Abstract
In the American literature of the 19th century, woman’s inauspicious destiny remained linked to her relationship with men because the oppressive patriarchal system had remained almost unchanged. In a context characterized with such frame of mind, a woman’s position was conceptualized and defined in terms of her traditional role as a wife, a daughter, or a mother, who had to remain under men’s shadow.However, voices of protest against this unequal relationship were beginning to be heard and they were to become, especially with the advent of the suffragist movement of the early twentieth century, louder than ever. With the socio-cultural changes witnessed in the relatively liberal climate of the time, women’s aspirations for an independent identity were being reflected in poetry, fiction and drama.In drama, in particular, one may trace the considerable attention given to woman’s attempts to actualize her identity back to the realistic plays of dramatists, such as Susan Keating Glaspell (1876-1948) and Rachel Crothers (1878-1958). In these writings, early echoes of women’s yearning for a separate, independent identity were beginning to be heard. However, such voices were to become, later in the first half of the century, perspicuous, particularly in the plays of major modern American playwrights, of whom Eugene O'Neill stands out.
The Benign Maternal Power in the Plays of Eugene O'NeillGhanim Jasim Samarrai |