A self-indulgent, poorly written, poor parody based off one line in August: Osage County dragged out to immesurable lengths in some form of masochism. Enjoy!
Violet: Whaddya know about life on these plains? Whaddya know about Hard Times?
Barbara: Why are you yelling at us? We know that Hard Times is a novel published serially by Charles Dickens in an attempt to improve the flagging sales of his periodical.
Violet: You do not know! You do not KNOW! It was written as a scathing assault on the utilitarian ideology of the Victorian era. [points to Mattie Fae] This woman. This woman saved me from one of my mother's many gentlemen callers by giving me an example of Louisa's latent intrinsic capability to experience emotion. She still has the paper-cuts on her hands from flicking through the novel to find the exact quote!
Barbara: We know you had a rotten childhood Mum. Who didn't?
Violet: You did not! You CANNOT know! None of you know what it's like to immerse yourself in a textual analysis of one of the greatest pieces of literature of our time, 'cept this woman right here and that man we buried today. Sweet girl, sweet Barbara, my heart breaks for every quote that you had to memorise. I wish I coulda recited them for you; Gradgrind was an "eminently practical man" described as being overwhelmingly 'square' in appearance; Bitzer's lack of soul is symbolised in his "unnatural" complexion that looks like if he "were cut he would bleed white". But if you think for a solitary second you can fathom the pain your father endured in his natural life, you've got another thing coming. Do you know what your father had to do from about age 4 to age 10? Do you?
(no one responds)
Do you?!
Barbara: No
Karen: No
Violet: Collect scraps and pages and cobble them together to gather a whole text that he'd be able to use later in his school life. With his mother and father! Crawling around classrooms, whilst the classes were still there and the teacher was calling the police, to pick up scraps of fucking paper. Now what do you want to say about your rotten childhood? Obviously it wasn't as bad as that of the Gradgrind children!
That's the crux of the biscuit: we knew nothing at all and then learned too much. We learnt everything about Hard Times, so that we could pass that knowledge on. Your father and I were the first in our families to even read Hard Times! And he wound up an award winning poet! You girls, given a college education (which was taken for granted no doubt), couldn't even analyse your way out of a paper bag! What theories have you thought up on that novel? What about you? Who are you? Jesus! If you worked as hard as us you've found the meaning of life in that book!
That's the crux of the biscuit: we knew nothing at all and then learned too much. We learnt everything about Hard Times, so that we could pass that knowledge on. Your father and I were the first in our families to even read Hard Times! And he wound up an award winning poet! You girls, given a college education (which was taken for granted no doubt), couldn't even analyse your way out of a paper bag! What theories have you thought up on that novel? What about you? Who are you? Jesus! If you worked as hard as us you've found the meaning of life in that book!
Barbara: Why are you yelling at us? Hard Times is clearly a two dimensional novel with symbolism painted thinnly over the top.
Violet: Just time we had some truths told 'round here's all.
Apologies to Tracey Letts
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