“Toys in the Attic” is Lillian’s last play. It’s a family-oriented story describing destructive part of sibling love.
Carrie & Anna Berniers, two unmarried sisters, live in New Orleans where they wait for visits from their younger brother Julian. After some absence, Julian returns home from Chicago with a large sum of mysterious cash and his “infant bride” Lily Prine. Julian tells his sisters that, though he lost the factory in Chicago, he did manage to save money to buy expensive gifts for his sisters, pay off the house and send them on a trip to Europe that they've long wished to do.
Carrie and Anna took care of him like a mother, desiring his success. However, once he succeeds, two sisters and even his wife seem not to be pleased with it and still skeptical about his success.
Julian said to his sisters in Act One,
“Big, successful Julian, the way you wanted me. The man who was never good at anything except living on his sisters, and losing his wife’s money. I never minded failure much, you minded.”On the other hand, Lily’s mother Albertine Prine reacts differently to his success. She unwrapped the package and arranged a comb on her head, saying “how very nice of you to bring it to me.”
Julian was puzzled by her attitude, totally different from his sisters and wife, and said;
JULIAN: …… Well, they’re sort of upset and they don’t think I know it. I should have had sense enough to know that when you’ve been poor and wanted things you couldn’t have, your stomach gets small and you can’t eat much right away. I brought too much, and everything too grand, and well - Guess they got a little sick. They’re so happy that it comes out unhappy.You know how it is?
ALBERTINE: I don’t think so.
JULIAN: It’s a crazy old world. For years, they tell me about what’s going to be, what I’m going to do, you know, get rich and big time. The more I fail, the louder they cheer me with what we’re all going to have, want. And so all my life, I dream about coming up those steps carrying everything, and I make up what they will say, and what I will say - Well, when it came, I guess it was hard to believe, maybe even frightened them, I never thought of that, and I just bought anything if it cost a lot, and made Carrie sick on caviar, and everybody acted scared, and like they were going to cry. Lily did cry - Natural enough. You know?ALBERTINE: No, I don’t know. You’ve had good fortune and brought it home. There’s something sad in not liking what you want when you get it. And something strange, maybe even mean. Nobody should have cried about your good fortune, nobody should have been anything but happy. -Quotes from Act Two, Page 47 to 48
Carrie and Anna thought he’s come home broke, like a never grow up kid. They are ready to give him all they had, and tell nice lies about how the next time. However, they are not ready to have successful brother, then get sick. Anna tries to take a chance of changing her life by going to Europe. But Carrie wanted Julian to need her again and live together with three of them, missing the past before his marriage. In the end, Carrie took advantage of Lily’s innocence to let Julian fail again…
Albertine gave a good-bye present to her daughter Lily.
“the pure and the innocent sometimes bring harm to themselves and those they love and, when they do, for some reason that I do not know, the injury is very great.” - Quote from Act Three, Page 76
Carrie and Anna are loosely based on Lillian’s paternal aunts Jenny and Hannah. Lillian described how she thought about them in Page 76 and 77 of “MAYBE”.
“they had lived doing the uncomplaining work of women brought up by middle-class intellectual parents who grew more educated as they grew poorer; going out to find any kind of work in a social class where that was a kind of disgrace; certainly pained by it once upon a time, but not by the time I knew them; proud, cranky, married to each other; frightened of life with brave faces; never owning anything that didn’t come from sales or cheap auctions; cooking, scrubbing, never admitting a pain or an ache, so totally different from my mother’s rich family - a comedy villain crew.
They were fine women for a little girl to be around although, of course, I didn’t think of them that way when I was a child. But I did know from the time I was two or three years old that I enjoyed them. And, later on, I knew that the things I learned from them would be good and valuable for me all my life. Not that they were teachers, or ever tried to be teachers, but I guess that’s what they were for me.”