In 1964, Arthur Miller presented his new play to the public — After the Fall. For many, it was shocking. At the center of the story is lawyer Quentin, an intellectual tormented by guilt and self-analysis. The woman he is connected to — Maggie — is unstable, sexualized, hysterical, and a foolish blonde singer descending into addiction. In the play, he pushes to the extreme. He no longer sympathizes, he does not suffer, he disdains. He literally compares her to a body through which men pass as if through a train station. He describes her as a woman who “was chewed and spat out by whole lines of smirking men.” And all of this is said by the protagonist, behind whom hides Arthur Miller himself:
“…What love is there here?! When whole lines of smirking men chewed her up and spat her out! Her very name has been soaked with the stench of dressing rooms and the cigar smoke of train cars!”
This was not a metaphor — it was a verdict. Her name, her body, her past — all of it had become filth, stench, something disgusting to him. He no longer saw her as a woman. He wrote it with revulsion — and with cold precision. Every word was meant to make the audience feel his contempt. Arthur never says outright, “I hate her,” but each word strikes like a blow. Monroe died in 1962, two years before the premiere of the play. She could not answer, could not defend herself. Instead, the public received a portrayal of her through the eyes of her ex-husband — without masks, without mercy. One critic called the play “an act of psychological execution disguised as art.” Another wrote, “He dissected her soul on stage like a pathologist.”
“He killed her again. Only now — in the silence of the theater hall,”
— wrote critic Ellen Wallace.
