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Act One, Scene Seven
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Shoe-Horn Sonata, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Survival, Resilience, and Catharsis
Pride and Patriotism
Friendship, Sacrifice, and Resentment
Trauma and Repression
Summary
Analysis
In Sheila’s hotel room, Bridie gives her friend a glass of Alka-Seltzer because she’s horribly hungover, though she claims she simply has a headache. After Bridie urges her to drink, Sheila asks if Rick was mad that she missed the day’s interview, and Bridie tells her Rick was simply surprised she was still alive. Indeed, although she doesn’t remember it, Sheila was so drunk the night before that she stood on a table and sang “God Save the King,” then re-enacted scenes from the prison camps. Worse, she said a number of disparaging things about Bridie.
It’s important to remember that the last conversation Bridie and Sheila had ended with Sheila staring at the shoe-horn and plunging into a painful memory. Having been forced to reckon with this memory (whatever it is), she clearly felt like she needed to get drunk to escape it. This, of course, is yet another indication that she has some rather troublesome emotions—emotions she hasn’t yet unpacked. Indeed, her decision to drink herself into oblivion rather than confront her past aligns with her tendency to avoid talking about the war.
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Bridie tells Sheila that she doesn’t want to be “judgmental,” but says she thinks Sheila has a drinking problem. Wanting to change the subject after hearing about how she treated Bridie, Sheila asks what she and Rick covered that day during the interview, and Bridie tells her they talked about Christmas in 1943, then asks—rather randomly—why Sheila never tried to see her again after the war. “Are you upset because I married?” Sheila denies this, and so Bridie asks why she “push[es]” her away. “We never had secrets in the camp,” she says, but Sheila only reminds her that they’re no longer in camp. Still, Bridie sadly points out that she doesn’t know the faintest thing about how Sheila has “spent [her] life.”
It's evident that Bridie resents Sheila for disappearing after the war. What she fails to see, though, is that her own presence seems to evoke uncomfortable emotions for Sheila. Indeed, the audience understands that there is something in Sheila and Bridie’s past that makes it difficult for Sheila to be around her former best friend. Unfortunately, though, Sheila is unwilling or unable to speak openly about whatever happened to her, and so she simply withdraws from their friendship. As a result, tension builds between the two women, estranging them from one another and making it almost impossible for them to merely sit in a hotel room without bickering.
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Bridie notes that drunk people almost “always tell the truth.” This is why she’s so upset about what happened the night before, she tells Sheila: “You looked at me with hate and said: ‘Don’t come near me, Bridie.’” She then asks why Sheila has kept her out of her life for so long, and when Sheila defends herself by saying that she wrote a letter, Bridie reminds her that this only happened once, right after the war, when Sheila wrote to tell her that she was leaving for England and that she’d send along a new address. “All we had in common was the camp,” Sheila insists. “I didn’t want to keep talking about it—I couldn’t, Bridie—it hurt too much. And when something hurts you run away…or you dig a hole and bury it.”
Bridie asks if Sheila ever missed her, and Sheila says she did, but it’s clear she’s lying. When Bridie points this out, Sheila says, “What did you expect—we’d all settle down in Chatswood—you, me and [your husband] Benny?” Hurt, Bridie slaps her across the face and says, “You’re alive today because of me. And don’t you ever forget it.” “I’ve spent fifty years trying to—if only I could!” Sheila says. “You want to know why I pushed you away. Here, Bridie—here’s your answer.” With this, she yanks open the dresser drawer and takes out the shoe-horn.
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Bridie is shocked to see her own initials engraved on the shoe-horn. “But you swapped this,” she says. “For quinine—when I came down with the fever.” She then asks Sheila how she managed to retrieve the shoe-horn, and Sheila begins telling a story about the final camp they were sent to, a place called Belalau—“the camp nobody talks about.” During their time here, many of the women became sick with malarial fever, and Bridie eventually contracted the disease. “I remember,” Bridie says, but Sheila tells her that she doesn’t actually know what happened while she was sick. “I took you to the hospital hut,” she says. “But they said you wouldn’t survive. Your skull was bursting from it. From cerebral malaria.” Interrupting her story, Bridie asks again how Sheila got back the shoe-horn after trading it for medication, but Sheila doesn’t give her an answer just yet.
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“Don’t you see?” Sheila says. “I was scared.” She tells Bridie that she didn’t want to put her in a coffin and carry her away. “I couldn’t let you die and leave me. I wouldn’t have survived,” she says. “So I went to the Japs—” As she continues, Bridie begins to whisper the word “no,” not wanting to hear what comes next. Still, though, Sheila pushes on, saying that she went to Lipstick Larry because he was “always smiling at [her].” She offered him all of their belongings in exchange for quinine, but he only laughed. Knowing what she had to do, then, Sheila offered herself to him. “You didn’t,” Bridie says, horrified. “Tell me you didn’t.” When Sheila reminds her that she was the one who “wanted to know,” Bridie adds, “You didn’t sleep with a Jap. Not you.”
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Continuing her story, Sheila says that Lipstick Larry showed her the quinine tablets and then brought her to the barracks, where a group of officers were “waiting” for her. “Don’t!” Bridie yells. “I don’t want to hear this!” Nevertheless, Sheila goes on, saying that she kept her eyes fixed on the guards’ feet. When they told her to sing, though, she obliged, singing so beautifully that they all began to cry. “They’ll let me go,” she thought at the time. “If men can cry, they’ll let me go.” Just as she went to leave, though, they “dragged” her back.
Bridie is distraught to learn that Sheila had sex with the guards in order to save her life. Sheila, for her part, admits that she has always told herself that Bridie would have “done the same” for her. “I was wrong, though, wasn’t I?” she asks. “You said you’d let your family die before you’d give in to the Japs. Did you mean it? Is it true?” Once this question is in the air, Bridie is unable to speak, but her silence makes it clear that she would not have made the same sacrifice Sheila made for her. As the two women quietly face one another, the audience hears young Sheila’s voice, saying, “Bridie, love—it’s me. Look—I’ve got tablets. I sold your shoe-horn. I’ve got tablets. Come on now—try and swallow them… Don’t leave me, Bridie. Please don’t leave me…”
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