Arcadia

A primary concern of the play is the search to make order out of chaos. This is best illustrated in Thomasina’s theorem. As Valentine demonstrates with his computer model, her work results in “[p]atterns making themselves out of nothing” (76). Yet her discovery is itself out of order, as she makes a discovery without the mathematical building blocks and “there’s an order things can’t happen in” (78). Knowledge itself goes through iterations, which are the repeated use of a formula where the output is used for the input. For example, Thomasina makes a discovery, which is lost, and then rediscovered.

Valentine’s explanation to Hannah also serves as an explanation to the audience. In simple terms, he explains how “she’s feeding the solution back into the equation, and then solving it again” (44). This definition of iteration informs the play, as characters gain, lose, and regain knowledge in its own looping progress. This algorithm makes the “unpredictable and the predetermined unfold together to make everything the way it is” (47). Despite the chaos of her data, the math brings order to it to reveal an object in nature. Valentine explains the ramifications of this to the audience, stating it is a “theory of everything” (48). With enough iterations, Thomasina’s data becomes ordered in an image. On a cosmic scale, the future is predetermined and works toward destruction. The things in the middle, like “whether it’ll rain on auntie’s garden party three Sundays from now” and individual choices (48), seem to be less determined and leave room for free will.

Thomasina’s observation about rice pudding and jam shows her scientific curiosity while it also underscores her ability to connect the abstract to the mundane and the small to the grand. The jam in the rice pudding is “a meteor in [her] astronomical atlas” (5). In her musings, she establishes the fundamental idea of chaos theory: that things move toward chaos and disorder. Each stir is an iteration that causes the equation to continually change. In the present, Valentine will use a cup of coffee to make the same point. While Septimus does not understand the mathematical possibilities and ramifications of her musings, he does understand the philosophical connection. He views the linear movement and “unchangeable” disorder as “free will or self-determination” (5). This aligns with Newton’s law of motion, which states that a body remains at rest or in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. This law leads to a deterministic view of the universe and rejects free will. Thomasina extends this, wondering if it would be possible to use algebra to “write the formula for all the future” (5).

The play’s plot contains iterations, too. The gardens are redone with each cultural shift. The new garden also reflects the play’s concerns with authenticity and chaos. There are “ruins where there was never a house” (12), with this crafting of an aesthetic getting misinterpreted in the present, where these ruins are seen as authentic and of the period when Hannah seeks to reconstruct them. As Noakes says, “Irregularity is one of the chiefest principles of the picturesque style” (12). The chaos of the gardens connects to Thomasina’s development of chaos theory and plays into the question of free will. Characters, sexual entanglements, and quests for knowledge repeat themselves with variations across time. The repetition of set and props creates a continuity with variations that build. Time, like heat, moves forward until death.