Resilience in Neil Simon’s Lost in Yonkers

“Grandma- Stay the way you are, Bella, because you don’t know vot such feelings would do to you.

Bella- Yes, I do, Momma. I know what other things you’re talking about…Because they have happened to me, Momma…They’ve happened because I wanted them to happen. When I was in school, I let boys touch me…And boys that I met in the Park…And in the movies…Even boys that I met here in the store…Nights when you were asleep, I went down and let them in…And not just boys, Momma…men too. I needed somebody to touch me, Momma. Somebody to hold me. To tell me I was pretty…You never told me that” (150)

David Richards states: “Bella gives a wrenching plea for the right to love someone who will love you back in a world where steelier emotions normally prevail” (qtd. in Kerschen, Louis). Her behaviour asserts the redemptive qualities of instinct and human empathy as opposed to the hatred of reason represented by Grandma. Bella prefers the warmth of relationships over mechanical responsibilities. “She is as warm and congenial as she is emotionally arrested” (92). She says to Grandma:

“Bella- But I’m smart, Momma. May be only as smart as a child, but some children are smarter than grown- ups. Some grown-ups I’ve seen are very stupid. And very mean.

Grandma-You don’t have responsibilities, Bella. And responsibilities are vot make meanness.

Bella- I don’t want to be your responsibility. Then maybe you won’t be so mean to me” (150)

Bella asserts her private space and her right to act like an individual. Throughout the play, Bella struggles to become an adult and think for herself. Her struggle against the incongruity of existence is portrayed in the following lines:

“Grandma- You vant to know vot you are, Bella... You’re a child. Dot’s vot doctors told me...

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