Article: A drunken widow in a gilded cage

In the dedication to Long Day's Journey into Night, Eugene O'Neill describes how his wife Carlotta's love enabled him to "write this play - write it with deep pity and understanding and forgiveness for all the four haunted Tyrones". The playwright showed less compassion for his descendants: on his deathbed, he "cursed his children and their offspring and the offspring to come." It's this curse, in the view of Patrice Chaplin, that her former mother-in-law, Oona O'Neill Chaplin, bore for the rest of her life.

For O'Neill, genius seems to have been less an infinite capacity for taking pains than for evading responsibilities. Oona saw her father only half a dozen times after he abandoned his ...

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