公共知识分子之声：格拉斯佩尔戏剧研究盛文琪

学号： 1811051005
硕士学位论文
论文题目：公共知识分子之声：格拉斯佩尔戏剧研究
学号： 1811051005
姓名：盛文琪
专业名称：英语语言文学
研究方向：美国文学
学院：外国语学院
指导教师：贺安芳副教授
协作导师：
2021年6月30日
A Thesis Submitted to Ningbo University for the Master’s Degree
Voice of Susan Glaspell as a Public Intellectual:

A Study of Her Dramatic Works
Candidate： Sheng Wenqi
Supervisor： Prof. He Anfang
Faculty of Foreign Languages

Ningbo University
Ningbo 315211, Zhejiang, P. R. CHINA
June 5, 2021
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宁波大学硕士学位论文
Acknowledgements
It is a great pleasure to acknowledge here the help which I have received from
many professors and friends in writing this thesis,and above all to thank them for their
advice and encouragement.
On this long journey of research, I experienced confusion and frustration, as well
as refreshment and excitement. I have to first and foremost thank my supervisor, Prof.
He Anfang. Her academie penetration and preciseness,as well as her personal integrity
set a model for me. Her vision impressed me and directed me to the right route in the
exploration of the present subject, while her sympathetic support when I was on the
lowland in my academie exploration were always warm and encouraging. I could not
imagine the present dissertation is possible without her guidance and help.
I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to the many scholars who compiled,
edited, and wrote about Susan Glaspell. I would also like to thank all the professors
who have entrusted me during my graduate studies. They are Professors Wang
Songlin, Duan Bo, Zhang Zhi, Tao Jiusheng, Liu Jihua, Cheng Wen, A’DeEr, Ge
Tibiao, etc. I benefited tremendously from their teaching, which lays the foundation
for my thesis writing and my future work and study.
In addition,I would like to thank all my friends for their care and love, especially
Chen Xinru, Fan Tingting, Shi Yaqian, Feng Maoyun and Xu Yaping. When writing
this thesis, I nagged about the problems I encountered and they listened with patience.
Special thanks are still due to my boyfriend for his company. Then, I would like to
thank my parents for their support, love and sacrifice. They have always been there
when I need help. They encouraged me and gave me confidence, I feel so lucky to
have them as my parents.
i
公共知识分子之声：格拉斯佩尔戏剧研究
Academic achievements
一、在学期间所获的奖励
应注明奖励名称、授奖单位、授奖时间等
（1）2018 至 2019 学年获得宁波大学研究生新生学业奖学金
（2）2019 至 2020 学年获得宁波大学研究生二等学业奖学金
（3）2020 至 2021 学年获得宁波大学研究生三等学业奖学金
二、在学期间发表的论文
盛文琪.（2019）.浅析波伏娃女性主义视角下“萨拉”的超越[J].文学教育，第
9 期（下），38-39.
ii
摘要
苏珊·格拉斯佩尔（1882-1948）是美国现代戏剧的重要奠基人，普利策（戏
剧）奖获得者。她与丈夫乔治·库克（George Cook）创建的普罗文斯敦剧团是
美国小剧场运动中崛起的众多优秀剧团中的佼佼者，发现和培养了尤金·奥尼尔
等一批著名的剧作家，为美国戏剧高潮的到来奠定了基础。而她本人为普罗温斯
敦剧团量身定做的戏剧作品，独辟蹊径，自觉背离百老汇戏剧的商业传统，成为
美国现代戏剧的先声，对美国戏剧走向独立和成熟起了巨大的推动作用。论文以
美国进步主义时期的政治、经济、文化历史为背景，运用公共知识分子研究的相
关理论，采用文本细读的方法，分析格拉斯佩尔的戏剧创作，探讨剧作家如何借
助戏剧舞台对进步主义时期的美国社会进言，参与公共事务，并以此分析其批判
精神和道义担当，以此管窥格拉斯佩尔的戏剧艺术创作对美国现代戏剧发展的重
要贡献。
论文首先对知识分子以及公共知识分子的主要理论成果进行梳理，分析戏剧
舞台作为公共平台为剧作家发声的可能性和优越性，然后回溯了格拉斯佩尔戏剧
创作时期美国戏剧的创作环境和发展状况。在美国进步主义时期历史语境中，格
拉斯佩尔戏剧艺术创作关注底层弱势民众的生存困境，敢于对抗权力阶层，并以
启蒙者的身份引导民众思想的改良与进步，充分体现了一个公共知识分子应有的
良知与责任。
格拉斯佩尔的戏剧作品坚持为弱势群体发声，关注女性问题和少数族裔的困
惑，捕捉知识分子所承受的社会压力。具体而言，格拉斯佩尔的戏剧作品集中反
映了美国经济飞速发展的背景下，美国乡村女性日益增长的精神生活需要与家庭
和社会环境对女性的限制和压迫之间的矛盾，印第安人等少数族裔人群的歧视与
同化问题，以及以大学教授为代表的知识分子生存空间遭受挤压。其次，格拉斯
佩尔的戏剧作品勇于对抗主流意识形态，对权力阶层说真话，直指当时的美国司
iii
法不公和弊政，并持坚定的反战立场。此外，格拉斯佩尔的戏剧作品发挥了民众
启蒙的作用。《琐事》关注女性力量与女性智慧，从女性主义立场给观众以启发。
在《人民》中，作者指出报刊杂志应具有独立性与引导性。在《继承者们》中，
作者深刻认识到美国精神的式微，并呼吁民族自省和自由公正美国精神的回归。
格拉斯佩尔的戏剧创作对社会问题的关注，资本主义文化的反思和对民众的
启蒙体现了剧作家和公共知识分子身份的合二为一，格拉斯佩尔戏剧创作的双重
身份特征推动了美国现代戏剧的艺术探索，为美国现代戏剧的崛起做出了贡献。
关键词：苏珊·格拉斯佩尔；公共知识分子；社会问题；美国现代戏剧
iv
Voice of Susan Glaspell as a Public Intellectual:

A Study of Her Dramatic Works
Abstract
Susan Glaspell (1882-1948), a Pulitzer Prize winner, was an important founder

of American modern drama. She and her husband, George Cook, founded the
Provincetown Players, the first modern American theatre. Together they discovered
and nurtured such renowned playwrights as Eugene O’Neill. Glaspell’s dramas, which
were tailored particularly for the Provincetown Players and deviated from the
principles of Broadway commercial plays, became a precursor to modern American
theatre and played a great role in the independence and flourishment of American
drama. Through close reading, the thesis analyzes Glaspell’s dramas in the context of
the American progressivism against its the political, economic, social and cultural
background, and examines how the playwright employs the drama as a platform to
speak to the American audience and society, spread her thoughts and exert her
influence as a public intellectual. In so doing the current study wishes to see
Glaspell’s contribution to the development of modern American drama from a new
perspective.
First of all, the thesis begins with a chapter that sorts out varied concepts and
theorizations of intellectual, analyzes the possibility and privilege of the stage as a
platform for playwrights to address their political and ideological concern. Then it
traces back to the development of American drama in Glaspell’s time. In the historical
context of American progressivism, Glaspell’s dramatic works pay attention to the
plight of the underprivileged, confront the power class, criticize social bias, and urge
social progress, thus enlightening and inspiring a general audience as a conscious and
responsible public intellectual.
Glaspell’s concerns with the underprivileged are mainly related to women’s
rights, ethnic issues, and social pressures that intellectuals suffered at the time.
v
Glaspell’s dramatic works primarily depict clashes and conflicts between women’s
spiritual growth and the rapid development of American economy and oppressive and
suffocating familial and social environment. Glaspell’s dramas also address the issues
of discrimination against and assimilation of American Indians and other ethnic
minorities. The increasingly miserable living conditions of university professors and
the freedom that they are allowed to speak for themselves are also a major issue that
Glaspell’s works are devoted to.
Glaspell’s plays also challenge the mainstream ideology, disregard the authority,
defy the injustices and abuses of American justice at the time, and speak out against
the war. The play Trifle inspires her audience from a feminist perspective, to draw the
audience’s attention to female power and female intelligence; In The People, Glaspell
points out that newspapers and magazines should maintain their independence and
autonomy. The play of Inheritors reveals Glaspell’s acute awareness of the decline of
the American spirit, and her calls for a national reflection upon American spirit of
freedom and justice.
Glaspell’s concern with social trends, reflection upon capitalist culture and
criticism of political issues in the American Progressive Era distinctively defines her
“public” property as a playwright, whose dramatic engagement and commitment not
only help to usher in the rise of American drama but also leads the direction of its
development.
Key words: Susan Glaspell; public intellectual; social issues; modern American
drama
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgements......................................................................................................... i
Academic achievements.................................................................................................ii
摘要...........................................................................................................................iii
Abstract.......................................................................................................................... v
Table of Contents......................................................................................................... vii
Chapter One Introduction..........................................................................................1
1.1 Introduction to Glaspell............................................................................1
1.2 Literature Review..................................................................................... 4
1.3 The Significance and Structure of This Thesis.........................................9
Chapter Two Susan Glaspell as a Public Intellectual Touching upon Social Problems
Through Dramas...................................................................................................11
2.1 A Theoretical Evolution of Public Intellectuals......................................11
2.2 Social Consciousness of Public Intellectuals in the Progressive Era..... 14
2.3 Drama as a Vehicle for Glaspell’s Public and Political Comment......... 17
Chapter Three Speaking up for the Disadvantaged and the Underprivileged........... 23
3.1 Concern with Domestic Violence against Rural Women in Trifles........ 23
3.2 Exposure of Prejudice and Assimilation Toward Native Americans in
Inheritors.............................................................................................................. 26
3.3 Compassion for the Professor’s Silence and Compromise in Inheritors29
Chapter Four Being Outspoken in Criticism of the Power....................................... 33
4.1 Empowering Marginalized Women in Trifles........................................ 33
4.2 Arguing against War in Inheritors.......................................................... 36
4.3Expressing Apprehension about Freedom of Speech in Inheritors.........39
Chapter Five As an Advocate of Social Progress...................................................... 43
5.1 Gender Edification in Trifles.................................................................. 43
5.2 Advocacy of the Independence of Newspapers in The People.............. 46
5.3 An Appeal to Reconstruct American Ideals in Inheritors.......................49
Conclusion....................................................................................................................52
References.................................................................................................................... 54
vii
Chapter One Introduction
This chapter gives a brief introduction to this study. This section introduces
Glaspell and her works, also includes the predecessor’s research on Glaspell, and the
significance of this study as well as the framework of the thesis.
1.1 Introduction to Glaspell
Susan Glaspell was born in Davenport, Iowa, to Elmer and Alice Keating
Glaspell, on 1 July 1876 and always thought of herself as a pioneer daughter and as a
true Midwesterner. Her father’s family had been among the earliest settlers, moving to
the Midwest in the 1830s. Glaspell was raised to be proud of her immigrant frontier
heritage. And her work is imbued throughout with an essentially American form of
democratic idealism.
Educated in public schools and at Drake University in Des Moines, Glaspell
knew early on that she wanted to become a writer, and she actively pursued that
career until her death in 1948. After her graduation from high school in 1894, she was
hired on as a reporter for the Davenport Morning Republican and as society editor for
the Davenport Weekly Outlook in 1896, producing for that magazine the “Social Life”
columns and placing there her first short story, “Tom and Towser”. While at the
university, she published short stories in the college’s The Delphic as well as serving
as the literary editor of the college newspaper. After graduating with a Ph.B. degree in
1899, she was hired on full-time by the Des Moines Daily News as a statehouse and
legislative reporter and created for that paper another ongoing column, entitled “News
Girl”.
1
Two years later, Glaspell moved to Chicago, where she amassed a wealth of
material as a journalist. During the time she spent in Chicago, Glaspell was first
introduced to non-commercial theatre. A theatre at Hull House produced plays that
dealt with social issues. Then Glaspell returned to Davenport and began writing full
time, publishing novels in Harper and Young Companion, and winning the Black Cat
Award in 1904. During this time, Glaspell rose to fame in her hometown and
befriended George Kram Cook, who was an iconoclast. Their common interest in
literature, socialism, and activism brought them together, and they often discuss the
limitations of Davenport’s old social mores. In 1907, Glaspell joined Monist Society
of Davenport, founded by Cook and his disciples. Her association with Cook inspired
her and shaped her thoughts and influenced her dramatic writing. In her book The
Road to the Temple, she admits that she would refuse to go to church with her parents
in the morning, and felt happy when she saw her parents and townsfolk shocked by
her rebellious acts. She is wary of the tendency toward taxonomy, explanation, and
closure in writing and life. Fluidity, openness, and otherness are her most often used
words, the dash is her most consistent punctuation mark. Although she is aware of the
impossibility of keeping life and art free from fixed forms and even parodies
fuzzy-headed dreamers in her works, she holds to the belief that ideas should not be
“shut up in saying”. As her persona Claire Archer realizes in The Verge, and that “We
need not be held in forms molded for us” (Glaspell, 2010, p.235).
In spite of her lack of fame today, Glaspell have received praise and recognition
as a dramatist during her own time. And her plays touches on very modern social
problems. Since writing for the Weekly Outlook, Glaspell’s wit and writing skills have
come to the fore, as her aversion to hypocrisy and vanity, and her focus on women’s
issues. In 1913, after marrying Cook, Glaspell went to live in Provincetown,
Massachusetts. The marriage and move are critical for Glaspell’s future as a
playwright. Waterman describes the importance of this transition:
When Susan Glaspell married George Cram Cook in 1913 and moved to
Provincetown, Massachusetts, for a summer honeymoon, she was making the
most important move in her life. Not only was she entering marriage, but she
was moving from the Nineteenth Century to the Twentieth, from the culture of
Midwest to that of the East, and moving artistically from being a conventional
2
novelist to become an experimental playwright. (Waterman, 1966, p174).
Glaspell became a prominent figure in the local salons, as well as a vital member
of several community groups. She joined radical feminist group Heterodoxy, which
was founded in 1912 by Marie Jenny Howe as a “club for unorthodox women”. The
group held Saturday luncheons every other week, with speaker leading discussions on
various topics. Birth control, feminism, pacifism, suffrage and many other
controversial topics of the day were aired. And Glaspell, like many other talented
artists, writers and others who gathered in the Greenwich Village at the time, to fight
for women’s jobs and status, to support birth control, education reform, radical social
revolution and socialism, to support the Labour movement and against conscription
and militarism.
Glaspell collaborated with Cook on the Suppressed Desire for the Washington
Square Theatre, but the company refused to perform the play because it was too
controversial. To create and perform their works more freely, Glaspell and Cook left
the Washington Square theatre to start their own theater at Greenwich Village, later
known as the Provincetown Theatre. Glaspell and Eugene O’Neill were principal
playwrights of the theatre. Urged by Cook to write material for their group, Glaspell
quickly produced a series of one-act plays that proved both popular with audiences,
particularly so in the case of Trifles (1916), and a fulfillment of the Provincetown’s
intent to promote an American drama unrestricted by commercial conventions or
expectations. Glaspell is acknowledged early on as one of the finest playwrights born
out of the Players, and her works are critically regarded as important contributions to
the development of native drama. Her one-act plays include the aforementioned
Suppressed Desires (with Cook, 1915), Trifles, The People (1917), Close the Book
(1917), The Outside (1917), Woman’s Honor (1918), and Tickless Time (with Cook,
1918).
Glaspell always insists on independent thinking of social realities in the public
sphere and uses the theatrical media to make speeches, and her dramas forces
Americans to look at and think about realities that people don’t want to see. She is
credited with bringing social, cultural, and political issues like birth-control, free
speech and the Red Scare to her plays. Her achievement in the drama of ideas is most
evident in her full-length plays for the Provincetown: Bernice (1919), Inheritors
(1921), The Verge (1922), and, to a lesser degree, Chains of Dew (1922). They
3
provide important documents of life in America as seen through the eyes of a

