Miller Discusses Marilyn

So, here we are at the final blog post and I am not quite finished researching. I emailed David Smith, PhD, a marital psychologist and Notre Dame, to ask him if he would allow me to interview him, but he hasn’t gotten back to me as of yet. I also found a video on youtube that I will probably use during my senior exit project presentation. It is a documentary featuring an interview with Arthur Miller. I could not find the full documentary on youtube, only the part that focused on his marriage to Marilyn, so I will use that and keep looking for the rest of it. Part one is at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1W5X8gmD5g&feature=related. 

During the interview, Miller discusses the way he fell in love with Marilyn. He mentions that at first, his feelings for her made him feel incredibly guilty (he was still married to his wife at the time). Quentin is also guilty about his initial feelings and physical attraction for Maggie in After the Fall, and both men felt the need to protect the perfect beauty and perceived joy of Maggie/Marilyn from the hands and looks of other, sinister men, both before and after Maggie/Marilyn becomes a star. I’m wondering if this initial guilt and continued protectiveness is part of what poisoned their relationship.

Meanwhile, Miller mentioned that he believed Marilyn wanted him so much because he loved her, and he saw the good in her: he saw her as she wanted to be. Barbara Leaming’s biography of her mentioned the same motivation for Marilyn’s love of Miller: she idolized him as a thinker and a moral man, a man who did not immediately try to sleep with her (although this may have been because of shyness and guilt rather than respect), and she thought that if he could love her, then she might be able to love herself. Her extreme emotional abuse as a child, which Miller also mentioned, led her to hate herself, and she had never felt she was deserving of anyone’s love, especially her own, until Miller came along. She was sexually abused in several of her foster homes as well, and she was raised to think that this was her fault, because she presented a temptation for men. Of course, when she became an international sex symbol, it must have recalled these childhood accusations and brought back the same sense of guilt and unworthiness. 

These feelings combined with a genetic predisposition towards mental illness, led Marilyn to be a very depressed, paranoid individual. At first, however, she only allowed Arthur to see the good side of her, saying men only want “a happy whore.” Maggie did the same to Quentin, only allowing flashes of her dark side to come out. When Marilyn finally allowed what she called her inner monster to come out, it shattered Miller’s illusion of her, and his disappointment in the truth of Marilyn Monroe convinced her he did not truly love her, and her illusion of the perfect marriage with him was also shattered. These feelings intensified, especially as she became convinced he was using her to get in with Hollywood and get his short story The Misfits made into a screenplay.

Now, everything I have read either is impartial or somewhat defends Miller’s behavior, but I wish I could find something that presented the other side of the story. Some of the things Miller did do suggest that he could have been using her. Even if he loved her at first, these feelings went away almost immediately, Miller himself stated that he only believed he could save his marriage “at first”. However, he stuck with it even after he saw there was no hope, and there is reason to believe that he did so because there was no way The Misfits could get made without Marilyn, and after a string of plays that had had a bad critical reception and his HUAC debacle, Miller desperately needed a comeback. The Misfits may have been originally intended to give Marilyn the serious role that she so desired, and the respect that would come with it, but by the end, Miller was making it purely for himself.

So, my research is far from over, but I hope that anyone sticking with me after all these incredibly long posts is enjoying it (:

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