American theatre in the early 1900s highlighted the changes that were occurring in society. Throughout this era, playwrights were making drama new by challenging traditions. Broadway’s establishment caused a rise in theatre that led to new plays and playwrights emerging. Among those emergent playwrights was Eugene O’Neill. O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape encompassed Modern characteristics such as alienation and industrialization, as well as characteristics of Naturalism. Although The Hairy Ape is one of the most representative plays of this era, many other plays are worth noting as influential during the early 1900s. Realism is presented in Eugene O’Neill’s play, Beyond the Horizon since there is a strong emphasis on the daily activities that one must perform on a farm. The focus is also on the conflict of man vs. man. This struggle can also be noted in Rice’s The Adding Machine. This play is noted as being an expressionist play because of the characters’ lack of identity. Mr. Zero’s name implies that he is meaningless and insignificant. Being likened to a machine dehumanizes Mr. Zero, just as O’Neill’s play, The Hairy Ape, dehumanizes Yank into an ape-like being. However, this era also provides domestic melodramas, such as Kelly’s Craig’s Wife and Howard’s The Silver Cord. These plays focus on female’s living in a male-dominated society and on the Modern characteristic of being a product of one’s environment. In both of these plays, the female characters are trying to find their place in society, yet it is challenging and nearly impossible. Howard provides hope for the reader in the character of Christina Phelps because she challenges feminine traditions and is a career woman, as well as a mother. David Phelps must follow his heart and... ... middle of paper ... ...racters that are alienated from society. Their quest to belong and achieve their goals is complicated by the challenges posed by their environment and is overlooked because of societal expectations. These expectations lead Yank to feel even more alienated from society when he is placed in the one location that seems to accept him: the ape’s cage. Yank’s breakdown at the zoo leads him to feel as if he and the ape are one: taunted and misunderstood. His new sense of belonging is short-lived as O’Neill indicates that a sense of belonging is never permanent. Yank and Mildred’s experiences are representative of the time period because all human beings seek to belong yet due to societal expectations and environmental issues, this quest is often ongoing. Works Cited O’Neill, Eugene. The Hairy Ape. Nine Plays. New York: The Modern Library, 1954. 37-88. Print.
Reuben, Paul P. "Chapter 3: William Apess " PAL: Perspectives in American Literature- A Research and Reference Guide. WWW URL: 04-10-2008
In this essay I will be comparing two playwrights, A Raisin in the Sun and A Doll’s House, to one another. I will also compare the two to modern time and talk about whether or not over time our society has changed any. Each of these plays has a very interesting story line based in two very different time eras. Even though there is an 80 year time gap the two share similar problems and morals, things you could even find now in the year of 2016. In the following paragraphs I will go over the power of time and what we as a society have done to make a change.
Wardle, Irving. "American Theater Since 1945." American Literature Since 1900: Penguin History of Literature, Vol 9. Ed. Marcus Cunliff. USA: Penguin, 1994. 205-236
Throughout the plays, the reader can visualize how men dismiss women as trivial and treat them like property, even though the lifestyles they are living in are very much in contrast. The playwrights, each in their own way, are addressing the issues that have negatively impacted the identity of women in society.
The play is set in the 1920s when women started to receive clerical jobs and were expected to complete certain milestones in life. For example, in the scene labeled “at home” young woman – the main character – tells her mom that she is going to get married, because everybody does it, but then says she will not because she does not love Mr. Jones (Machinal). Ultimately her choice was to not get married, but in the end she does because her mom needs and wants her to get married for financial stability and the young woman feels that her destiny was to care for her mother. However, in the scene titled “prohibited”, the young woman starts deciding her destiny and chooses to cheat on her husband, Mr. Jones (Machinal). This is the moment when she realizes she can control her own destiny. That she does not have to be the happy housewife that society says her fate has to be. But there was still one problem, society still appeared to be in control of her destiny because she hasn’t decided on what her exact destiny would
A Doll House, by Henrik Ibsen, and A Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry, both have central themes of search of self-identity within a social system. This is demonstrated by women characters from both plays breaking away from the social standards of their times and acting on their own terms. In most situations women are to be less dominant than men in society. These two plays are surprisingly different from the views of women in society and of the times and settings that they take place in.