pioneering woman in the first half of the twentieth century. Besides her role in the
group as a dramatist, without which the Players would not have been so successful,
Glaspell worked as an actress, taking on central roles in many of her own plays.
Largely through her financial and intellectual assistance, the Provincetown Players
becomes the most well-known and innovative little theatre group in the United States.
Her one act play Trifles attracts wide attention both at home and abroad for its
structure and content, Noe comments that Trifles is “still a popular choice of little
theatre groups all over America, and is frequently cited in playwriting texts as the
classic example of a well-made one-act play” (Noe, 1983, p.86). But except Trifles,
her plays are rarely studied, edited and produced by domestic scholars. Bigsby calls
her “a neglected writer but one of genuine insight and power” (1982, p.421). Although
at the time of her own greatest dramatic productivity, the years from 1915 to 1922
with the Provincetown Players, she was considered by critics, such as Lud wig
Lewisohn, to be as important a playwright as her fellow Provincetown Player Eugene
O’Neill in originality, innovation and challenge, today Glaspell does not hold
comparable celebrity. Her later works did not extend and preserve her reputation, as
O’Neill’s plays did for his. In the estimation of modern critic Christine Dymkowski,
“her contemporary reputation as one of the two most accomplished playwrights of
twentieth-century America may come as a legitimate surprise even to serious students
of dramatic history” (1988, p.91). Lewisohn states that her works “were, except for
O’Neill’s, the first American plays that belonged to dramatic literature and not to the
false and tawdry artifice of the uncreative theatre” (1932, p243).
1.2 Literature Review
In 1931, Alison’s House (1930) won the Pulitzer Prize and attracted widespread
criticism. But after Glaspell died, she received less attention from the academic
community. In the 1960s, the only study of Glaspell was Arthur E. Waterman’s book,
Susan Glaspell. Waterman’s research covers a wide range of Glaspell’s published
works, but it focuses on her early novels, with very limited study of her plays, nor
does it touch on Glaspell’s social concern, which is reflected in her plays. In the 1970s,
with the development of feminism, Glaspell returned to public view and gradually
became one of the focuses of American dramatist. During this period scholars began
4
to make detailed textual analyses of Glaspell’s plays and novels, but due to the
prevalence of feminism, researchers paid more attention to the feminist play Trifles
and the story “A Jury of Her Peers”. Much of this response can be attributed to the
rediscovery of “A Jury of Her Peers” in the early 1970s by feminist critics such as
Annette Kolodny and Judith Fetterley, committed to a reexamination of forgotten or
undervalued women writers. Mary Anne Ferguson’s inclusion of the story in her
influential collection Images of Women in Literature (1990) is central to this
reemergence of Glaspell. Then Trifles is included in Women in American Theatre
(2006) by Helen Krich Chinoy and Linda Walsh Jenkins.
In 1976, more systematic and comprehensive studies of Glaspell began with
Marcia Noe’s doctoral thesis, Susan Glaspell’s critical biography. Since then, Noe
published a monograph, Susan Glaspell: Voice From the Heartland. Noe puts
Glaspell’s work in the context of American heartland, and studies the American
themes. The texts she studies, like Waterman’s, are still all of Glaspell’s works, even
her earliest short stories, at the same time, her study of Glaspell’s plays is still not
profound enough. The subsequent appearance of Trifles in Sandra Gilbert and Susan
Gubar’s Norton Anthology of Literature by Women (1985) helps redress the balance of
Glaspell studies to promote consideration of the dramatic version of the story.
Henceforth, the focus and high praise for Glaspell’s plays came from Mary E.
Papke. In 1993, Papke compiled of Glaspell’s plays, and codified the history of their
rehearsals and their evaluations in Susan Glaspell: A Research and Production
Sourcebook. Not only that, Papke speaks highly of Glaspell’s achievements in the
dramatic arts, saying that Glaspell deserves to be reassessed, she also argues that
Glaspell’s contribution to the development of modern American theatre is comparable
to that of Eugene O’Neill. The book not only provides a lot of detailed information for
future researchers, but also helps scholars to pay attention to Glaspell’s plays, and
breaks new ground for Glaspell’s drama study. In the same year, Veronica
Makowsky’s Susan Glaspell’s Century of American Women: A Critical Interpretation
of Her Work was also an important milestone. It is the first critical book about all of
her works since Waterman. Makowsky presents a clear and concise, chronological and
critical overview of Glaspell’s major works in prose, focusing on the area of fiction
which Makowsky is familiar with. Although only 28 of the 146 pages are devoted to
drama, she makes clear in her introduction that Glaspell’s dramatic writing is
innovative and revolutionary.
5
In 1995 Linda Ben-Zvi edited and published Susan Glaspell: Essays on Her
Theater and Fiction. In this book, several contributors call Glaspell a feminist and pay
particular attention to several plays, like Trifles. Only two of the essays feature
Glaspell’s novels, which shows that, while the focus of this collection is Glaspell’s
feminist identity, but scholars’ attention shift to her plays. In 2001, Ellen Gainor’s
outstanding work called Susan Glaspell in Context: American theater, culture, and
politics, 1915-48, raised the study of Glaspell’s plays to a new level. For the first time,
this book defines all of Glaspell’s talents in drama, and encompasses a great deal of
Glaspell’s plays, focusing on the cultural, historical and political background of
Glaspell’s period, summarizes and analyzes various cultural, social and philosophical
trends of thought that influenced her dramatic creation from 1915 to 1948. Gainor
locates Glaspell’s dramas in the cultural, historical and political context of the
author’s life. The book shows that, like Eugene O’Neill, Glaspell is concerned with
audience acceptance, and deeply engaged in discussing social issues.
In 2003, Ben-Zvi, Barbara Ozieblo and Carpentier founded the Susan Glaspell
Institute, and Carpentier is president. In 2005, Ben-Zvi published Susan Glaspell: Her
Life and Times. “Ben-Zvi’s book moves gracefully among biography, cultural history,
theatre history, and dramatic criticism” (Barlow. 2007. p.191-192).This book mainly
studies the ideological trend of Glaspell’s times and the cultural influence of the
formation of Glaspell’s view of drama, and analyzes Glaspell’s productions from the
social, cultural and historical perspectives. On this basis, in 2006, Carpentier edited
Susan Glaspell: New Directions in Critical Inquiry. The book brings together the
latest findings from the 1990s, and looks forward to the development of Glaspell’s
research. Four of the seven essays in the book analyzes Glaspell’s dramas, including
Chains of Dew, Trifles, Inheritors, and Woman’s Honor. And this collection shows
that researchers are no longer confined to the focus of Glaspell as a feminist writer,
instead, they turn to democracy and war. They not only analyzes more of Glaspell’s
plays that are relatively ignored and compared Glaspell with other playwrights
horizontally and vertically. In the same year, Ozieblo and Carpentier’s book,
Disclosing Intertextualities: The Stories, Plays, and Novels of Susan Glaspell, was
published. This study breaks the restrictions of genre, transcends the bondage of
feminism, and returns to the study of literary texts, with a “dialogic” intertextual
interpretation of Glaspell’s works in the fields of philosophy, sociology and politics.
6
In 2008, Ozieblo explored the writing tradition of female dramatists in American

literature in her book named Susan Glaspell and Sophie Treadwell. In 2010, Susan
Glaspell: the Complete Plays was published, and Glaspell’s 14 plays were included.
Introducing Susan Glaspell: the Complete Plays, Ben-Zvi and J. Ellen Gainor as its
editors as well as leading Glaspell scholars observe that “the critical standing of any
author fluctuates over time, as tastes and the criteria used to gauge interest or
excellence shift within the academy and the culture at large.”(2010, 7) And then,
Emeline Jouve illustrates the way that Glaspell’s dramas addressed issues of sexism,
the impact of World War I on American values, and the relationship between
individuals and their communities, among other concerns in Susan Glaspell’s Poetics
and Politics of Rebellion (2017).
In summary, the study on Glaspell covers all of Glaspell’s works, including her
plays, short stories, novel, biographies, essays, and more. Studies of Glaspell’s plays
expand from Trifles to The Verge, Inheritors, Suppressed Desires, and Alison’s House,
for other plays such as Woman’s Honor, The people are relatively small. In terms of
research direction, at the beginning scholars focused on her identity of feminists, later
they turned to the perspectives of sociology, aesthetics and philosophy, which shows
that the value of female writers lies not only in discussing the issues of sexism and
gender oppression, women writers’ concern for social issues, their attitudes toward
politics, war, and the direction of national values, and especially Glaspell’s sense of
responsibility for the moral edification of her plays also worth our attention and
in-depth study.
In contrast researches on Glaspell start late in China. In 1992, Wu Keliang
published a paper to analyze Trifles and spoke highly of Glaspell’s dramatic skills and
feminism. Since then, more than a decade, there was little domestic research on
Glaspell. Since 2004, Glaspell’s works gradually appeared. Susan Glaspell is included
as a separate entry in the Works of American Literary Lexicographers, compiled by Yu
Jianhua. The one-act drama Trifles is included in the Selected Works of British and
American Drama edited by Gao Guangwen and Hu Xiaohua. In 2005, Yang Jincai and
Wang Yuping published a paper entitled the The Feminine World of Pathos in
Glaspell’s Works, they analyzed the plight of women in Glaspell’s time from Trifles,
The Outside, The Verge and Inheritors. In the following years, as in the early years of
Glaspell’s studies abroad, the main subjects of studies were Trifles and “A Jury of Her
Peers”, and the research angles were mostly female and gender. In the study of this
7
period, researchers saw Glaspell’s focus on women, but there was a lack of research
on other aspects of her dramatic work.
Over the next few years, there was a steady stream of research on Glaspell,
including five master’s theses and a greater variety of perspectives in journal papers.
The studies of Glaspell’s plays takes on new dimensions in terms of themes and
techniques. In 2014, Ling Jian’e’s book Susan Glaspell and the Plasticity of Her
Dramatic Art was published. Ling takes an implicit criticism into the study of poetics
and, this book is a comprehensive study of the nomadic poetics of Glaspell’s 16 plays.
According to Ling’s Review of the Susan Glaspell the complete Plays (2014), the
Provincetown Theatre with its distinctive anti commercial purpose and ideal of
promoting local drama, attracts dozens of people, including Eugene O’Neill, and
helps put American theater on the map of serious literature, is a milestone in 20th
century American Theater. Ling also points out that “Glaspell’s fearless and self
reflection … made her the public intellectual of America in the first half of the 20th
century” (Ling, 2012, p33).
In 2018, Zhu Jie published An Analysis of the Social and Legal Causes of the
Female Tragedy in the One-act Play Trifles, analyzing the legal aspects and social
causes of tragedies. It shows women’s family status and social situation a century ago.
In 2019, Zhou Ming published a paper entitled Just Desire: the Moral Economy and
the Rural Imagination in the Works of Freeman and Glaspell. This paper makes a
cross-sectional comparison between Mary Wilkins Freeman’s “The Revolt of Mother”
and Glaspell’s “A Jury of Her Peers”, and points out that the significance of these two
works transcends the gender concern of the “new female literature”. The author points
out that “A Jury of Her Peers” completes the expulsion of the conservative peasants in
the industrial and commercial society through the female husband-killing, which
provides a new angle and new thinking for the study of Glaspell.
To sum up, the domestic study of Glaspell starts relatively late, academic
monographs are few, the research works has long been limited to Trifles and “A Jury
of Her Peers”, the research angles is mainly female and gender-related angle, the
critical analysis under the text close reading is still privation, and there is still a lot of
research space outside the feminist perspective. The deep social concern in Glaspell’s
plays and her public intellectual identity have yet to be further studied and
demonstrated in the light of Glaspell’s life and the text of her works.
8
1.3 The Significance and Structure of This Thesis
Susan Glaspell was an essential figure in the small theater movement in the 20th
century, but the literary value of Glaspell’s works was disputed for a long time.
Glaspell’s plays almost always prompted widely diverging critical opinion,
which ranged from admiration to flat dismissal. In the nearly two decades since
Glaspell’s death, academic attention has been limited to Eugene O’Neill’s excavators
and patrons, and her work has not received the attention it deserves. It wasn’t until the
1970s, with the rise of feminism, when academic attention began to return to Glaspell,
who was “rediscovered” from Trifles to other her works. Starting from her status as a
playwright, through close reading of the texts and tracing back to the social, political
and cultural history of the United States at that time, this thesis explores how
playwrights, as public intellectuals, pay close attention to the development of society.
Moreover, the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century marked
not only an important period of social transformation in the United States but also an
important period of the rise of Realism and the American vernacular drama, it is of
great significance to study the contribution of Glaspell’s dramas to the development of
modern American theater from the perspective of public intellectuals.
This thesis is divided into five parts, which will be discussed around the
following:
The first part is the introduction to this study. This section introduces Glaspell
and her works, also includes the predecessor’s research on Glaspell, and the
significance of this study as well as the framework of the thesis.
The second part analyzes the evolution of public intellectual theory, and due
responsibilities of American public intellectuals under the background of American
Progressive Era, then it discusses the characteristics of theatre, which makes it has
advantages as a medium for the dissemination of ideas.
The following three parts separately analyze how Glaspell embodies her identity
as a public intellectual in her dramatic expressions. The third part discusses Glaspell’s
social position as a voice for disadvantaged people. Firstly, this part discusses the
exposure of domestic cold violence against rural American women in Trifles, and it
elaborates the discrimination and substitution of Native Americans in Inheritors, then
this part argues that professor who was unjustly persecuted because of his speech, so
people who are supposed to play the role of public intellectuals became weak and
9
trapped in an unspeakable situation.

