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Cyclopedia of Literary Characters
Desire Under the Elms

Author: Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953)
First Published: 1925
Genre: Drama
Locale: A farmhouse in New England
Time: 1850
Plot: Tragedy

Ephraim Cabot, a greedy, harsh, old New England widower. He has taken over his second wife’s farm and worked her to death. He has brutalized his three sons, working them like animals on the farm until they hate him bitterly. At the age of seventy-six, he marries thirty-five-year-old Abbie Putnam, a deed intended to cheat his sons of their inheritance. The two older sons have left the farm, but Eben, the youngest, remains. Abbie, whom Eben hates, cleverly seduces him, and he fathers a child that Ephraim, duped by flattery, believes is his own. Taunted by his father, Eben threatens to kill Abbie for tricking him. By this time, she has fallen in love with Eben. As her way of proving this love, she murders the baby. When Abbie is about to be arrested, Eben realizes that he now loves her, and he insists on accepting part of the blame for her crime. As the sheriff takes them away, Ephraim is left alone to contemplate his empty victory over his sons.

Eben Cabot, Ephraim’s son by his second wife. He hates Ephraim for the way the self-righteous old hypocrite treated his mother. Believing that the farm is really his, Eben buys out the potential claim of his brothers by giving each three hundred dollars from a hoard of gold his mother had hidden. He bitterly resents the arrival of a young stepmother, and he continues to hate her even after she seduces him and he fathers her child. Her final act of love toward him changes his hatred of her to love, and he willingly goes away with her to share her punishment.

Abbie Putnam, Ephraim’s third wife, less than half his age. She marries him to get a home. Her appearance heightens the hostility that exists between Ephraim and Eben. Abbie seduces Eben to get a child who will be Ephraim’s heir and who will deprive Eben of his expected inheritance. Although Eben tells her that he hates her, Abbie has fallen in love with him. To prove this love, she smothers the baby she has tricked him into fathering. Shocked by this crime, Eben goes for the sheriff, but when he begins to realize that he really loves Abbie, he tells the sheriff that he is an accomplice in the crime and is taken away with her.

Simeon and Peter Cabot, Ephraim’s sons and Eben’s half brothers. Hating their father and wanting desperately to join the gold rush to California, they accept Eben’s offer of three hundred dollars each and renounce all claims to the farm.