Linda Loman

• Willy describes Linda as his “support” and the audience is given the impression that she is well used to managing and protecting her husband.
• Comparison:

  • Linda is compassionate and caring. From the opening scene where Willy, badly shaken, has returned home, we see Linda trying to protect her husband.
  • She gently takes Willy’s jacket from him just as Willy decides he will make another attempt to drive up to New England, skilfully keeping her husband at home (the audience may infer that she has had to do this before).
• Support:

  She also offers support and advice, protecting Willy’s feelings by speculating that his tiredness may be caused by his glasses, but also suggesting that Willy sees his manager in the morning to ask for a transfer.
• Sensitive:

  Miller’s stage directions show Linda’s apprehension throughout this scene.

  She is at first described as calling to Willy “with some trepidation” and throughout, she speaks to him “carefully” and “sensitively”, the adverbs emphasising the care she takes to avoid upsetting Willy and triggering another one of his outbursts.
• Patience:

  Again, the audience may sense that Linda has had a lot of practice in ‘managing’ Willy in these situations, and Miller describes her as reacting “with infinite patience”.
• Strength:

  • Willy describes Linda as his “foundation” and “support”, imagery which suggests Linda’s hidden strength.
  • Linda keeps a careful eye on the household finances and, despite the debts and payments becoming harder to manage, maintains a grip on her emotions.
• Linda's Passivity:

  Many commentators have criticised Miller’s presentation of Linda, seeing her as too much of a passive, helpless victim unable to help her husband. However she does have moments of strength.
• Confrontation:

  Linda often hides what she knows in order to avoid a confrontation with Willy.

  She knows that Willy borrows 50 dollars a week from Charley but will not hurt Willy’s pride by letting her husband know that she knows this.

  Linda also clearly suspects that something “happened” between Willy and Biff to cause their rift, but is wary of probing too deeply, perhaps scared by what she may learn.
• Suicide:

  She also knows of Willy’s suicidal impulses, aware that at least one of Willy’s car ‘accidents’ was deliberate and that Willy has a piece of rubber pipe ready by the gas heater in the cellar with which he can gas himself.

  Linda will not confront Willy as she thinks this will “insult” his pride, again placing what she sees as the needs of her husband first.
• Passive?

  Many commentators have criticised Miller’s presentation of Linda, seeing her as too much of a passive, helpless victim who is unable to understand, and therefore truly help, her husband.

  However, it should be remembered that Linda, just as much as Willy, is on the edge.
• Suffering:

  Biff notices that “Mom got grey… got awful old” and Linda confesses to him that she lives “from day to day”, herself exhausted and terrified by Willy’s condition.

  As Willy tells Ben, Linda has “suffered”.
• Not passive?

  • Linda is not always passive. She is prepared to confront the behaviour of her sons if she feels they have wronged their father.
  • In Act Two her frustrations come to a head and she speaks forcefully and bluntly to both, calling each of them a “bum” and then, when she learns of how they abandoned Willy in the restaurant, “a pair of animals”.
  • She dismisses Happy’s women as “lousy, rotten whores” and, near the end of Act Two, tells both sons that they must leave the house.
• Strength:

  • Miller gives Linda one of the key lines in the play: “So attention must be paid… Attention, attention must be finally paid to such a person”.
  • Many commentators regard this as a central message of the play: that the ‘common man’ deserves respect and dignity.
  • Miller’s use of repetition, and the placing of the word “attention” at the beginning of the sentence, add to the power of these lines.
• Delusions and Values:

  Linda shares many of Willy's delusions and misplaced values. Because of this she does not challenge Willy and cannot help him save himself.
• The American Dream:

  • Linda clearly shares Willy’s ambitions.
  • Miller tells us in the opening stage direction that Willy’s “massive dreams” are “longings which she shares”.
  • When, in Act Two, we see the scene from the past where Ben offers Willy a position in Alaska, it is Linda who prompts Willy to tell Ben about Dave Singleman and how a salesman can enjoy great success.
• Shared Values:

  • Similarly, Linda trusts the power of selling and advertising, reassuring Willy that their Hastings refrigerator must be a good model as it had “the biggest ads of any of them”.
  • For some critics, Linda is partly responsible for Willy’s death as she does not question or confront Willy’s values.
  • Because she does not challenge Willy, she cannot help him save himself.
• Irony:

  • At the end of the play, Linda is a lost figure, unable to understand Willy’s death.
  • Her monologue closes the play: tellingly, she addresses it to Willy.
  • There is a dark irony in her last phrase (“We’re free… We’re free”), demonstrating that, even now, she is unable to process the fact that Willy will never return home.