects the Grover’s Corners

community as a whole. These elements complement each other and open up the

possibility to link the individual to the community and at the same time let the

individual figure stand out. In order for this to become clear conversations as well as

daily rituals are repeated for the audience.30 Everything repeats itself generation after

generation and is not fixed to one person at one certain point in time. The stage

manager describes the sunset and normal change of seasons and adds the fact that

“[s]ome babies that weren’t even born before have begun talking regular sentences

already; and a number of people who thought they were right young and spry have

noticed that they can’t bound up a flight of stairs like they used to, without their heart

fluttering a little.” (50) He shows that human existence is subjected to the natural

cycle and the historical time which becomes generalized through the words “almost

everybody.” (50) He includes the persons outside Grover’s Corners, that means, not

only the few who left the town but people in the audience and the readers.31 Emily is

at first opposed to her mother’s ideas of being rather “healthy than bright” (28), as

she likes to read at the table and the audience gets to know her as an intelligent girl,

helping her husband to be with his homework. Soon enough, however, she

compensates and at last even applies her mother’s ideas. Almost the same pattern is

visible in George’s development, who takes advice from Editor Webb on his wedding

day. The advice he gets was handed down from Editor Webb’s father. He also

inherited the fear to leave his space in town and the love for it. Taking this as a model

it is probable that Emily and George’s child will be part of the repetitive pattern.32

30 Cf. Porter, 214-215.31 Cf. Nimax, 51.32Cf. Nimax, 47.

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III. Conclusion

The manipulation of the stage manager is of a neutral kind and doesn’t have a

negative effect, like for example Iago’s manipulation of Othello.33 And he is no

magician in the traditional sense, casting a spell on people, may it be for the better or

worse. On the contrary, with his interference among the characters he tries to prevent

negative experiences, like Emily’s. It is interesting to notice that “[o]nly in Wilder’s

play […] [does] the figure […] (stage manager) serve as chorus, bit player, narrator,

and omniscient coordinator of the performance”34 whose attempts to (re)create a

town with a bare stage are successful. He is, furthermore, able to show the

insignificance of an individual existence against the vast universe. The figures alter

the data they are given, but not to mislead the audience in a malicious way. Wilder

rather tries to show that there is a repetitive pattern and that the experiences are not

singularly designed for Emily and George but designed as a collective experience.35

In the words of Lothar Hönnighausen, “the experience of space is not a matter of the

individual alone, but it is a social and socializing experience as well”36 linking

generations together and supporting the idea behind the repetitive pattern.

The “omnispatial, omnitemporal “now” and “everywhere” of the eternal

mind”37 make Grover’s Corners the center of the universe, but it makes Grover’s

Corners at the same time a thing of the past that can only exists in the memory of the

people.38 Emily’s manipulation of the space finally turns into a painful experience for

her, as it is impossible to relive happy childhood memories.39 The future is already

known and Emily couldn’t live carefree anymore because of the experiences she

already made. She tried to transcend historical time but as it is stated above the

characters are subjected to it and cannot overcome its tyranny. Emily’s memories are

33 Londraville, 370.34 Lifton, 204.35 Cf. Nimax, 46.36 Hönnighausen, 42.37 Porter, 213.38 Porter, 221.39 Cf. Nimax, 61.

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real but for the audience to know them time lapses are necessary. So, memories are

only created through the time lapses and the rearrangement of time. The characters’

manipulation of space causes a shift between the world of the living and the dead and

only the stage manager can fully exist in both of them.40 However, there is still

something positive as “they [are] waitin’ for the eternal part in them to come out

clear” (76) and then there will be no more need for manipulation and facing painful

memories.

4. Bibliography

40 Fletcher, 91.13

Primary Works

Wilder, Thornton. “Our Town”. Town and Other Plays. London: Penguin, 2000, 15- 91.

Works Cited

Bunge, Nancy. “The Social Realism of Our Town: A Study in Misunderstanding.”Thornton Wilder: New Essays. Ed. Martin Blank, Dalma Hunyadi Brunauer and David Garrett Izzo. Locust Hill Literary Studies, 26. West Cornwall, CT: Locust Hill Press, 1999, 349-364.

Fletcher, Anne. “Thornton Wilder’s “Eternal Present”: Ghosting and the Grave Bodyin Act III of Our Town”. Death in American Texts and Performances. Corpses, Ghosts, and the Reanimated Dead. Eds. Lisa K. Perdigao and Mark Pizzato. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010, 79-97.

Haberman, Donald. The Plays of Thornton Wilder. A Critical Study. Middletown, CT:Wesleyan University Press, 1967.

Hönnighausen, Lothar. “Where Are We? Some Methodological Reflections on Space,Place, and Postmodern Reality.” Space in America. Theory History Culture. Eds. Klaus Benesch and Kerstin Schmidt. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005, 41-52.

Lifton, Paul. „Vast Encyclopedia“. The Theater of Thornton Wilder. Contributions inDrama and Theater Studies, 61. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press: 1995.

Londraville, Richard. “Our Town: An American Noh of Ghosts”. Thornton Wilder:New Essays. Ed. Martin Blank, Dalma Hunyadi Brunauer and David Garrett Izzo. Locust Hill Literary Studies, 26. West Cornwall, CT: Locust Hill Press, 1999, 365-378.

Nimax, Manfred. „Jederzeit und Allerorts.“ Universalität im Werk von Thornton Wilder. Frankfurt/Main: Haag und Herchen, 1983.

Porter, Tom. Myth and modern American drama. Detroit, Mich.: Wayne StateUniversity Press, 1969.

Soanes, Catherine and Angus Stevenson (Eds.). The Concise Oxford EnglishDictionary. Twelfth edition. Oxford University Press, 2008. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. 7 July 2011.http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t23.e34075

Wilder, Thornton. “Preface”. Our Town and Other Plays. London: Penguin, 2000, 7-13.

---. “Preface to Our Town”. Collected Plays and Writings on Theater. Ed. J.D.

14

McClatchy. New York: The Library of America, 2007, 657-59.---. “Some Thoughts on Playwriting”. Collected Plays and Writings on Theater. Ed.

J.D. McClatchy. New York: The Library of America, 2007, 694-703.

Further Literature

Craig, William Lane. The Tenseless Theory of Time: A Critical Examination. NewYork: Springer, 2000.

Goldstein, Malcolm. The Art of Thornton Wilder. Lincoln: University of NebraskaPress, 1965.

Guthrie, Tyrone. “The World of Thornton Wilder.” The Modern American Theater –A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Alvin B. Kernan. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:Prentice-Hall, 1967.

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