The fourth part revolves around Glaspell’s political stance of daring to challenge
authority and speak truth to power in a complex social context. Many of Glaspell’s
plays, such as Trifles, Inheritors, and the People, are references to and descriptions of
real events, and Glaspell does not mince her words about social reality and speaks out
where she can be heard most. This part indicates that justice is served by marginalized
women by close reading of Trifles. Then it discusses Glaspell’s anti-war views in
Inheritors. At last, this chapter points out the dramatist’s concerns about the regulation
of free speech in Inheritors.
The fifth part elaborates Susan Glaspell’s role as both a playwright and a public
intellectual to social progress. The chapter starts with a discussion about the gender
implications in Trifles, and then points out Glaspell’s view about the newspaper’s
independence and enlightenment in The People, and finally the chapter expresses the
playwright’s condemn to the decline of American idealism and her appeal of spiritual
reconstruction of American idealism in Inheritors.
In the conclusion, this thesis brings Glaspell and her plays back into the
background of American drama history. It discusses that it is playwrights like Glaspell
who have the spirit of public intellectuals, which starts American Realism. The public
intellectual characters of Glaspell have great significance to the development of
modern American drama.
10
Chapter Two Susan Glaspell as a Public Intellectual Touching

upon Social Problems Through Dramas
Glaspell, as a dramatist, uses drama to reproduce the social events at that time.
Her dramas not only show the social concern of public intellectuals, but also promote
the development of American modern drama. The following is a review of the
theories of public intellectuals, and then focuses on the period of American
progressivism in which Glaspell lived, analyzing the social concern and social
responsibility of the public intellectuals at that time. Finally, it makes a general
discussion about how Glaspell deviates from the tradition of American Broadway
commercial dramas and insists on reflecting the reality of people using dramas and
creates meaningful American native dramas.
2.1 A Theoretical Evolution of Public Intellectuals
Commentaries and monographs on the research of intellectuals have been

published in large amounts in recent years. The concept of “public intellectuals” is
produced in course of intellectual development, which takes the concept of
intellectuals as the prototype and contains contemporary significance.
It is generally believed that the word “Intellectual” has two origins: one is
“intellectual”, which originated from the French word “Intellectual” in the 1890s. It is
a noun first used by Clemenceau in the Dreyfus Affair, at that time, those people who
supported Alfred Dreyfus were referred to public intellectuals; the other is derived
from the Russian word “intellegentia” in the 1860s, which was originally used to
describe a group of young aristocrats with a strong critical spirit and radical
philosophical views in the 19th century. In Post Modernism and the Position of
11
Intellectuals, Wang Zengjin points out that, the French word “intellectual” was used
before Alfred Dreyfu’s time, though it gained widespread popularity among Dreyfus
Affair (2003, p.13). The term is originally used to refer to “highly educated people”;
the Russian word for “intellectual” is first used by the literary critic Belinsky, and the
original meaning of the word includes the following three aspects: men of refinement
and good manners, elites who is dissatisfied with the status quo, full of moral
sentiments and committed to social progress, and members who are well-educated.
Wang also points out that the word “intellectual” has another etymology from English,
in which it was used as a noun and meant “understanding” and “intelligence” in 1599
(2003, p.2). Taking the three etymologies into consideration, the meaning of
“intellectual” is: (1) A well-educated person with the faculty of understanding and
discernment; (2) a moral and critical person who adheres to the principles of justice.
Antonio Gramsci divided intellectuals into traditional and organic intellectuals.
Traditional intellectuals are usually independent and self-governing, transcend all
social groups, and represent the general truth, justice and ideal of society. Organic
intellectuals are created together with the class and have some organic ideological
connections with certain social systems and interest groups. They consciously
represent certain classes and appear as spokesmen in their class. In Antonio Gramsci’s
view, such people are related to classes or corporations and these social groups gain
more interest, and power from organic intellectuals (1971). In contrast to Gramsci’s
opinion, Julien Benda’s definition of intellectuals is a small group of philosophers
who are highly intelligent and moral — philosopher kings. In his view, “real
intellectuals are rare people who, inspired by metaphysical passions and the
transcendent principles of Justice and truth, denounce corruption, defend the weak,
and resist imperfect or oppressive authority” (qtd. in Said, 1994, p.9).
In 1993, Edward Said was invited to present the BBC’s annual Reith Lectures.
His six talks were collectively entitled Representation of the Intellectual in which he
examined the role of intellectuals in modern society. In his opinion, intellectuals who
are on the sidelines or the periphery escape easier from the control of mainstream
culture. Thus they could maintain their own independent and critical thinking; and the
experience of exile enables intellectuals to have a different and vibrant life experience
so that they could have an open vision. In addition, Said believed that intellectuals
should be secular. He emphasized that intellectuals should represent the poor, the
12
voiceless and the powerless; and they should tell the truth to power.
In short, intellectuals should not only have profound knowledge, devote
themselves to their own profession, have the spirit of independence and enlightenment,
but also have a sense of social responsibility and care for the development of society.
They need to participate in public affairs through public awareness.
In the post-modern period, universities gradually made the publicity of public
intellectuals disappear. Since universities outnumbered bookshops and cafes in
Greenwich Village, the salary and noble social status attracted an increasing number
of intellectuals. At the same time, the specialization of the university made it less
public; the rules and conceptual framework in the university also urged intellectuals to
give up their independence. As a result, independent intellectuals gradually became
experts on campus, and faded out of the public eye.
In 1987, Russell Jacoby first raised the question of public intellectuals in The
Last Intellectual.
For the past 50 years, young intellectuals have been in a professional area and
are no longer open to the public, they use technical terms for thematic
discussions and rely on the assessment of experts for their salaries. New
academicians have greatly outnumbered independent intellectuals. When young
intellectuals succeed in their professional careers, the public culture becomes
increasingly impoverished and decrepit. (2002, p.4).
Richard A. Posner also pointed that, “The depth of knowledge that specialization
enables is purchased at the expense of breadth, while the working conditions of the
modern university, inparticular the principle of academic freedom backed by the
tenure contract, make the intellectual’s career a safe, comfortable one, which can
breed aloofness and complacency” (2001, p.4). However, Jacoby not concluded that
intellectuals have been content with “academic life” and have lost interest in public
expression. With the development of media, the channels for intellectuals to express
themselves were more, Jacoby preferred to see this “realization of intellectuals’
publicity” as a form of obsequiousness and deference, arguing that, rather than being
public, they were trying to reach their market objectives.
Xu Jilin holds that the academic intellectuals are controlled by the discipline of
universities, while media intellectuals are influenced by the market logic of the media
13
and the publishing industry, so it is difficult for them to have the spirit of reflection
and criticism (2003, p.29). He thinks that the publicity of public intellectuals can be
understood from three aspects, the first is speaking to the public, the second is
thinking for the public. He insists public intellectuals should consider from the public
standpoint and the public interest rather than from the private standpoint and the
personal interest. And thirdly, they need to deal with the affairs and major issues about
public.
There are various definitions of public intellectuals in China and overseas. As
one kind of intellectuals, public intellectuals is based on the essence of intellectuals,
and inherits its spiritual characteristics. In short, public intellectuals take publicity as
the leading factor and public expression is the main way to realize their publicity.
2.2 Social Consciousness of Public Intellectuals in the Progressive Era
In the Progressive Era in which Glaspell lived, public intellectuals had special
missions.
As in every pertinent comparatist perspective, if one does not separate the

sociological approach, which sheds light on the coherence of types and
structures, from the historical approach, which highlights conjunctures changes,
turning points, ruptures, differences, and the insertion of a historical
phenomenon into the larger society of an epoch, then the use of the term
‘intellectual’ is justified and useful. (Ding, 2010, p.4).
This section focuses on the relationship between public intellectuals and

vulnerable groups, the relationship with those in power and the role they play in
promoting social progress, and discusses the necessity and objectivity of the three
roles of public intellectuals in the progressive period as the expositor, the critic and
the enlightener.
Influenced by the theory of racial superiority and inferiority in the “scientific”
discourse of Progressive society, race is regarded as a mark of citizenship.
Under the influence of Nativism, the concept of a ‘Democratic Public’ in the

United States, which is supposed to be the political construction at the national
14
level, is increasingly characterized by the tribalization of politics. The standard

of rationality is racialized and sexualized. The term ‘Democratic Public’ refers
specifically to middle-class white males who understand and practice civil
rights and duties; the term ‘irrational’ is associated with savages, women, and
children. (Zhou, 2014, p.21).
People from “dictatorial or even barbarous countries” are considered to lack the
ability of self-government and cooperation, so they do not deserve to be part of the
American democratic system. The media of the business community takes advantage
of this by deliberately highlighting the “foreign” character of vulnerable and poor
people when they strike, to make their political claims seem irrational to the rest of
the population. In ethnic discourse, gender difference is also considered to be the
result of the development from primitive society to a civilized society, and women are
isolated from public politics because of a “lack of rationality”.
The powers believe that “for American civilization to survive and thrive, the
intellectual, economic, social, and political communities at the highest levels of the
United States must ensure, for the foreseeable future, which they are made up of the
descendants of the upper-middle class from northern Europe. The vast majority of
blacks, Indians, Latinos, Asian Americans, immigrant laborers, and women will not be
able to meet the requirements of American citizenship for generations to come”
(Smith, 1999, p.467). Their discrimination against other races is concealed and
outwardly objective by the term “civilization”. Other races will be eliminated because
of the backwardness of their civilization. Indians will become a “vanishing race”
because of their body, moral and cultural levels.
Under antiquated legislation and hastily passed laws, government agencies, often
employing private detective agencies, began arresting those with foreign names and
accents, since they were clearly not “100 percent American”, an undefined litmus test
that was sweeping the country in its Red panic. Native Americans might be next to be
deported for not being sufficiently American.
Public intellectuals must have public concern and shoulder social responsibility,
putting forward their views on general social problems. Therefore, they need to keep
contact with and speak out for the disadvantaged groups, and shout for the people at
the lower social scale to fight against oppression. The writings of intellectuals in the
progressive period went straight to the social problems and focused on the living
15
conditions of the people at the lower end of the social scale, reflecting the problems of
women and race at that time. In this case, public intellectuals focused on the social
development of oppressed groups, paying attention to the fate of vulnerable groups to
find out the problems in the development of society.
Said believed that intellectuals should keep their distance from power, or should
not be too deferential to power. Intellectuals are full of moral and political
heterogeneity; this kind of heterogeneity is not totally against the government, but
maintains tension with power without losing principle. The most important
achievement of progressive public intellectuals in dealing with the relationship
between individuals and political power is that ideas that they carried and advocated
finally entered into the state policy and legislation, they are used for government
governance and social transformation, and ultimately reversed the wrong
developmental ideas and cultural values that existed at that time.
“Uncompromising freedom of opinion and expression is the secular intellectual’s
main bastion: to abandon its defense or to tolerate tampering with any of its
foundations is in effect to betray the intellectual’s calling” (Said, 1994, p.89). There is
a special duty to address the constituted and authorized powers of one’s own society,
which are accountable to its citizenry, particularly when those powers are exercised in
a manifestly disproportionate and immoral war, or in a deliberate program of
discrimination, repression, and collective cruelty. For a public intellectual who lives in
America in the progress period, there is a reality to be faced, namely that America is
first of all an extremely diverse immigrant society, with fantastic resources and
accomplishments, but it also contains a redoubtable set of internal inequities and
external interventions that cannot be ignored.
The Espionage Act of 1917, calling for a maximum of twenty years in jail and a
fine of $10,000 for anyone interfering with the operations of the military or opposing
the draft, and the 1918 Sedition Act, making it a crime to use language that could be
construed as being disloyal to the national cause or to that of an allied country; they
were then used by politicians, business people, and self-appointed watchdog citizen
groups to suppress any form of political, social, and cultural dissent. The trials of
Hindus, the persecution of university professors, press and publication workers by the
American government during the period of American progressivism made it
impossible for public intellectuals to stand by idly. They became targets for
16
government surveillance and were under intense pressure to sue the government for
wrongdoing.
Speaking truth to power can draw public attention to these topics and engage a
growing audience. in the course of discussion, American people quickly woke up and
actively participated in the social reform. It also made the administration re-examine
various policies and systems under the strong demand of the people, to give a new
socio-economic outlook. Speaking truth to power is no Panglossian idealism, it is
carefully weighing the alternatives, picking the right one, and then intelligently
representing it where it can do the most good and causes the right change.
In writing and speaking, intellectuals’ aim is not to show everyone how right
they are, but rather to try to induce a change in the moral climate whereby aggression
is seen as such, the unjust punishment of people or individuals is either prevented or
given up, the recognition of rights and democratic freedoms is established as a norm
for everyone, not invidiously for a select few.
Intellectuals and social elites with public sentiments perceived the violation of
the libertarianism ideology and atomistic individualism. And men of insight were
called upon to use their wisdom, to assume their own responsibility, to judge, to argue,
to debate, to participate in social life, and to use their knowledge to provide
ideological guidance for social activities. Public intellectuals should have both
intellectual superiority and self-confidence, maintain humility, and turn their wisdom
into a profound insight into society. They cannot only make strong criticism of social
injustice, but also provide foresight and guidance for social development. Public
intellectuals should not be bystanders of social turmoil, but should be interventionists.
The transformation of society also provides a good opportunity for them to dedicate
themselves to social reconstruction.
The sense of mission causes public intellectuals to spontaneously germinate and
rise. They are striking at the old system and old ideas. They are prophets and guides;
they are promoters and leaders; they are both the ferment of the progressive
movement, and a catalyst for government change.
2.3 Drama as a Vehicle for Glaspell’s Public and Political Comment
Although its media function is often neglected, drama, as a means of

