The Clean House

After the tragedy of her parents’ deaths, Matilde, a Brazilian woman in her late twenties, moves to the United States and takes a job as Lane’s live-in cleaning lady. At heart she is a comic, and her passion is writing jokes, but she is also in mourning and wears black. Matilde describes herself as once the third-funniest person in Brazil and now the funniest, since her mother and father (the first and second funniest, respectively) died. With no one to match her humor, Matilde felt that there was nothing left for her in Brazil. But in the United States, Matilde is depressed and angry at being asked to become a piece of machinery in a humorless home. Despite her unhappiness, Matilde is reluctant to pursue her dreams and turn comedy into her career. She is preoccupied with creating the perfect joke, but also fears its power. In the end, she uses the deadly power of the perfect joke to perform a merciful and surreal assisted suicide for Ana. Instead of fading into the background, Matilde teaches Lane and Virginia how to distance themselves less. She shows them how to treat Ana’s body, and how to face and accept things that make them uncomfortable.

Virginia is in her late fifties and Lane’s older sister. At the beginning of the play, Virginia is tightly wound and deeply but secretly dissatisfied with her life. As carefully as Virginia attempts to control herself, she sometimes erupts in inappropriate comments, such as her joke about killing herself. Just as Lane sees Virginia’s decision to be a homemaker as an affront, Virginia is offended by Lane’s choice to hire a housekeeper instead of cleaning her own house. She sees cleaning as an act of intimacy with her home. Until recently, Virginia has found purpose in the act of cleaning. She has centered her life on safety. While writing one paper in college, Virginia discovered that she had nothing to say, so she gave up instead of taking the risk and trying again. She married a man she considers to be mediocre—a man she compares to furniture—because she doesn’t worry that he will leave her. She is glad not to have had children because she does not have to fear for their safety. Virginia stopped laughing because her husband made a negative comment about the sound of her laugh. She is desperately lonely, and fascinated by those who live less controlled lives than her own. She befriends Matilde, and she can barely hide her admiration for Charles and Ana and their romantic whirlwind. By the end of the play, Virginia and Lane become closer, and Virginia is able to offer her sister help without hiding it.

Virginia describes Charles, Lane’s husband, as too attractive, too successful as a surgeon, and too charismatic, noting that if she were his wife, she would worry that he would be unfaithful or leave her. In contrast, Lane insists that she isn’t concerned at all that Charles will stray from their relationship. When Charles meets Ana, he is her surgeon. His relationship with Lane has become distant and impersonal, and Charles throws himself into the romance of becoming a different person for Ana. He absolves himself of responsibility for being unfaithful to his wife by claiming that Ana is his bashert, his divinely chosen soulmate. Although he isn’t Jewish, he uses Jewish law as justification and permission to leave his wife. In the end, none of Charles’s superlative qualities—not his passion, success, surgical skill, or charm—can change Ana’s illness. When she won’t accept treatment, he convinces himself that he should go on a grand, romantic journey instead of helping her through her final days. His impracticality and idealism contrast with and illuminate Lane’s rigidity and severely controlled emotions. The actor who plays Charles also doubles as Matilde’s father in her memories and imagination, drawing a parallel between two romantic figures who idealize the women they love and cannot cope with losing them.