Plays by Susan Glaspell

ISBN-10: 1986437620
ISBN-13: 9781986437622
Series: Plays by Susan Glaspell
Pages: 220
Language: English
Published: 2018-03-13
Author: Susan Glaspell

Description

This volume contains four plays by Susan Glaspell. 1. Her one-act play Trifles (1916) which is frequently cited as one of the greatest works of American theatre. 2. The Outside (1917) is the shortest and least written about plays by Susan Glaspell. She uses symbolism to convey the emptiness of Mrs. Patrick's life on the outside. Glaspell uses the imagery of the station and the areas beyond to show that Mrs. Patrick is keeping herself away from the things she once knew. Glaspell's use of symbolism aides the characters onstage as well as the audience in realizing the situation the women are facing. 3. Inheritors is a four-act play first performed in 1921. The play concerns the legacy of an idealistic farmer who wills his highly coveted midwest farmland to the establishment of a college (Act I). Forty years later, when his granddaughter stands up for the rights of Hindu nationals to protest at the college her grandfather founded, she jeopardizes funding for the college itself and sets herself against her own uncle, the president of the institution's trustees (Act II and III). Ultimately, she defies her family's wishes, and as a consequence is bound for prison herself (Act IV).The play was a defense of free speech and an individual's ability to stand for his or her own ideal during a time of aggressive anti-Communist politics in the US. 4. The Verge was one of Susan Glaspell's first full-length plays and is considered by many to be the most complex of her career. The play grew out of Glaspell's recognition of the way in which Victorian society left some women feeling trapped in roles for which they were unsuited.