From the Private Submissive Sphere to Public Intellectual Resistance: American Female Playwrights? Contributions to Dramaturgy and Feminism
This article joins a vibrant conversation in American literary studies about the contribution of female
playwrights to dramaturgy as well as the feminist movement in the early twentieth century. In addition to assessing their
contribution to American drama, the article extends the discussion to study how these female dramatists reflected the
status of women in contemporary societies. We argue that the selected works of Susan Glaspell?s Trifles (1916) and
Bernice (1917), Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun (1959), and Rachel Crothers? A Man's World (1910) reveal a
process, a transformation, a theatrical presentation of the development of female awareness about the self, the
masculine, and the community. The analysis of these plays reveals recurrent patterns of resistance and recreation that
witness the development and advancement of American feminism into three stages ? namely, resisting masculine
exclusionist ideologies through instinctual, unintellectual means, recreating and maneuvering self-actualization while
compromising agency, and adopting social activism to expose the private oppression of women. The analysis of these
plays shows that these patterns are not just recurrent and repetitive; it also shows the response to these patterns as
productively evolving. These examples of drama show the progress of American theater in general and connect the
discussion to larger cultural perspectives about American feminism