Inheritors: A Play In Three Acts

by Susan Glaspell

This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.

Genres: Plays, Drama, Theatre

168 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2007

About the author

Susan Keating Glaspell (July 1, 1876 – July 27, 1948) was an American Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, actress, director, novelist, biographer and poet. She was a founding member of the Provincetown Players, one of the most important collaboratives in the development of modern drama in the United States. She also served in the Works Progress Administration as Midwest Bureau Director of the Federal Theater Project.
Her novels and plays are committed to developing deep, sympathetic characters, to understanding 'life' in its complexity. Though realism was the medium of her fiction, she was also greatly interested in philosophy and religion. Many of her characters make principled stands.
As part of the Provincetown Players, she arranged for the first ever reading of a play by Eugene O'Neill.

Reviews

[Chuck Williamson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yeah, it's preachy as hell. But I'd be lying if I didn't say it completely devastated me.

[Mary Davidsaver · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was lucky enough to see this play performed on two different occasions. One was a staged reading without sets at the Figge Museum in Davenport, Iowa. The other was a production performed by the QC Theatre Workshop, also in Davenport. Both of these where adapted and directed by Aaron Randolph III using Glaspell's original work. They stayed true to Glaspell's coming-of-age story of a young woman taking a moral stance in the face of great personal loss.

It was wonderful to see Davenport's own Pulitzer-winning female playwright getting some much needed attention. This play and "Trifles" are still relevant in our modern age and should not be overlooked in whatever form they can be found.

[Maggie Lapinski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Susan Glaspell continues to wreck me.

[Martin Denton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set just after World War I, at the time of the Red Scare (fear that the then very recent Russian Revolution would explode in additional Communist revolts worldwide) and a simultaneous retreat into isolationism here in the U.S., Inheritors is about a young woman who speaks out against the suppression of political speech and opinions by the government. In doing so, she puts herself at great peril (i.e., she is likely to go to jail, possibly for a very long time).

Now why does Madeline Fejevary Morton, our heroine, choose this course of action? Because she understands that, as an American, not only may she do so, in fact she must do so: "I think I'm an American," she declares. "And for that reason [emphasis mine] I think I have something to say about America."

Her family--her father, uncle, aunt, cousin; even a so-called "radical" professor at Morton College, the institution she attends, which was founded by her grandfather 40 years before--all want her to reconsider what she sees as her duty. A variety of arguments are proffered: her aunt explains that she'll miss out on other important things in life, such as love and family, if she's locked away in prison; her father worries for his own health and sanity (having lost his only son in the war and his wife long ago to terrible tragedy); her uncle, who is president of the college's Board, fears for the health of the school and, therefore, the family's legacy.

Everybody has a point, of course, but Glaspell is resolutely the ideologue in Inheritors, which makes it perhaps less satisfying psychologically than it could be, but enormously resonant philosophically. It's an epic play that she's written, spanning a century of American life, from the character of Madeline's extraordinary grandmother, who was the first white woman to settle this section of the Midwest (the particular state is never named) back in 1820, through Madeline's own revolutionary journey in 1920. And within the play, we meet a lot of different kinds of Americans, and hear them explain what they think that means. Grandmother Morton, the true pioneer, brags about her own role in the Black Hawk war of 1832 ("I threw an Indian in the cellar and stood on the door. I was heavier then.") and, moments later, tells us that the Indians were great friends to them when they arrived in the wilderness, and that the land was more or less stolen out from under them and, for all that, that the land is hers. (If all of the foregoing isn't precisely American, then I don't know what is!)

Silas, her son, wants to leave a legacy not only of money and property but of something returned to the land he inherited--this is why he gives away the best parcel of all and founds Morton College on it. Felix Fejevary, Silas's best friend and neighbor, fled from his native Hungary to escape political oppression there; in the American Midwest, he awakens Silas's curious and generous spirit and turns his thinking outward. Madeline says, "They're people from the other side of the world who came here believing in us, drawn from the far side of the world by things we say about ourselves. Well, I'm going to pretend--just for fun--that the things we say about ourselves are true." She says this to her uncle, Felix's son; she's talking about the Indian nationalists that she's been defending, but she could just as well be speaking of her Hungarian immigrant grandfather. Glaspell understands the essential contradictions of being an American, and lays them out, untidy as they are, for us to inspect, confront, and contemplate.

There's more to Inheritors than a lot of political talk. This is an authentic bit of American dramatic history that's more or less been ignored for about a hundred years. I was pretty much blown away by what Glaspell was attempting in this piece in 1921: it's almost Shavian in its ambition, but it was written at a time when most American writers were still mired in Belasco- or Fitch-styled melodrama; O'Neill was just beginning his experiments with tragedy and symbolism, and all the other more-or-less "modern" playwrights (Barry, Anderson, Sherwood, Kingsley, etc.) weren't on the scene yet. Glaspell doesn't have the technique or tools to quite pull off everything she attempts in this play, but it's nevertheless a remarkable achievement, and one that any student of the history of dramatic writing will be interested in.

[sophies world · Rating 4 out of 5]

Inheritors is a moving pledge for free speech, the power of knowledge, compassion and equality. Quite shocking how relevant this is to modern-day America!