Plays by American Women: 1900-1930

by Judith E. Barlow

Rachel Crothers' A Man's World ; Susan Glaspell's Trifles ; Georgia Douglas Johnson's Plumes ; Sophie Treadwell's Machinal , Zona Gale's Miss Lulu Bett .

Genres: Plays, Theatre, Drama, Feminism

304 pages, Paperback

First published November 30, 1984

Reviews

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Judith E. Barlow's edited collection of four early 20th century plays includes Rachel Crothers's A Man's World, Susan Glaspell's Trifles, Zona Gale's Miss Lulu Bett, Georgia Douglas Johnson's Plumes and Sophie Treadwell's Machinal. This book is a must-read for all theatre arts students and an enjoyable, informative read for anyone interested in dramatic literature or thinking more deeply about bigamy, marriage, indentured servitude, sexual and moral double standards, anxiety, class, ageing, race, men's violence against women and female perpetrators of violence.

I highly recommend reading all of these plays, especially Sophie Treadwell's Machinal. The protagonist Young Woman (Helen Jones) is accused of murdering her husband (you'll have to read it to find out if she was convicted). The play is an exploration of her desire to be free and the costs of freedom. I guarantee that Treadwell's superb, expressionistic writing style and remarkable choice of thematics will leave you questioning: why is Machinal omitted from drama anthologies such as the Norton and Wadsworth?!?! We know that it's because play publishers have historically been men. Hopefully, when it becomes a women's world, more fantastic, early 20th century women-authored plays (not just Glaspell's Trifles) will be anthologized.

Do not forget to read the introduction to this book, which offers a smart and thorough overview of key American women playwrights from Mercy Ottis Warren to Sophie Treadwell.

If you are an actress, I highly recommend looking at the titular protagonist's monologues in Miss Lulu Bett (the one on page 142 is my favorite).

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I mainly read this because it contained Machinel, and I was seeing a play dealing with Sophie Treadwell's efforts to write the play (Not Enough Air). I didn't like the play I saw so much (it was okay, but I had various issues with it), but was surprised at how much I really enjoyed this collection. In particular, Trifles (which I apparently should have read years ago, as it's well-known to everyone but me) and Machinel are highly recommended, and I also thought highly of Lulu Betts (and the decision to print both endings, for comparison purposes), the introductory materials, and the way the plays all worked together. It probably helped that I just finished Elaine Showalter's A Jury of Her Peers, which discussed a number of these authors, of course.

[Greg Kerestan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This volume is slim by default, as the early twentieth century had relatively little female-written drama. However, two of the plays in this collection are genuine classics: Sophie Treadwell's Expressionist "Machinal," and Susan Glaspell's "Trifles," famous to all drama students as the definitive one-act, one-room, one-scene murder mystery.