communication, plays an irreplaceable role in the transmission of information. A
17
paper points out: “In early modern England, where modern media such as newspapers
and television did not exist, drama, along with ballads and pamphlets, shared the news
media function of reporting on cases” (Liu, 2018, p.143). The transformation of
literature requires authors to put public issues to the community of literature; it makes
public affairs become the object of public communication, discussion, and criticism.
Public space is also called the public sphere, and the function of literature in the
public sphere is the publicity of literature. As a special literary form, drama, with its
own unique characteristics, can best embody the publicity of literature.
In her 1914 study, The Social Significance of Modern Drama, Emma Goldman
described: “The medium which has the power to do that is the Modern Drama,
because it mirrors every phase of life and embraces every strata of society,–the
Modern Drama, showing each and all caught in the throes of the tremendous changes
going on, and forced either to become part of the process or be left behind”
(Foreword).
In an age of political turmoil, social problems infect drama the fastest, and drama
reflects and transmits social unrest the fastest. “Theatre, in this sense, is a combination
of people and ideas—and the works of art that result from this collaboration” (Cohen,
2012, p.7). On the one hand, a theatre with a stage and audience provides an
opportunity to introduce, perform and demonstrate new themes, plots and tendencies
among the public; on the other hand, the script is meant to express political views
from the beginning. “…when you entered the theater through the ticket counter, your
identity changed... the theater is a place where you can cry and laugh, where full of
charming, and where can change people’s personalities” (Dong & Ma, 2004, p.23).
Because the structure of script is short and compact, it can respond quickly and
spontaneously to current events and dialogues in drama are conducive to the debate of
different points of view.
The “square” nature of traditional drama enables drama to convey serious
meaning in the form of madness and ridicule. Drama is ritualized and life-oriented,
the boundary between drama and life is broken, the performance is more like a real
carnival, and social ideology is reshaped in it. The external communication system of
drama concerns the interaction between the stage and audience, implying or explicitly
indicating some similarity or identical relationship between the imaginary drama and
the society; the audience can accept and understand the ideological meaning of drama,
18
and drama could change their ideas and even make them change the status quo with
actual action. The internal communication system mainly points to the interior of the
stage performance, where both sending and receiving of information are carried out.
In the process of giving and receiving, the text meaning of the performance is
constructed and a fictional world is generated. The external communication system is
contact with audience and the real world that the audience represents, the message
that communicated on stage is extended to the outside world through audience. The
social meaning of drama is created by the combination of imaginary stage events,
theatrical experiences, and life.
Modern dramatists often represented the iconoclasts of their time, constantly
trying to shake off the burdens of the past and rebuild society. This is the social
significance which differentiates modern dramatic art from art for art’s sake. It is the
dynamite which undermines superstition, shakes the social pillars, and prepares men
and women for the reconstruction.
Unfortunately, we in America have so far looked upon the theater as a place of

amusement only, exclusive of ideas and inspiration. Because the modern drama
of Europe has till recently been inaccessible in printed form to the average
theatergoer in this country, he had to content himself with the interpretation, or
rather misinterpretation, of our dramatic critics. As a result the social
significance of the Modern Drama has well nigh been lost to the general public.
(Goldman, 1914, foreword).
The mainstream of American drama at that time pursued commercial interests.

Although aware of the differences between European experimental drama and
American commercial drama, most American playwrights were still not innovative
and could not be reflective and critical. “In spite of the dramatists of the time, but with
the aim of attracting attention, entertaining the audience, and profiting from their
plays, most dramatists focus was on the surface of life” (Corey, 1990, p.12). During
this period, most American dramatists’ identity was more like “media intellectuals”.
Their plays oriented toward commercial success. The purpose of drama creation is to
cater to public interest and gain economic benefits. There is a contradiction between
the rational culture represented by the intellectuals and the popular culture of
enjoyment.
19
The realism in the United States was conditioned by the conventions of the 19th
century melodrama, by popular expectations, and then by a monopoly called Theatre
Syndicate. Theatre Syndicate, founded by a group of opportunistic individuals who
ruled the theatre, encouraged only commercially successful plays and dominated the
theatre from 1900 to 1915. As a result, the Syndicate was able to take control of
regional tour companies and theaters, and eventually took control of the theaters in
New York. The Syndicate was interested only in producing plays that appealed to a
wide audience, starring popular actors of the time. This prevailing situation forced any
experiment to be small. This trend of avant-garde theater operating outside
professional circles was known as the “Little Theatre” movement.
It was in the little theatre that Glaspell made her greatest mark, heralded along
with O’Neill as the country’s most important playwright and credited equally with
him for initiating “the entrance of the United States drama into the deeper currents of
continental waters” (Goldberg, 1992, p.471), as critic Isaac Goldberg described their
epochal work with the Provincetown Players, the first indigenous American theatre
company, which Susan and Jig founded. From the difference between Glaspell’s plays
and the prevailing melodrama of the time, we can see that Glaspell had the public
intellectual consciousness that other playwrights lacked. Glaspell and Cook believed
that something was clearly wrong with the commercial theatre, as Glaspell explains:
Those were the days when Broadway flourished almost unchallenged. Plays,
like magazine stories, were patterned. They might be pretty good within
themselves, seldom did they open out to------where it surprised or thrilled your
spirit to follow. They didn’t ask much of you, those plays. Having paid for your
seat, the thing was all done for you, and your mind came out where it went in,
only tireder. An audience Jig said, had imagination. What was this ‘Broadway’,
which could make a thing as interesting as life into a thing as dull as a
Broadway play? (Glaspell, 1927, p.248)
When he returned to New York for the winter, Cook began to look for a
Greenwich Village space for the group to continue presenting their plays. Greenwich
Village at the time was a unique place, it is the main center of freedom, creativity,
permission and anonymity. Radical ideas were everywhere and people came to the
20
village to find freedom to write, create art, and protest confining ideas and institutions
though their own unfettered lifestyles. The Provincetown Players is a pioneering
experimental theatre that dares to break new ground. The dramatists created
experimental dramas, and focused on social reality.
“The scope of life reflected in the plays has been greatly expanded. The plays
have penetrated all the fields of daily life. In the plays, people have come to
know a wide variety of people, including millionaires, beggars, prostitutes,
farmers and sailors. There were also artists, small traders, dockworkers, miners,
fishmongers, bandits…” (Wang, 1982, p.116)
The Provincetown Players provided a stage and a group process for American
playwrights; and reflected, as well as influenced, the current intellectuals renascence
in the United States. The Provincetown Players were interested in the artistic aspects
of their works, rather than commercial success.
Glaspell, like other Greenwich Village playwrights, was not only interested in
tinkering with society, but also insisted on getting rid of the heavy burden of the past
completely in drama creation. Glaspell creatively applied expressionism techniques to
dramas, creating new dramatic ideas. In addition, Glaspell’s plays deal with important
social issues that were critical to the time she wrote. These themes were basic to the
structure of her plays, not incidental. Bigsby refers to the social content of Glaspell’s
plays when he states that “she sought to press her concerns, her language and her
techniques to the point at which she could challenge social no less than dramatic
conventions” (1982, p.29).
Waterman writes that because most American theatre historians focus on the
Provincetown’s nurturance of O’Neill, “they overlook that theatre’s devotion to the
new dramatist and misconstrue both its purpose and final triumph” (1966, p.26). What
has been forgotten over the decades is the Players’ great concern for the social issues
of their days, and their intense commitment to changing the world through their
theatre. Glaspell represents these aspects of the Provincetown Players. Waterman
explains that “(Glaspell’s) plays... serve as the best illustration of the Provincetown
ideal, the best measure of its success as a leading force in the beginnings of modern
American drama, and incidentally, as the best means of evaluating her artistic
abilities” (1966, p.175).
21
It is the emergence of dramatists such as Glaspell who have the courage to

break away from tradition and challenge authority to create a new type of American
drama that has fundamentally promoted the process of the localization of American
drama.
22
Chapter Three Speaking up for the Disadvantaged and the

Underprivileged
When writing her dramas, Glaspell was led by her ambition to reach a larger
audience and to awaken them to the injustices of society caused by the double
standard applied to race, class and gender issues. When Glaspell wrote about the
genesis of their theatre in her biography of Jig Cook, she expressed a wish that “the
Provincetown Players had been a magazine” (1927, p.180). In speaking up for the
disadvantaged and the Underprivileged, Glaspell’s plays deal with women, especially
rural women, Indians, as well as the college professors represented by Professor
Holden in Inheritors who were barely able to support his family.
3.1 Concern with Domestic Violence against Rural Women in Trifles
Trifles is a drama based on a court case in which Glaspell shows her audience
that the rural women lived in American Progressive Era are underprivileged in the
family, their basic mental needs are not met and they suffered from the cold violence
and oppression of their husbands.
While working for Des Moines Daily, Glaspell often covered court cases,
especially lurid ones that involved murder, scandal and sex. The Iowa of 1900 may
not have been more violent than it is today, but it certainly was no less so. Of all the
cases reported by the News, the one that high-profile was the murder of Horszak, in
which a mother of nine was accused of hatcheting her husband to death while he lay
in bed asleep. Susan reported the case, which became the subject for her masterpiece
Trifles. In The Road to the Temple, Susan Glaspell writes about the genesis of Trifles
and describes the very moment when she began to write her first play:
23
When I was a newspaper reporter out in Iowa, I was sent down-state to do a

