Desire Under the Elms was published by Boni & Liveright in 1925. Old Ephraim Cabot, a seventy-five-year-old New England farmer whose stony land has broken three wives, brings home a young third wife, Abbie Putnam. His son Eben — who hates his father for working his mother to death — sees Abbie as a threat to his inheritance. Abbie sees the farm as her security. Their mutual suspicion transforms into sexual desire, and they begin an affair.
Abbie becomes pregnant. Old Cabot believes the child is his — proof of his virility at seventy-five — and celebrates. Eben, discovering that Abbie has told the old man the child is his, accuses her of using him only to secure the property. Abbie, to prove her love is genuine and not mercenary, murders the infant. Eben, horrified, summons the sheriff — then repents and claims complicity.
O’Neill fuses the Phaedra myth (stepmother seducing stepson) with the Medea myth (mother murdering child to punish/prove love to the man) and sets both in a landscape whose granite hardness mirrors the Puritan ethic that produced these people: desire is sin, land is righteousness, and human feeling will be crushed by either.
Collecting Desire Under the Elms
First edition (Boni & Liveright, New York, 1925): Boards with dust jacket. First appeared in the collection Plays: Desire Under the Elms, The Hairy Ape, Welded.
Market values:
- First edition in jacket: $150–$400
- Limited signed editions of O’Neill plays: $300–$800
Projected values (2026–2036): Moderate appreciation.
New England Tragedy
Desire Under the Elms (1924) is O’Neill’s most Freudian play — a stark, powerful drama set on a New England farm where an aging patriarch (Ephraim Cabot) brings home a young third wife (Abbie), who seduces Ephraim’s son Eben in a struggle over inheritance and desire. The play draws on Greek tragedy (specifically the Phaedra myth) and is shot through with Puritan guilt, Oedipal jealousy, and a grim vision of American rural life. It was banned in several cities for its frank treatment of adultery and infanticide, which only increased its fame.
Frequently Asked Questions
Was this controversial? Extremely. Productions were banned in Boston, Los Angeles, and London. A New York district attorney tried to close the Broadway production on obscenity charges. The controversy made O’Neill a household name and established his reputation as America’s most daring dramatist.