A View from the Bridge

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses Eddie’s quasi-incestuous desire for his surrogate daughter.

As Alfieri says in Act I, Eddie is “as good a man as he had to be in a life that was hard” (390). Eddie is good in the sense that he works hard to support his family. He is also generous and hospitable. When his wife Beatrice’s father’s house burnt down, Eddie let him stay in his house and sleep in his bed. He lets Beatrice’s immigrant cousins, whom he had never met before, stay in his house at significant personal risk and inconvenience. However, Eddie is harboring a forbidden love for his niece, Catherine. Although Catherine is not related to Eddie by blood, she was raised by him and Beatrice as their adopted daughter from childhood. As she reaches maturity, Eddie develops sexual and romantic feelings for her which he is unable to acknowledge. His unacknowledged passion for Catherine drives all of Eddie’s other actions in the play, including his transgressions against his community’s laws of hospitality toward fellow immigrants.

The conflated paternal and romantic feelings Eddie harbors for Catherine manifest as a desire to protect her from the outside world, especially from other men. At the beginning of the play, Eddie criticizes Catherine for “walkin’ wavy” (381) and says that “I don’t like the looks they’re givin’ you in the candy store” (381). Similarly, when Catherine tells Eddie that she has been offered a job as a typist, reacts with hostility, hiding his fear that she will meet other men behind concern for her social status. His obsession with Catherine’s sexual appeal to other men belies his own desire for her and his sublimated wish to be in a romantic relationship with her. These jealousies and fears only intensify when Rodolpho starts living with them. Rodolpho’s genial, artistic personality also triggers a crisis of masculinity for Eddie. To Eddie, aggression and physical labor constitute masculinity; the fact that Catherine prefers a man who jokes, sings, and sews threatens both his sublimated desire for her and his sense of himself as a man.

Whether Eddie would have let Catherine go eventually if Rodolpho had not come is unclear. But what is clear is that the arrival of a concrete rival for his love and Catherine’s defiance of Eddie’s attempts to control her spurs Eddie to increasingly desperate actions. He grabs and kisses him in front of Catherine to “prove” Rodolpho’s unworthiness by emphasizing what he sees as his lack of true masculinity. He then informs immigration services about Rodolpho and Marco to get them deported, an act that violates the moral laws of his immigrant community and requires mutual protection and hospitality. Even after Marco seeks revenge for Eddie’s transgression against him, Eddie is unable to confront the truth. Eddie declares “I want my name” (437), insisting that the real issue is that Marco has defamed him, not that he violated the laws of hospitality to preserve his incestuous relationship with Catherine. In this sense, Eddie departs from the classical model of a tragic hero. Although a singular passion destroys Eddie, in his downfall, he gains no clarity about why this happened or about the nature of the flaw that sealed his fate.

Beatrice Carbone is Eddie’s wife and a dedicated housewife. When, with the news of Catherine’s job offer, Beatrice advises her in opposition to Eddie’s cynicism to trust people and “be the way you are” (387), Eddie instantly puts her down: “[Y]ou lived in a house all your life, what do you know about it?” (387). Eddie suggests that because Beatrice is a housewife, she has no real understanding of human nature. Yet, as the play progresses, the opposite proves to be true. In fact, Beatrice’s proximity to the domestic world gives her insight that other characters lack. For instance, she connects Eddie’s frustration with Rodolpho and Catherine staying out late to Eddie’s lack of sexual interest in her. As she asks Eddie, as they are waiting outside for Catherine, “when am I gonna be a wife again, Eddie?” (399). Beatrice is the first to see that Eddie’s anger with Rodolpho is jealousy over Rodolpho’s blossoming relationship with Catherine. She realizes that Eddie not sleeping with her is a result of Eddie’s obsession with Catherine.

As the play progresses, Beatrice’s insight into the unfolding tragedy deepens. She recognizes that Catherine has to marry Rodolpho and leave Eddie, but she also believes that a reconciliation is possible, even after Eddie has kissed and humiliated Rodolpho. She says to Eddie, “I’d like to make a party here […] she still loves you” (427). Beatrice recognizes that she can repair the rifts in her family and community if she can reintegrate Eddie into the community’s wedding rituals. When Eddie’s blindness prevents this, and the cousins have been arrested, she also sees the deeper truth that they all are responsible for what is happening: “whatever happened we all done it” (436). Beatrice recognizes that bringing a young girl into her household created the situation that led to Eddie falling in love with Catherine, while Catherine continuing to behave like a little girl toward him has prevented necessary boundaries from being created in their relationship. Tragically, Beatrice sees only too late that this passion cannot be redirected. When she tells Eddie, after he says that he wants Marco to apologize, “that’s not what you want” (437), she realizes that Eddie’s consuming love for Catherine will result in his death. Nevertheless, she remains with Eddie until the end. Holding him in her arms as he dies, she symbolically sacrifices herself and her name to give Eddie a noble death.