changing attitudes toward life and the other characters in the play, particularly the women; and his reflection on the
Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing is, on the surface, a typical romantic comedy with a love-plot that ends in reconciliation and marriage. This surface level conformity to the conventions of the genre, however, conceals a deeper difference that sets Much Ado apart. Unlike Shakespeare’s other romantic comedies, Much Ado about Nothing does not mask class divisions by incorporating them into an idealized community. Instead of concealing or obscuring the problem of social status, the play brings it up explicitly through a minor but important character, Margaret, Hero’s “waiting gentlewoman.” Shakespeare suggests that Margaret is an embodiment of the realistic nature of social class. Despite her ambition, she is unable to move up in hierarchy due to her identity as a maid. Her status, foiling Hero’s rich, protected upbringing, reveals that characters in the play, as well as global citizens, are ultimately oppressed by social relations and social norms despite any ambition to get out.
Ionesco, Eugene. "The Bald Soprano." Four Plays by Eugene Ionesco. Trans. Donald M. Allen. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1958.
A shift in the spotlight had occurred on the 1990’s British stage. Within this new In-Yer-Face or New Brutalism-dubbed wave, playwrights—in writing and showcasing their plays—preferred a more explicit and uncensored language as a means of conveying what they saw, felt, and thought, as well as exhibiting the cutthroat events and cutthroat people of a modern society. Among the many writers of this wave is Martin Crimp, who openly and ruthlessly reflects the society and culture within which he lives in a rather blunt tone onto his works through his use of uncensored language and his realistic point of view. This paper has examined how the female characters of Crimp’s In The Republic of Happiness have been reflected through the lens of Materialist
In its historical context A Doll’s House was a radical play which forced its audience to question the gender roles which are constructed by society and make them think about how their own lives are a performance for Victorian society.
Henrik Ibsen catches the world off guard with his play A Doll House. The world is in what is known as the Victorian era and women and men have specific roles. The way the story unravels takes the reader by surprise. Ibsen wanted to write a play that would challenge the social norms and that would show the world that no matter how hard they press, they would not always win. Ibsen uses society’s customs, deception, and symbolism to keep the reader on their feet and bring them a play that they would never forget.
Edward Albee burst onto the American theatrical scene in the late 1950s with a variety of plays that detailed the agonies and disillusionment of that decade and the transition from the calm Eisenhower to the turbulent 1960s. Albee became a serious dramatist dealing with serious but always relevant themes, primarily having to do with the predicament of humanity in a society with moral decay, as well as the conflict between reality and illusion. His work is considered to be unique, uncompromising, controversial, elliptical, and provocative.
In 1979, Caryl Churchill wrote a feminist play entitled Cloud Nine. It was the result of a workshop for the Joint Stock Theatre Group and was intended to be about sexual politics. Within the writing she included a myriad of different themes ranging from homosexuality and homophobia to female objectification and oppression. “Churchill clearly intended to raise questions of gender, sexual orientation, and race as ideological issues; she accomplished this largely by cross-dressing and role-doubling the actors, thereby alienating them from the characters they play.” (Worthen, 807) The play takes part in two acts; in the first we see Clive, his family, friends, and servants in a Victorian British Colony in Africa; the second act takes place in 1979 London, but only twenty-five years have passed for the family. The choice to contrast the Victorian and Modern era becomes vitally important when analyzing this text from a materialist feminist view; materialist feminism relies heavily on history. Cloud Nine is a materialist feminist play; within it one can find examples that support all the tenets of materialist feminism as outlined in the Feminism handout (Bryant-Bertail, 1).
The nineteenth century was truly a different time for women and what their assumed roles in life would be. Henrik Ibsen’s play “A Doll’s House” is an examination into those assumed roles and a challenge to them. It was a time of obedience and inequality and in the first act each character is shown to portray these qualities. However, the characters in this play have multiple layers that get peeled back as the story progresses. As each new layer is revealed the audience is shown that even with the nineteenth century ideals, the true nature of each character is not quite what they appeared to be initially.