Noel Coward's Dysfunctional Family in Term Paper

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He is perfectly well aware that he possesses 'star quality', which is the lodestar of his life. In his case, it might be defined as the ability to project, without effort, the outline of a unique personality, which had never existed before him in print or paint." (Eller, p. 1)

So to an extent, the various characterizations used to present the Bliss family may in some manner echo the various personas between which Coward could move so easily. In the Bliss children especially, we can speculate that Coward is of a mixed sentiment regarding his entrance into high society in spite of his low society birth. A spot of dialogue between Simon and Sorel underscores this sentiment. Here, Sorel asserts, "I sometimes wish we were more normal and bouncing Simon." When Simon presses her on this proclamation, she tells, "I should like to be a fresh, open-air girl with a passion for games.." Simon retorts, "Thank God you're not." (Coward, p. 6)

In this rather humorous exchange, Sorel actually shows some level of self-awareness, suggesting that the insular and dysfunctional nature of the family -- generally couched in its elitist sense of artistic intellectualism -- does detain her from a certain freedom and abandon. Still, as the unfolding of events thereafter will demonstrate, this self-awareness is not strong enough to prevent her from performing to the will of her eccentric mother. In fact, one might argue that she and the rest of the Bliss family are only intensified in their desire to display their eccentricities by the presence of their unsuspecting guests. This is a type of familial dysfunction that is actually quite familiar within the scope of public life today. In fact, the prescience of Coward's work is not so much in his exploration of high society but in the way that he deconstructs the oddness of family dynamics.

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Certainly, the degree to which this subject continually generates interest in public discourse may account for the continuum of success enjoyed by the play itself. Hay Fever's constant revival and performance may be attributed at least in part to the increasing pertinence of the play to modern family life. In fact, in many regards, the story of the Bliss family and its voyeuristic impulses seems to predict by nearly eighty years the proclivity toward this dysfunction that would become the province of reality television and other like-minded media. Today, there is almost a desperate sense for some families and individuals to equate the kind of disturbed attention given by the country house guests in this play with the adulation and interest heaped upon celebrity. That each of the members of the Bliss family is in some way driven toward an artistic medium, and particularly that Judith is a former actress who has lost both her youth and her audience, strangely foreshadows the sense of desperation that oozes from the dysfunctional anonymous and celebrity families that choose to air their affairs in broadcast contexts.

To this end, the Bliss family is strangely modern in the detachment which its members display toward one another and toward their guests. Like those who present themselves so nakedly on television and in public life today, the family at the center of the Coward play seems blissfully uninterested in how it is perceived by others so long as others are paying attention. And to credit Coward's perceptiveness, it is compelling that in the absence of its departed audience, members of the Bliss family would continue their deranged performance for one another, truly indulging unabashedly in their dysfunction.

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