Feminist Theory and Postwar American Drama

Author

Gayle Austin, The Graduate Center, City University of New YorkFollow

Date of Degree

1988

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Program

Theatre

Advisor

Marvin Carlson

Committee Members

Vera M. Roberts

Albert Bermel

Mary Ann Caws

Subject Categories

Dramatic Literature, Criticism and Theory

Abstract

This dissertation is concerned with developing feminism as a critical tool, to be applied to drama. Feminist theory from anthropology, psychology, literary criticism, and film theory is summarized and one theorist from each field is selected to serve as an example of how feminism in that field can illuminate drama written by both women and men.

I begin by outlining the three chronological stages of feminist criticism: (1) Images of women; (2) Women writers; and (3) The questioning of an entire field. The various political divisions of feminism (liberal, radical, and socialist) also need to be kept in mind, and some of the feminist insights from science and history give perspective on the whole process of theorizing, "objectivity," and making categories.

The sixteen plays have been selected from the period 1945-1985. The playwrights include prominent figures in the traditional canon (Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Lillian Hellman, Sam Shepard, John Guare, David Mamet, and David Rabe) as well as some women playwrights who would not generally be placed there (Jane Bowles, Carson McCullers, Maria Irene Fornes, Joan Schenkar, the group Split Britches, and Wendy Kesselman).

The chapter on feminist anthropology applies Gayle Rubin's idea of "the exchange of women" to three plays from the 1940s. The chapter on feminist psychology applies Nancy Chodorow's ideas about mother-daughter bonding during the preoedipal phase to three plays from the 1940s and 1950s. From feminist literary criticism, some of Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar's ideas on madness and confinement in nineteenth-century fiction are applied to five plays from the 1970s and 1980s. And from feminist film theory, Laura Mulvey's early ideas on the representation of women from "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" are applied to four plays from the 1980s. In concluding, I combine ideas from Chodorow and Mulvey to do a brief, illustrative analysis of My Sister In This House by Wendy Kesselman, and suggest future directions feminist dramatic theory and criticism might take.

Comments

Digital reproduction from the UMI microform.

Recommended Citation

Austin, Gayle, "Feminist Theory and Postwar American Drama" (1988). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/2149