Rachel Crothers
Rachel Crothers (December 12, 1870 [1] – July 5, 1958) was an American playwright and theater director known for her well-crafted plays that often dealt with feminist themes.
[4] Though her parents were religious and conservative, with no particular interest in theater, issues of money, equality, risk-taking, and a woman's place in the world were a part of Crothers' life from her earliest years.
"[6] That was encouragement enough and, though the famous producers' help ended there, she left Bloomington for Manhattan, and, with the financial backing of her mother, enrolled in acting classes and found small parts in stock and touring companies.
Rachel Crothers' plays often dealt with contemporary social themes and moral problems affecting women, including the sexual double standard, trial marriage, "free love," divorce, prostitution, and Freudian psychology.
Though some of her plays are clear, provocative expressions of sympathy for the challenges twentieth-century women had to confront and present young female characters of boldness and originality, others involve an element of comedy, even parody, and an implied criticism of radical feminism; thus, her work cannot be easily characterized in a political sense.
But when he loses an important sculptural commission to Ann, the family's beliefs are put to the test: Can Tom live with his wife's public success and his own very visible failure?
Will Ann's professional commitments now take her even further from her maternal duties to a teenaged daughter who is already feeling neglected because of her parents' busy work lives?
Other characters include Tom's assistant, who is honest about expecting his fiancée to give up her career as a journalist and become a homemaker when they marry (not an agreeable prospect to the young woman); Ann's father, who is dismayed that his daughter would even consider jeopardizing her marriage in this way; and Tom's unmarried sister, who is self-supporting but has achieved this status by not having a husband and children, a loss she regrets.
Most importantly, Crothers has situated her story in a real world of good intentions and hard facts: true equality is still a pretense, even among liberal men and women, and someone has to take care of the children.
She began work on the play in 1912 before the vogue was underway, visited the Bedford Street Reformatory for Women to talk to some imprisoned sex workers, and elected to adopt an entirely female-centered perspective.
Like George Bernard Shaw's Mrs. Warren's Profession, there is no brothel in the play to entertain a voyeuristic audience; there is a clear suggestion that male sexual appetites are the problem, not women's weakness or immorality; and the author expresses some skepticism about reformist intentions in a society wedded to its hypocrisy.
[14] The play tells the story of a wealthy, spoiled, and restless woman who finds meaning for her aimless life in an evangelical movement and attempts to convert her Park Avenue friends.
In the end, Susan accepts that she has been deluded by her conversion, that faith and salvation are far more complex than she had acknowledged, and that a more loving and meaningful act would be to help her husband achieve a stable life.
"[16] Actresses were especially appreciative of the strong roles she created for them, and leading parts in her plays were performed by Ethel Barrymore, Estelle Winwood, Katharine Cornell, Tallulah Bankhead, and Gertrude Lawrence.
According to her biography on Literature OnLine, Rachel Crothers "distinguished herself as one of the most significant American playwrights of the early twentieth century and as an influential force in the development of modern drama."