murder trial, and I never forgot going into the kitchen of a woman locked up in
town. I had meant to do it as a short story, but the stage took it for its own.
(p.255).
At first Glaspell thought that she could make money by exploiting urban readers’
curiosity about the countryside, and she did sell a lot of newspapers by faking it.
“Employing the techniques of Gonzo journalism sixty years before Hunter Thompson,
Susan filed twenty-six stories on the Hossack case, ...” (Benzvi, 2005, p.61) But after
she met Margaret herself, Glaspell altered her description, her reference to the
accused woman became more benign. Deeply moved by the despair of this
“husband-killer”, Glaspell began to understand that the moral justice of rural women’s
rebellion actually comes from the trampling of their legitimate rights by male
abstinence. At that time, women were trapped in the status of “queen of the garden”,
and were asked to play the role of housewife, unable to achieve their social values
outside their family. The spiritual and consumptive desires of women, growing with
the development of industrialization and urbanization, cannot be satisfied because of
their husband’s stoicism and vulgarity.
We can read about Minnie’s husband from the design of the house and the
description of the neighbors, and then we can see Minnie’s living conditions. The
interior structure of the house shows characters of the host. In New England colonial
period, the most common form of Puritan housing construction is the “foyer-living
room” two-room pattern. What behind the door is the living room, and then the stairs
lead to the upstairs. The most striking feature of the space is the chimney, which is the
center of life and the only place with light, warmth and food. With the same setting of
rooms and stairs, Mr. Wright’s house shows a strong colonial character. Things in that
house are barren, cold, imprisoning, and violent. Using a cold stove, chairs, and
assorted kitchen items as props, those “trifles” the men derisively dismiss and
overlook, Glaspell externalizes Minnie’s desperate state of mind and externalizes the
situation of the absent accused woman. And from the words of his neighbors, we can
see that the outsiders’ view of Mr. Wright is consistent with the features of his
colonial dwelling. “Just to pass the time of day with him-[Shivers.]Like a raw wind
24
that gets to the bone” (Glaspell, 2010, p.32). Moreover, Minnie’s husband is a
stubborn laggard in his way of life. “He (Mr. Wright) didn’t drink, and kept his word
as well as most, … and paid his debts” (ibid.), he wouldn’t even get a telephone. But
Mrs. Wright used to be an innocent and lively girl, she liked singing, she used to wear
pretty clothes, when she was Minnie Forster, one of the town girls singing in the choir.
Faced with a man as ruthless as Mr. Wright, Minnie was plunged into endless misery
and loneliness.
In addition to the family environment in which Minnie lived, Minnie’s spiritual
needs were being influenced by the changes taking place in American society at the
time. Minnie’s psychology was squeezed by the external environment and her family,
the external environment with rapid development and the family pressure from her
hard husband make Minnie can bear her sufferings no longer. And By describing
Minnie’s situation, Glaspell is, in effect, describing the living conditions of all rural
women of the time.
In 1900, forty percent of the population lived in cities and towns. In the
following decade, the urban population in the United States grew by 12 million people,
30 percent of whom came from rural areas. With the blossom of business and industry,
inventions of appliances liberated women from domestic activities; women began to
crave music, art, and other advanced civilization. Trifles shows a picture of rural
females’ lives at the end of 19th century. In Trifles, Minnie doesn’t have kids, “Not
having children makes less work” (ibid.), her reasonable desires were pretty clothes,
singing, and canaries. Glaspell’s orchestration of events exemplifies the fixed order of
life within the farm environment and portrays social issues encountered in such
communities. In both versions she emphasizes the routines of rural women’s existence
and the domestic activities and problems they all share, although her characters do not
initially realize how much they have in common. Trifles dramatizes the course of a
trip to the past taken in the present by the two female characters on the stage, Mrs.
Hale and Mrs. Peters. Their destiny is an encounter with that which is gone and
cannot be seen or held, but can be revisited in one’s thoughts, recreated on the stage.
The process of recollecting the past, of scanning the life of those who have
disappeared, is never innocent nor free of consequence. By recollecting the life and
experience of an absent friend, Minnie Wright, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters discover
not only the motive of the crime committed the night before, they also find out that, as
farmwives, they have much in common with her who is accused of the murder. Mrs.
25
Hale exclaims: “We live close together and we live far apart. We all go through the
same things-it’s all just a different kind of the same thing” (ibid.). At that time, most
rural women were trapped in a small family, with no means of resistance to their
husbands’ indifference, discrimination and violence, and unable to satisfy their
material and spiritual needs. “As the two women discover piece by piece the tragic
life of the off-stage Minnie, they seem to have win sympathy from the audience as
well for the extremely domesticated women victimized by domestic violence, poverty
and frontier isolation” (Ling, 2014, p.53).
“Glaspell’s dramaturgy reflects a process of cultural and political analysis; the
plays that evolve from her experiences tell us much more than the stories that initially
underlay them” (Carpentier, 2006, p.71). As an intellectual in the American
Progressive Era, Glaspell is keenly aware of the changes that have taken place in the
society, especially in the countryside behind the rapid development of American
industry and commerce, and sees the inner pain and struggle of women who have
nowhere to speak. The women, perhaps the sympathetic sheriff’s wife, might have
been able to offer a different reading of the case, they were not accorded the
opportunity in the court or in the newspaper accounts Glaspell filed. Sixteen years
later, in her play Trifles and in the 1917 short-story version, “A Jury of Her Peers,”
Glaspell would give them the opportunity to be heard.
3.2 Exposure of Prejudice and Assimilation Toward Native

Americans in Inheritors
Inheritors was undoubtedly a play about the complex social problems of

America. In the middle of the 19th century, American drama critics began to reflected
on the heavy dependence of American drama on foreign (especially British) drama,
they put forward the theoretical proposition of constructing the American national
drama which can show the style of the United States on the basis of its own life style
and social reality. In Inheritors, Glaspell exposes the unfair treatment of American
Indians at that time, and used American drama to reflect the social problems of
America from the perspective of public intellectuals.
The alien models in the drama came from some widely reported trials of Hindus.
A pamphlet published by “The Friends of Freedom of India” in April 1919 gave a
26
moving describes of their life in imprisonment or execution of Hindus who were

awaiting freedom from British rule; and the pamphlet cited cases in which Britain
spent $2.5 million to secure the conviction of 16 Hindu nationals in San Francisco.
Glaspell chose Hindus as an alien group in Inheritors to address contemporary
injustices.
Inheritors is a clear manifestation of some Americans’ racial discrimination and
antipathy at the time, and it is obvious that American officials encouraged such
discrimination. The attitude toward immigrants and Indians was a litmus test for “real
Americans” and “traitors and rioters”. In act 2, when Fejevary said, “I’ll show those
dirty dagoes where they get off”, and “This foreign element gets my goat”, the senator
said, “My boy, you talk like an American” (Glaspell, 2010, p.197).
“Those characters with the greatest integrity are the most marginal. . . . [s]een by
society as both extremists and outsiders” (Dymkowski, 1988, p.91). Glaspell
literalizes this marginality by having them never appear onstage. Nevertheless, she
forces her audience to recognize the figures society has ostracized. Although these
people did not appear on the stage, Glaspell made her audience see the injustice done
to those people on the edge of society, who were arrested illegally and deprived of
their legitimate rights to read books.
In addition to being persecuted, the Indians of the time faced the problem of
being replaced. The stories of Madeline’s parents show that Americans trying to
replace the Indians, and they are anxious that they might be replaced by foreign
immigrants.
Glaspell’s opening instructions and dialogue should be noticed, because she then
establishes the overall relationship among the three acts of the play. First, the actual
location of the Mortons’ farmhouse, “on the rolling prairie just back from the
Mississippi [River]”, and Grandmother Morton references to “The war of the 1832”,
set in northwest of Illinois, which was in the middle of the territory fought over by the
Black Hawks. These details introduce the theme of Native American deprivation in
the play. It is like Grandmother said, “This very land-land you want to buy-was the
land they loved-Blackhawk and his Indians. They came here for their games. This was
where their fathers-as they called’ em-were buried” (2010, p.228).
In 1906, Congress began to determine the amount of land that Indians could buy
and sell on the basis of their “purity” -- the amount of white blood. This political
context guarantees the identity of the United States as the “replacement” of the
27
ancient Indian civilization. “This land that was once Indian maize now grows corn-I’d
like to have the Indians see my corn!” (ibid.) Madeline’s father’s corn is the best corn
in the state, and has taken several prices. He planted a new kind crop on land that used
to be Indian land and named it after himself. Seeing that the Indians had been tamed,
the extinct Indian civilization was thus shaped as the beginning of American history,
this cultural, not biological, heritage both protects Americans from native American
contamination, and gives them the right to occupy the Americas, preventing new
immigrants from becoming part of the United States. When Ira told Madeline how her
mother died, he said, “She choked to death in that Swede’s house. They lived” (2010,
p.224). He used words like “ignorant Swede”, “crazy woman”, and “immigrant
woman” to shows his hostility and resentment towards them. In the progressive era, as
the rational individual and the subject of “Democratic Public” in a democratic society,
white people are called “the great race that is disappearing”; immigrants are regarded
as the natural lack of self-governance, and their replacement of white people will be
the disaster of American democracy. Madeline’s mother died for trying to save the
family, the Swede was the surrogate who triggered this fear.
In the play, Madeline has been speaking up for the Hindu students and taking
action to get justice for them. Before Madeline could make her final decision to go to
jail, the playwright inserts Madeline’s mother’s story to tell the audience about the
insecurities and fears that arise from the selfishness of those people beneath the
surface. Her mother’s story has been suppressed for nearly two decades and has
become a story cannot be told. It turned out that her mother had died trying to help
Swedish immigrants who are outsiders in the American society. Madeline’s mother
choked to death and her own voice was cut off so those people in her society who
were others had a chance to live and speak. But the rest of her family thought it was
unspeakable because they think people from dictatorships and even brutal states are
considered to lack the sense of self-government and the ability to cooperate, and
therefore, are not qualified to enter mainstream American society.
In addition to showing audience the plight of the Indians, who are often
overlooked in real life, the dramatist creates a powerful figure to speak for them,
Madeline, who is Glaspell’s most appealing protagonist. Hindu students cannot speak
for themselves, nor can they fight for the protection and justice they deserve.
Madeline chose to align herself with these students who were considered others in her
28
own society, and denied the power of patriarchal laws to determine what was right
and wrong. Madeline would not only speak for them, she would work for them, and
she would be arrested along with them. When Madeline is asked by her uncle why she
has chosen to be “guardian of these strangers”, she replies, “Perhaps it’s because
they’re strangers.” Through Madeline, the dramatist acknowledges that these people
are outsiders, but at the same time she does not see them as so called destructive
element. She believes it is critical to recognize the common basic humanity of people
from different races. People should seek the possibility of peaceful coexistence in a
just and equal environment.
Glaspell creates dramas with public concern, in many of her works, she centers
stage discourse on people who live on the edge of mainstream society, and who may
be overlooked. Her plays are not for the amusement of the audience, but for the
audience to think more and to see more of the time. She wanted to show through these
fringe issues that besides the problems of ethnic relations between settlers and natives
and the history of conflict, the problem about ideal of harmony has been compounded.
The issues in the play are rooted in the United States, and the nativization factor is the
basic reason for the development and prosperity of American modern drama.
3.3 Compassion for the Professor’s Silence and Compromise in

Inheritors
Glaspell sees the embarrassment of the university professor’s life and the
hopelessness of their free expression. There were many authorities in history who
liked to silence people with power and despotism. In Inheritors, professor Holden’s
compromise is the result of pressure from those in power. In the play, Glaspell
expresses her compassion for Professor Holden and her concern for the situation of
the intellectuals who were represented by university professors at the time.
In Inheritors, Glaspell portrays an embattled professor asked to change his views
or lose his position. And the choice of Glaspell of a university as a battleground for
American values is certainly appropriate. Historians have documented many of the
shocking events like that described in Inheritors, in which colleges responded to
multiple pressures against teachers who held different political views from those in
power. Six years earlier, in his pamphlet The Third American Sex, Cook had described
systematic attempts to undermine the moral and intellectual power of professors in
29
American colleges. There was a tendency that spread dangerously during and after the
war. In a famous incident in 1917, two respected professors in Columbia university,
Harold Dana and James Cattel, were fired for speaking out against the war. In
Inheritors, Professor Holden is an example of Susan’s great teacher being cowed into
submission, sacrificed by a timid manager who was afraid of criticism.
Through Fejevary’s conversations with the senator, we learn about the nature of
Holden’s protests and the plight of the student named Fred Jordan. Jordan has been
expelled and imprisoned for he was a conscientious objector. Although Holden has
only protested his expulsion inside the school, he spoke out against the treatment of
Jordan in prison, especially the denial of access to books. In the play, Holden is a
representative of intellectuals. He came to this university for his ideals, and he hoped
to protect it from outside forces that would corrupt it. He criticized the change in
university education:
You say enlarge that we may grow. That’s false. It isn’t of the nature of growth.
Why not do it the way of Silas Morton and Walt Whitman-each man being his
purest and intensest self. I was full of this fervor when you came in. I’m more
and more disappointed in our students. They’re empty –flippant. No sensitive
moment opens them to beauty. No exaltation makes them-what they haven’t
known they were. (2010, p.207).
The necessity to go on, to follow one’s ideals, is not negated because others lack
understanding or because the goal is not realistically achievable. It is a sacred mission
for university teachers as critics to criticize the social malady. The critical spirit of the
university and its teachers is the internal source of the university’s own survival,
development and growth, and also the promotion of human awakening, the
encouragement of human innovation and progress, and the promotion of human
emancipation and development. In particular, university teachers should be able to act
as an independent social force, to be the representative of presiding over social
fairness and justice, and to make accurate and rational judgments on the professional
connotation contained in social issues. At the same time, they should influence the
public and even the government with the comprehensive ability of “professional
conscience”, to highlight the “morale” of professors, so as to fulfill the social
30
responsibility that university teachers should undertake. But in the play, the
environment forces professor Holden to abandon his principles and initial opinions,
and he is forced to keep his university professorship in silence to pay for his wife’s
treatment.
Intellectuals are essential to the practice of democracy and the formation of a
democratic public. The compromise of intellectuals, represented by university
professors, reflects the dilution of the roles of intellectuals as “leaders” and “mentors”
in the process of American democracy. Combining the historical facts of that time
with the attitude of the Senator to Professor Holden in Inheritors, we can see that the
political situation of that time squeezed the existence and expression space of the
intellectuals.
For a long time, Professor Holden insisted on rescuing his conscientious
objectors and tried to stop the school from expelling the Indians, moreover, he was
even willing to give up his professorship for these beliefs. He said to Fejevary: “It’s
small-vengeful-it’s the Russia of the Czars. I shall do what is in my power to fight the
deportation of Gurkul Singh. And certainly I shall leave no stone unturned if you
persist in your amazing idea of dismissing the other Hindus” (2010, p.208). But along
with the material survival predicament comes the dwarfism and the defeating of the
spiritual belief. He could sacrifice himself to live up to his beliefs instead of being a
professor, but he couldn’t sacrifice his family. He has been pleased to hear that
Madeline had defended Indian students against police officers, and then became one
of those who persuaded Madeline to abandon her beliefs. In an attempt to persuade
Madeline, Holden said:
You do this thing and you’ll find yourself with people who in many ways you
don’t care for at all; find yourself apart from people who in most ways are your
own people. You’re many-sided, Madeline....I don’t know about its all going to
one side. I hate to see you, so young, close a door on so much life. I’m being
just as honest with you as I know how. I myself am making compromises to
stay within. I don’t like it, but there are— reasons for doing it.... (Glaspell, 2010,
p.222)
We can see clearly how Professor Holden was forced to change. Intellectuals are
often pressured to compromise, retreat, and conform to prevailing cultural mores,
31
Professor Holden in Inheritors embodies Glaspell’s deep anxiety about the plight of
the intellectuals and the fall of them, and the change of Holden’s attitude and
descriptions of Holden’s situation draws the attention of her audience to the survival
dilemma of intellectuals of the time.
In his Representations of the Intellectual, Said emphasizes the importance of
passionate engagement, exposure, risk, commitment to principles, vulnerability in
debating and being involved in worldly causes to the intellectuals. Public intellectuals
primarily act as aggressors because they fight against the unfair. When no one else
dares to speak to the power for the unrepresented, public intellectuals take this
responsibility by nature. The publicity of drama makes Glaspell’s identity of
playwright and public intellectual come true simultaneously. Trifles and Inheritors
were widely released and received a lot of praise which promotes the attention of
American local plays to the social reality.
32
Chapter Four Being Outspoken in Criticism of the Power
Public intellectuals always take unpleasant actions because they stand against the
authority, but for the public. “Uncompromising freedom of opinion and expression is
the secular intellectual’s main bastion: to abandon its defense or to tolerate tampering
with any of its foundations is in effect to betray the intellectual’s calling” (Said, 1994:
89).They are dissatisfied with the status quo. They should strive to improve people’s
lives, and fight against social injustice or discontent through their pens. Therefore,
Glaspell uses the stage to expose the cruel reality, and to criticize the evil and
corruption of her time. Generally, intellectuals are the most qualified to give speeches
and the most responsible for giving speeches, and they enlightened the public by
making social criticism through their speeches. From what Professor Holden suffered,
Glaspell’s audience should know that intellectuals’ silence is painful to the individual
and harmful to society. Glaspell’s outspoken criticism of power was part of her
practice as a public intellectual in the midst of America’s chaos.
4.1 Empowering Marginalized Women in Trifles
Glaspell based Trifles on the Hossack murder case and used it to challenge
traditional ideas of legal jurisprudence based solely on the ‘higher’ abstract principles.
Glaspell had accumulated enough experience and stories, when she returned home to
write full-time.
I was assigned [on the Des Moines Daily News] to the State House and covered
the Legislature when in session. There I was always running into things I saw as
short stories, and after less than two years of newspaper reporting I boldly gave
up my job and went home to Davenport to give all my time to my own writing. I
33
say boldly…(qtd, Ben-Zvi, 2005, p.69)
Based on this experience, the adaptations of her works, inevitably touched on the
political and legislative aspects of the country.
In Trifles, the two women find Minnie Wright guilty of murder but acquit her of
the crime on the grounds of justifiable homicide. “While the standard polarization of
human beings in a crime story is normally determined by dividing law abiding
citizens from the criminal, the characters here are ...divided on the basis of sex
differences” (Alkalay, 1984, pp.1-9). This alteration helps Glaspell develop her theme
of the “law” versus “justice”.
When Mrs. Peters says: “The law has got to punish the crime, Mrs. Hale.” Mrs.
Hale doesn’t answer her, but says: “That was a crime! That was a Crime! Who’s going
to punish that” (Glaspell, 2010, p.33)? John Wright has tormented his wife and killed
the “girl” spiritually, even the state supreme court ruling published the findings that
John Hossack had repeatedly beaten his wife with his hands and stove lid: “The
family life of the Hossacks had not been pleasant perhaps the husband was most to
blame. He seems to have been somewhat narrow minded and quite stern in his
determination to control all family matters” (qtd, Ben- Zvi, 2005, p.68). The absence
of legal leads to no one punishes that crime. Until the 1970s, the American legal
system treated domestic violence against women as a personal matter and did not
intervene, which has become a consensus and tacit understanding. Husbands were
absolute leaders of their families and even in courts, which represented public power.
The “non-interference” attitude of the law to family affairs leads to the indifference to
the women who suffer from domestic violence.
Glaspell accuses the American judicial system of being unequal, this inequality
made it virtually impossible for a woman to have a “jury of her peers”, as women
were not allowed to serve on juries until late in the twentieth century. Marina Angel, a
legal professional, notes that women then “were not judges; they were not members of
state legislatures; they could not vote until 1920; and they could not serve on juries in
moststates until the 1940s” (Carpentier, 1996, p.33).
“As the feminist author expresses her own fantasies of justice, her reader
temporarily and figuratively gains membership to the law-making elite” (Munt, 1994,
p.197).” Since only men could serve on juries at that time, Glaspell foregrounds the
34
fact that women could not be tried by their peers. This irony emphasizes how the
particular circumstance of a woman like Minnie reflects women’s lives throughout the
country, regardless of their class position or geographical location. Like Elizabeth
Robins said in her play Votes for Women: “Men boast that an English citizen is tried
by his peers. What woman is tried by hers” (Robins, 1985, p.72)? In Trifles, the
fairness of women cannot be achieved through the judgment of men, because the men
would have to acknowledge the male brutality that may have motivated the woman’s
response. “It is not simply the case that men can not recognize or read women’s texts;
it is, rather, that they will not... For the men to find the clue that would convict
Minnie ...they would have to confront the figure of John Wright” (Fetterley, 1986,
p.149).
The fact that Glaspell allowed both official and amateur investigations conducted
at the same time to demonstrates the limitations of people who have authority and the
inadequacy of their methods. Both male and female audience must learn to see as
women do, and to realize that the way of seeing from women’s view is different from
the men’s way, and in this case, it’s even more advanced than the male perspective.
Although in stage of Trifles, the position of women is as marginal as their place in
society, but the playwright gives great strength to their knowledge of “woman’s
sphere”. “Glaspell seems impatient to show her ‘signs of anger’ about the fact that
women of 1916 or 1917 do not have the legal right to serve as jurors” (Ling, 2014,
p.53). The dramatist likened the law of the day to a bad stove by Mrs. Hale’s words:
“A bad stove is a bad stove, how’d you like to cook on that.”
Sixteen years ago, twelve men had convicted the accused, and then Glaspell
created a new jury of two women who could evoke a presence that vanished from
sight and could see farther. Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale are the dual protagonists of the
drama, pointing out and describing the absent presence of the accused; they gather
evidence, and argue legal arguments, create a plot about the defendant’s life and
motives, and ultimately determine her fate. In Trifles, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters are
not as stupid as the men think. They’re examine Minnie’s past, and in doing so, they
reinterpret their lives and find the strength to break the law.
Trifles shows that women have the ability to make their own judgment. It is
absurd and unreasonable that the law ignores women in the family and that women
have no right to participate in the verdict. In the play, Glaspell gives women the
power to carry out their own same-sex trials, in effect criticizing the injustice of
35
American law at the time.

Glaspell’s dramas reflected not only the social reality on the stage, but also the
irrationality of the social base and superstructure at that time. “In the middle of the
19th century, American drama critics realized the heavy dependence of American
drama on foreign (especially British) drama, they put forward the theoretical
proposition of constructing the national drama which can show the native style on the
basis of its own life style, social reality, character image and political system”(Fan,
2018, p.69). Glaspell’s expressions and critiques of policy and law, which were
exactly missing from the prevalent American farce at the time, enriched the content of
American Modern drama.
4.2 Arguing against War in Inheritors
In Glaspell’s time, World War I was an inescapable topic, references to war

appear in almost every drama she wrote, whether as passing allusions or as central
themes. With the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, the focus of
American society shifted from domestic reform to foreign wars. In this way, how the
United States should respond the war in Europe became an important issue in
American politics. From Glaspell’s works, it is not difficult to see Glaspell’s
opposition to the First World War.
In this early story, Glaspell already reveals her distaste for jingoistic language
and displays a pacifism that she maintained through World War I and expressed in her
dramas and fiction. Glaspell’s pacifism is reflected in her short story, “The Philosophy
of War”, which she created while studying at Drake university, in which a young man
who had fought in the Spanish-American War says that there are no Spaniards on the
battlefield, and, they didn’t know what they were fighting for, only that they were
being attacked by mosquitoes. She also recounts a narrator’s view that the
Spanish-American War was not so much a “war for humanity” and “A golden chapter
of American history” as it was touted in the newspapers, more like a terrible waste of
young people’s lives. More serious accounts of her anti-war position can be found in
her other works like, The Visioning (1911) and Bernice (1919), in which Glaspell
expresses that “the First World War has meant, among other things, death, sudden
death of unprecedented number of soldiers and civilians” (qtd, in Ling, 2014, p.67).
Not only the senseless death of war, but the growing labor unrest, the chauvinism and
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consumerism that prevailed in postwar American society were also reflected in

Glaspell’s other works.
In Inheritors, Glaspell’s opposition to World War I was based on two aspects, the
first one is that the war is meaningless consumption of young lives; the other is that
the First World War interrupted the development of American idealism, and it is a
destruction of American social civilization.
Glaspell made a series of precisely calculated choices about which wars to use in
her dramas. Her choices provide the best example of her particular technique of
presenting controversial issues in such a way that her audience is carefully led to
accepting ideas and positions that they might otherwise reject. In Inheritors, the word
“War” appeared in the first act of the play with a picture of Lincoln on the wall,
Grandmother Morton said, “That the worst of a war – you have to go hearing about it
so long. Here it is – 1897 – and we haven’t taken Gettysburg yet. Well, it was the
same way with the war of 1832” (Glaspell, 2010, p.181). There are another
conversation in which Grandma Morton and her son discuss the war “Seems nothing
draws men together like killing other men” (2010, p.183), and her son Silas later
muses, “I’d like to go to a war celebration where they never mentioned war. There’d
be a way to celebrate victory” (2010, p.188). The speakers commented not only on the
wars they had fought — a conflict between settlers and Native Americans over
disputed land rights in western Illinois that resulted in the massacre of hundreds of
Native Americans and the U.S. Civil War between the States, but also on the World
War I that the audience had just experienced. When the audiences hear these
comments about wars, it is easy to think about the war they have just been through.
“By skillfully conflating the wars of the past with the war she and her audience had
just lived through, Glaspell is able to effectively express the futility of all wars and
their legacy” (Ben- Zvi, 2006, p.289).
In the anti-war view, Glaspell considers not only the war itself on the
consumption of young people’s lives but also changes in American society and the
social problems that will emerge after the war. In the first act, the young salesman
who came to the Morton Farm to persuade Mr. Morton to sell their land for
development heard Grandma Morton’s story of the past, but he had no interest in her
history or the history of the community. “More people, more homes” — the slogan of
postwar America — is his mantra, and it must have resonated with contemporary
audience of Glaspell. The salesman repeated that, “The town is growing very fast.” In
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this scenario, Grandmother Morton seems to be the dramatist, and her audience seems
to be the salesman listening to the story. Glaspell tries to challenge the post war
materialism with an old woman in a rocking chair, hoping the audience will regain the
wisdom and tenacity of America’s pioneering spirit.
Act 2 and 3 are set in the college library, and a photograph of Silas Morton hangs
prominently in response to the portrait of Lincoln in Act 1. The opening scene is a
conversation between Felix Fejevary Jr. who is president of the board of trustees of
the college and Senator Lewis. As the first act, it quickly establishes a war context,
alluding to America’s recent involvement in the First World War. Senator Lewis
mentioned Fejevary’s son, who “stood up and offered his life,” and Felix Fejevary Jr.
said, “Yes. And my nephew gave his life. . . . Silas Morton’s grandson died in France”
(2010, p.196). Instead of continuing to discuss the details of the war, however, they
began to discuss the post-war situation. The conversation that follows focuses on
Professor Holden, who is condemned because of his defense of conscientious
objectors. Professor Holden was convinced that “it’s disgrace to America that two
years after the war closes he should be kept there — much of the time in solitary
confinement — because he couldn’t believe in war” (2010, p.208). Thus the Senator
thinks Holden is a “radical”. The woman in the rocking chair challenges the post-war
materialism in a peaceful and accessible way, while the attack on the chauvinism is
more aggressive. Before and after Inheritors was released, many people were arrested
for anti-war rhetoric and refusal to perform military service. Accordingly, in
Glaspell’s opinion, a series of policies carried out by the United States government
during and after the war have undermined the democratic rule of law in the United
States.
“Her (Glaspell’s) dramas reflect the impact of the wars on a specifically
American milieu: on the individual character, on social morality, on the commitment
to action, and on a sense of national history and its foundational principles” (Gainor,
2001. p.9). The opposition to the war and its portrayal of the social problems that
emerged after the war in Inheritors show Glaspell’s abilities and responsibility as a
public intellectual. The rebels under tyranny, the uncooperative members of the
censorship system, the exiles who do not beg for their lives, the organizers and
front-line commanders of non-violent non-cooperative movements such as
demonstrations and strikes, and so on, are the imagination of the people and the
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general public of the image of public intellectuals. Glaspell brought the courage,
attitude, and spirit of public intellectuals into her American plays, which she insisted
on producing for the public.
4.3 Expressing Apprehension about Free Speech in Inheritors
During the First World War, the struggle to preserve the right to free speech
became an issue of growing urgency for political activists, writers, and teachers.
Glaspell used drama to attack the authorities’ policy of suppressing free speech, she
saw these insults to free-speech supporters both inside and outside her circle, and
gained the raw material of her dramas.
People who publicly opposed the activities or policies of the United States
government could be prosecuted for their beliefs. In the jingoistic atmosphere of
chauvinism that immediately followed the war, it is hard to differentiate the
anti-imperialism views from communism, and radical political views were seen as
dangerous as immigrant populations.
President Wilson signed a series of executive orders aimed originally at the press,
but reviewed any arguments against the official war. The key terms were found in
Title I, section 3, stated:
Whoever, when the United States is at war,...shall wilfully cause or attempt to

cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty, in the military or
naval forces of the United States, or shall wilfully obstruct the recruiting or
enlistment service of the United States, to the injury of the service or of the
United States, shall be punished by a fine of not more the $10,000 or
imprisonment for not more than twenty years, or both. (Mock, 1941, p.40).
The outbreak of global violence and America’s suppression of free speech

prompted Glaspell and her colleagues to make new commitments. They acted to
counter the government’s decree to restrain dissent which is a very real threat to
themselves and their livelihoods. Glaspell wrote about the battle for free speech in
three dramas produced between 1917 and 1919: Close the Book (1917), The People
(1917) as well as Bernice (1919). Struggle for freedom was the logical continuation
and expression of her long-held political beliefs, and she was determined to make it
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one of the central themes of Inheritors. In Inheritors, Glaspell directly challenged the
government’s repression. This drama, with its comprehensive vision of American
history and critical examination of the basic principles of democracy, proves that
Glaspell and the Provincetown Players believed in the power of the stage to express
and influence political beliefs.
The Espionage and Sedition Act had just been repealed when Inheritors opened
in March 1921, but they were still in force the year Glaspell wrote the play. The ideas
she espouses in her work could made her be prosecuted under the terms. In her early
plays, she made quick hit-and-run attacks on armies, but it was easy to miss these
attacks. Not this time, because her drama confronted three blatant injustices of the
time: the intimidation of university professors and students; the expulsion and
prosecution of aliens without due process; imprisonment and excessive punishment of
conscientious objectors continued after the end of the war. And her audience maybe
realize that each of these abuses was based on a real event.
In Inheritors, professor Holden was threatened with resignation for trying to get
justice for his students. Holden is suspected to be a “Red” because of his public
support for a former student who was imprisoned for being a conscientious objector.
He is genuine sympathy with youth, and that is invaluable in a teacher. But the
Senator who has the power to decide whether to donate to the university doesn’t care
if he’s a good teacher, but cares if he’s a radical human beings. He said, “I’ve read
things that make me question his Americanism.” and “But we don’t want radical
human beings” (Glaspell, 2010, p.194). To stay alive, the college not only expelled
students who claimed conscientious objector status, but also put pressure on
professors and students who support this view. The play shows not only the pressure
that the bill put on individuals and the news media, but also the pressure that it put on
colleges.
Professor Holden had a chance to go to Harvard, but he chose to stay here, for he
felt that Morton College was soil in which he could grow. He believes a man who is
willing to go to prison for what he believes has stuff in him no college need turn its
back on. But the bill almost destroyed his ideals which were in conformity with
Morton College’s manifesto:
Morton College was born because there came to this valley a man who held his
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vision for mankind above his own advantage; and because that man found in
this valley a man who wanted beauty for his fellow-men as he wanted no other
thing.Born of the fight for freedom and the aspiration to richer living we believe
that Morton College-rising as from the soil itself- may strengthen all those here
and everywhere who fight for the life there is in freedom, and may, to the
measure it can, loosen for America the beauty that breathes from knowledge.
(Glaspell, 2010, p.205).
The implementation of the Act destroyed the college’s founding principle. If it

sticks to its principles, the college will lose its living space. Fejevary and Holden
know that they face the risk of losing their scope for dreams on the way of seeking
living space. They know that if they give in, they will face sustaining compromises.
They are in the fog, but both of them are unable to resist, and do not know how to get
out of the fog. In this case, Glaspell created the role of a powerful schoolgirl.
Madeline, with the rebellious attitude, is the playwright’s best indictment of the
political environment of the time. Madeline’s struggle is to against unfair censorship
and fight for their right to state their views. As on stage, the real world of journalism,
education, and labor is at war, and even in opposition to those in power.
Glaspell criticized social maladministration through dramas with strong social
concern and moral responsibility. On stage, people like Madeline making accusations
for their rights that reflect the extradiegetic reality where her audiences live. Glaspell
risks arrest to rebel in response to an unreasonable policy and puts the hypocrisy of
American democracy on trial by turning the playhouse into a courthouse. “They
certainly could not overlook the political bent of Inheritors, Glaspell’s historical
drama, the first written for the modern American stage” (Carpentier, 2006, p.288).
Glaspell has her political views, and her thoughts will inevitably be expressed through
her dramas. It is possible for her to criticize the unreasonableness and unfairness of
social and political life, because of her status as a playwright in Provincetown Players.
Inheritors proved to be a popular success with audiences, running an additional
week at the Provincetown, then following Jones and O’Neill’s Diff’rent uptown for a
run at the Princess Theatre and returning to MacDougal Street, along with The Spring,
in a special summer season that Jasper Deeter organized. Deeter stayed faithful to
Inheritors, which he believed to be one of the most important political plays ever
written in the country. As he explained to Susan: “Your vision taught me how to look;
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your insight taught me how to perceive; your words enable me to speak and your play
gave me a life to live” (qtd, Ben-zvi, 2005, p.270). In his repertory company, he
presented Inheritors on Memorial Day and the Fourth of July, every year from 1923
to 1954, except during the Second World War, when Glaspell denied him permission,
explaining that some might confuse her antiwar sentiments concerning the First World
War with her feelings about the present war. In the early days of American drama,
Glaspell’s plays, which were intended to convey a political point of view to the public,
were of extraordinary significance.
Glaspell’s commitment to anti militarism and pacifism in World War I, her
struggles for the environment, her abhorrence of discrimination in any form and her
tendency to speak and see from the heart and not from the head, have their roots in her
America heritage. The purpose of criticism is to establish new principles and to set
them up on a more solid and new basis. Glaspell’s plays no longer seek to appeal only
to the audience’s emotions, but to their capacity of consciously making sense of
things.
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Chapter Five As an Advocate of Social Progress
Tragedy in the classical period of ancient Greece had the political function of
civilizing people of the state. By the time of the enlightenment, drama as a means of
teaching has been more widely used. As many critics acknowledge, Glaspell’s plays
relentlessly focus on the Native Americans, the working class and, more
fundamentally, women; they reflect mainstream social problems by discussing
marginal issues. Shaw believed that the popular audience did not like to use its brains,
and that only a “masterpiece or two” of the New Drama could revive the London
theatre and awaken the audience. On the other side of the Atlantic, Glaspell knew that
the Broadway audience she aimed for, she hopes to shake her audience out of their
lethargy and lead them to reconsider accepted behaviors and morality.
5.1 Gender Edification in Trifles
Glaspell helped her audiences to become aware of themselves and to make their
own judgments and decisions wisely, rather than blindly trusting in authorities. And as
a playwright, Glaspell had the advantage of playing multiple roles as a public
intellectual.
In Glaspell’s time, an opportunity opened up which made her plays more
accessible.
“In the late nineteenth century, publishers realized that they could increase
circulation by targeting a female audience. In both magazines and newspapers,
editors developed content for this readership, soliciting fiction by and about
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women and creating regular columns devoted to domestic concerns and society
news” (Carpentier, 2006, p.75).
Furthermore, plays by female playwrights began to explore issues deriving from

women’s subjective experiences of society and their daily lives. Glaspell was known
primarily for stories aimed at women readers. Thus the very potential for Glaspell to
have such a writing career emerged from the media’s identification of women as
significant force in the marketplace. Glaspell seized the opportunity to consciously
use drama to enlighten the female audience at that time. Glaspell’s plays do not follow
the paradigm of the female novel at the time, in which the ultimate goal of the heroine
is to let the hero take care of her. Glaspell’s heroine, by contrast, can only take
responsibility for herself and nurture others, including men, once she has achieved
self reliance. The heroine of Trifles leads the audience into the public sphere of
demonstrations, courts and prisons, where she demands that society consider women’s
feelings and situations more important than trifles.
To have found such a woman innocent or to have explored the question of
justifiable homicide would have been unthinkable in the Iowa court of 1901. Such an
argument would have necessitated an investigation of the family, the power wielded
by the husband, his physical abuse over a long period, and the circumscribed lives of
the wife and children. Both the prosecution and, tellingly, the defense seemed loath to
pursue this direction. Instead, as Glaspell’s accounts indicate, their cases were built on
small, tangential points, few of which addressed the central issue of motive. Glaspell
gave women a distinguished voice on the stage during the era of women’s suffrage,
championing the independence of women and exploring women’s issues in front of a
broad audience. Women in her plays repeatedly struggle with traditional gender
expectations, the construction of womanhood, and the bondage of female desire and
self-creation. In Mrs. Peters’ revelatory speech: “When I was a girl — my kitten —
there was a boy took a hatchet, and before my eyes — and before I could get there —
[covers her face an instant] If they hadn’t held me back I would have — [Catches
herself, looks upstairs where steps are heard, falters weakly] — hurt him” (Glaspell,
2010, p.33). Mrs. Peters’s words are punctuated by long silence, and Glaspell resorts
to pauses and silences throughout the play to indicate the hesitancy of the women to
face the implications of what they are discovering. It shows that Glaspell’s women,
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whose limitations had silenced them in the past and who were not accustomed to
speaking in public, are now struggling with gender restrictions. “Glaspell is celebrated
first and foremost for having given center stage to a host of remarkable female figures
who struggle against patriarchy’s imprisoning gender expectations” (Hinz, 2006,
p.202).
In Trifles, “they do not remain objective observers; they become personally
involved, and, through their successful investigations they gain human sympathy and
valuable insights into their own lives. This growth, rather than the sleuthing process,
is the play’s focal point” (Stein, 2007, p.252). The women’s process of investigating
Minnie is integral to their own personal growth. In this process, they reject male
control, male domination, and male interpretation of their reality. In this drama, the
lawmen are quickly shunted offstage to roam about on the periphery of the action,
their presence marks theatrically by their shuffling sounds above the heads of the
women, another expressionistic touch. Glaspell leads her female audience away from
the notion that men see and know more than women do, so that women gain power
not through alliances with men, but through their own power and truth. “It’s in the
belated interpretation of the past within the drama of the present that we begin to
understand history” (Phelan, 2001, p.5).
Trifles does not fully convey the real events of the past. There are lots of ways to
tell a story, according to what the dramatist wants her story to do to the world of her
audience, and Glaspell chooses her own way. In Trifles and her other plays, Glaspell’s
way is to change what the world is going to be through reaching towards that once
was. It is painful to anticipate loss most of the time and it is frightening to see into the
future sometimes, theatre is a place in which Glaspell could practice her art about
learning from death for living. In Trifles, by dead and absent Minnie Wright, her
audience sees their future, and the possibility of changing the direction of their
journey. By depicting the crime and its motives, Glaspell mercilessly questions the
“world view” of the community at the time – the patriarchal order. Glaspell came up
with a resolution in which the world view had to be changed radically. And the social
order, though not much changed on the surface, but we know that the community will
never be exactly the same as it was before.
Glaspell creates a space is both historical and immediate, and her drama draws
possibility and strength from both the past and the present. In Trifles, the final
judgment of the women is not merely symbolic of power and equality, but become a
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spiritual entity that connects the characters in the play and the audience of the play
together in a possibility of the future where is accessible to all. “Her works envisage a
better future for both her fictive insurgents and her spectators, whom she encourages
to consider which modes of revolt are appropriate and effective for improving the
society they live in” (Emeline, 2017, p.2). Glaspell leads the audience to see the tragic
fate of rural women and their plight of no recourse from the female perspective,
which not only makes women grow up, but also makes both men and women aware of
the wisdom and strength of females.
5.2 Advocacy of the Independence of Newspapers in The People
With her intimate knowledge of Village journalism and its practitioners, Glaspell
wrote thinly-disguised in The People about the radical newspaper of the day, The
Masses, whose editor and writers are closely associated with members of the
Provincetown Player. Locally, The Masses was the official news agency of the day. If
a society wishes to establish a new way of life and rebel against traditional forms, it
needs a publication to disseminate its ideas. At the end of 1912, a young Columbia
University philosophy teacher named Max Eastman took over as editor of a narrowly
defined socialist publication, with the help of Floyd Dell, the publication became a
central institution for creative experimentation and social change in New York from
1913 to 1917. Dell became managing editor of the publication the following year. Its
masthead calls it “A Revolutionary and not a Reform Magazine”. It supports most of
the radical positions discussed at heterodoxy magazine, including feminism suffrage
and birth control. It supports radical socialism and the IWW Labour movement, and
Pacifism and anti-conscription protests after the outbreak of the First World War.
Glaspell knew that this publication shared aspirations of the Provincetown Players to
have a cultural and political impact across the country. The play reflects the
correspondences between the two organizations, as a commentary, and idealizes the
image of what such organizations mean to the audiences and the readers.
The People is designed to show that since words have great power to face the
people, it is bound to bear the corresponding responsibility, as well as the writers bear
the expectations of the people. Editor Wills, played by Cook, comments that,
“Everybody plugging for his own thing. Nobody caring enough about the thing as a
whole” (Glaspell, 2010, p.51). These words are directed not only to the characters on
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stage, but also at the members of the Provincetown Players and The Masses. She
wants to portray a journal that purports to speak to “the People”, and Glaspell’s aim is
to be a passionate reminder of how a revolutionary group is committed to certain
goals at its inception. These goals may be lost along the way, but because of their
independent and enlightened nature, they must be rediscovered and restarted.
A lack of motivation and direction is a more serious problem than a lack of
funding. After his trip across the continent, the editor got tired of his people. He states,
“They’re like toys that you wind up and they’ll run awhile. They don’t want to be
expressed. It would topple them over.” He declares, “Social revolution is dead”
(Glaspell, 2010, p.53), so he wants to cut the paper’s subtitle which was “Journal of
Social Revolution”. Here, the playwright wishes to point out that the reason of people
lose faith in newspapers is because that they alienate people who are supposed to be
the reason for the newspaper’s existence.
The editors lost touch with the people and lost sight of the greater significance of
newspaper printing itself. Glaspell has the Woman from Idaho speak for them all,
when The Woman first appears, she tells the associate editor that, “I will stand down
on the street and watch the people go by.” But he doesn’t understand her, and then she
explains, “The people. It’s so wonderful to see them — So many of them. Don’t you
often just stand and watch them?” He replies sarcastically, “No, madam, not often. I
am too busy editing a magazine about them” (Glapell, 2010, p.50). After describing
where she has come from —“a flat piece of land fenced in”— the Woman from Idaho
tells Wills that his words have been for her “like a spring breaking through the dry
country of my mind.” With her hands outstretched “in a gesture, wide, loving,” she
asks him to continue his magazine: “Let life become what it may become!—so
beautiful that everything that is back of us is worth everything it cost.” The Women
believes that, as a writer, the editor has been moved by something greater than himself,
something he may not even realized. “You wrote it because it’s the living truth, and it
moved in you and you had to say it” (2010, p.53), she explains, his words show that
there is more to life than just waiting for one’s time to die, that individuals may
experience a greater depth of meaning for their lives.
With his ability to write this way, he takes responsibility for others that he must
now lead this paper to its original purpose and deal with The Woman’s further
expectations. “I know you will give it to us,” she tells him. The editor asks, “Give
what to you?” “What you have for the people. What you made us know we need,” she
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answers. Later, she responds to his lack of belief by saying that she is sorry for him.
The Woman from Idaho, the Boy from Georgia and the Man from the Cape, all
provide living proof of the power of the written words and the ability of ideas, of the
truth, to move people. They have been deeply touched by what the editor had written.
The Woman states, “From the South and the East and the West we’ve come because
you made us want something we didn’t have, made us want it so much we had to
move the way we thought was toward it--before the sun goes down” (Glaspell, 2010,
p.52). Because he has the ability to move these people, the editor must now deal with
them and their continued expectations of what he can tell them about life’s meaning.
The play highlights the idea that writing can influence people to take positive
action, those who, like editors, have the ability to move people with their words, have
a moral obligation to continue to this day. The people itself is a means of challenging
the existing order. Editors lose their faith in themselves, in their ability to move
people. He also lost faith in humanity’s ability to cope with change and hope.
Therefore, he is saying no to the group of people with whom he wished to correct the
larger society. The People suggests that the editor should use his own power to
re-establish contact with society.
The reality on which newspapers depends is something more solid than material
reality. The People can continue its existence only if it is possible to spread its ideas to
people. If there is no tangible proof of the connection between the words of this paper
and the lives of real people, the paper will be folded up. This spiritual feeling is
underscored by the greater reality at the end of the play. The editor declares that the
paper cannot stop. The printer inquires, “Oh—you’ve got something to go on with?”
He is referring to money, but when the editor replies, “Yes, some thing to go with”
(Glaspell, 2010, p.56), he is speaking of faith, not of funds.
Glaspell illustrates that she is a sensitive reader of the times and can provide
some beneficial enlightenment for the development of the times through her own
dramas. She points out the difficulty of fund shortage in the development of
newspapers, and the direction for the development of newspapers that newspapers
should not be separated from the people, but should play a role in promoting social
progress.
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5.3 An Appeal to Reconstruct American Idealism in Inheritors
In Inheritors, readers and audiences can see how Glaspell, with her identities of
public intellectual and dramatist, responds to this world with sincerity, how loyally
and unapologetically she defends her moral code, and, finally, how the writing of a
public intellectual influenced an entire generation of American readers. Intellectuals
make their living by speaking and writing. Only intellectual thinking can achieve
immortality. Since Dreyfus Affair, Zola has shaken French politics with an essay to
accuse, and the “Intellectuals” have become the personification of moral order and the
ethics of goodness.
In Inheritors, Glaspell denounced the decline of American idealism and called
for a return to the true American Spirit. Glaspell asserts, like another of her literary
progenitors, Walt Whitman, that the United States offered itself the hope of life on its
own virtue, which is the argument at the core of Inheritors. Despite the violence and
darkness of much of her work, Glaspell remains convinced that the American people
have the potential to make the next necessary evolutionary leap.
In the play, Glaspell is looking for a vision of America that will help Americans
recognize more clearly of who they really are and what they can strive to be. What
Glaspell is trying to say is that as individuals, Americans need to fight for self
knowledge and moral strength. Like the United States itself, Americans need to find a
way to be fair about the inner greatness of them, and the deep weaknesses that, in fact,
determine their actual lives --all the self-deception, hubris, and betrayal.
Writing for the Nation in 1921, Ludwig Lewisohn produced one of the strongest
supporting evaluations of Inheritors:
If the history of literature, dramatic or non-dramatic, teaches us anything, it is

that Broadway and its reviewers will some day be judged by their attitude to
this work. ...It is the first play of the American theater in which a strong intellect
and a ripe artistic nature have grasped and set forth in human terms the central
tradition and most burning problem of our national life quite justly and
scrupulously, equally without acrimony or compromise. (1921, p.515).
The central theme of Inheritors is the loss of the values of pioneers, the spirit of
movement and change is replaced by the spirit of acquisition and fixation. She had
49
seen this process at work in Davenport, where the second generation got rich and the
third richer -- and more conservative. Freed from this cycle by her grandfather’s loss
and her father’s further economic decline, Glaspell came to believe that future
generations would pay for their comfort only by denying their ancestors’ dreams and
positive values. Inheritors traced the decline.
Madeline Morton is a character who makes the audience aware of the realities of
the current disturbing political environment. She is aware that their status as strangers
does not earn them a voice in American society, the same society whose discourse on
their values and freedoms has been proven wrong, which forces Madeline to resort to
laws higher than those established by man. Madeline focused on the myth of
“America” and its commitment to equality for all human beings, regardless of belief
or origin.
Madeline’s appeal for those foreigners and her growing consciousness that the
pursuit for justice and liberty they follow is the same as that of her forebears lead her
to question many of the values espoused by people around her who claim to be
upholding the pioneers’ democratic principles. She is forced to choose between the
compromised but comfortable morality she perceives within her community and her
emerging ideals, the pursuit of which will have serious legal consequences.
She tries to look out, but can not sit very still, seeing what it is pain to see.
Rises, goes to that corner closet, the same one from which Silas Morton took
the deed to the hill. She gets a yardstick, looks in a box and finds a piece of
chalk. On the floor she marks of Fred Jordan’s cell. Slowly, at the end left
un-chalked, as for a door, she goes in. Her hand goes up, as against a wall,
looks at her other hand, sees it is out too far, brings it in, giving herself the
width of the cell. Walks its length, halts, looks up. (Glaspell, 2010, p.215).
Through this simple act, Glaspell takes all the noble discussions about free
speech published in 1920 and shows her audience what it actually means to act upon
faith. The plain simplicity of the play reinforces the sense of righteous indignation. It
is a powerful and compelling moment, a visual image that is moving for its starkness.
When Madeline was talking to his uncle in the library, she defined the foreign
students as “people from the other side of the world who came here believing in us,
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drawn from the other side of the world by the things we say about ourselves”
(Glaspell, 2010, p.215). If “true Americans” cannot speak for their own country, they
need to hear other people’s voices. Madeline chose to speak for the Hindu students in
order to achieve what Americans say about themselves.
To stop with the present, to become content, to keep from progressing or
moving beyond what others have done, would be a betrayal of all those pioneers who
came before as well as a betrayal of the Indians who first held the land. Glaspell’s
argument in Inheritors takes the form of a kind of American idealism. Individuals
have the responsibility to progress, move on, and better the human and spiritual strain,
lest they betray the struggles that brought them to this point. “The world is all a
moving field,” Madeline proclaims at the end of Inheritors, “What you are—that
doesn’t stay with you. Then … be the most you can be, so life will be more because
you were” (Glaspell, 2010, p.225).
In this play, Glaspell, through Madeline, answers on stage why she helps
outsiders, why go against the state and why speak out when there are serious
consequences for speaking out. Glaspell asks all American people to consider what it
means to be an American. She reminds Americans forcefully of the democratic
principles on which the country was founded principles that can all too easily be
manipulated by those in power who wish to impose their vision upon the nation.
Inheritors remains a play of epic scope and political cogency, as relevant today as
when Glaspell wrote it all most a century ago.
In an essay, On knowledge and Power, Mills outlines the role of the public
intellectual as one who is “the moral conscience of his society” (1963, p.611). A
public intellectual comes to occupy such a role through the deployment of individual
knowledge to the benefit of the society. “At least when conceived of as someone who
is attempting to make a serious contribution to the improvement of public
understanding, the public intellectual lacks accountability” (Posner, 2001, p.7).
Glaspell never stop voicing a crucial call for action and hope, she has been working to
change the world by caring about people and raising their awareness. In “Preface” to
The Road to the Temple, Glaspell wrote that “as we fight for a free world, more of us
than ever before are thinking of what man’s life on earth has been—and can be”(1927,
Preface).
51
Conclusion
With the attributes of public intellectuals, Glaspell’s dramatic engagement ushers

in the rise of American drama and leads the direction of its development. Through her
counseling and manner of social criticism, we may regard her as a great contributor to
the promotion of the common good. Her more fundamental achievement lies in her
role as a dramatist. Said said: “The intellectual does not climb a mountainor pulpit
and declaim from the heights. Obviously, you want to speak your piece where it can
be heard best; and also you want it represented in such a way as to influence with an
ongoing and actual process, for instance, the cause of peace and justice” (1994, p.102).
As a playwright, Glaspell had the theatre as a rare platform, the desire of public
intellectuals to express their views on public affairs and the desire of dramatists to
change the world are realized on the stage.
At the time of Glaspell’s writing, American playwrights have hardly produced
thoughtful plays. Formula drama has a huge commercial success at the time, and the
popular playwrights’ impulse to write serious drama was weak and the results were
poor. They had little incentive to focus on social issues. Some of them wrote plays
about society and its foibles, but they were interested mainly in the surface of life.
They churned out their so-called social melodrama to please a paying audience
seeking to be entertained easily. At the same time, the Provincetown Players aimed to
produce new American plays. The theatre enables the playwright as a public
intellectual to intervene in the public sphere in a more independent and direct way.
Glaspell retained her original rational spirit and critical vitality and achieved
relatively free expression.
Drama should be regarded without equivocation as a literary form whose
52
purpose was to depict life realistically from a moral perspective. “Coming out of
nineteenth-century American realist traditions......, Susan Glaspell both absorbed and
contributed to expressionist theatrical innovation in the turbulent Greenwich Village
environment of the first decades of the twentieth century” (Papke, 2006, p.17).
Glaspell uses her wit and subtle irony to serve up acute readings of American society
in concoctions that were easy to ingest yet could produce the desired, salutary effects.
Her method of submerging the political in the personal was so cleverly framed that
readers and audiences were often not fully aware of the radical ideas being presented,
and were thus more amenable to the ideas than they would have been in more didactic
renderings.
Trifles and Inheritors expose the oppression, injustice, and limitation of
disadvantaged. At the same time, Glaspell shows an apparent critical attitude in these
two plays, criticizing the definition of women and the restriction of women’s rights in
the United States at that time. She indicates her criticism of the U. S. Government
includes the participation in World War I and the implementation of the
anti-espionage Act after the war. Glaspell has a desire for social change, and she
wanted her plays to be civilizing and enlightening. In Trifles, she inspires women and
all Americans to recognize the wisdom and power of women. In The People, she
inspires the newspaper to remain independent and rooted in the people. In Inheritors,
Glaspell hopes that the American people at the time could rediscover the American
Spirit of freedom, equality and justice, and places hopes on the social progress. She
combines the identities of the expositor, critic, and enlightener of the public
intellectuals with the cognitive, critical, and enlightening functions of the drama.
Glaspell, one of America’s most underestimated modernist playwrights, held a
Shavian conviction that the theatre could do more than offer an aesthetic experience
and, having established an intellectual relationship with her audience, sought to
reform society through her plays. Such a study allows us to see and get a fuller view
of how her artistic choices are influenced by and interact with her social position and
the social scene of her age and, how her dramatic creation influenced the development
of modern American drama.
53
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58
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公共知识分子之声：格拉斯佩尔戏剧研究 盛文琪

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学号： 1811051005

Voice of Susan Glaspell as a Public Intellectual:

Candidate： Sheng Wenqi

Supervisor： Prof. He Anfang

Faculty of Foreign Languages

Voice of Susan Glaspell as a Public Intellectual:

Susan Glaspell (1882-1948), a Pulitzer Prize winner, was an important founder

Chapter One Introduction

1.1 Introduction to Glaspell

novelist to become an experimental playwright. (Waterman, 1966, p174).

provide important documents of life in America as seen through the eyes of a

1.2 Literature Review

In 2008, Ozieblo explored the writing tradition of female dramatists in American

1.3 The Significance and Structure of This Thesis

trapped in an unspeakable situation.

Chapter Two Susan Glaspell as a Public Intellectual Touching

2.1 A Theoretical Evolution of Public Intellectuals

Commentaries and monographs on the research of intellectuals have been

2.2 Social Consciousness of Public Intellectuals in the Progressive Era

As in every pertinent comparatist perspective, if one does not separate the

This section focuses on the relationship between public intellectuals and

Under the influence of Nativism, the concept of a ‘Democratic Public’ in the

level, is increasingly characterized by the tribalization of politics. The standard

2.3 Drama as a Vehicle for Glaspell’s Public and Political Comment

Although its media function is often neglected, drama, as a means of

Unfortunately, we in America have so far looked upon the theater as a place of

The mainstream of American drama at that time pursued commercial interests.

It is the emergence of dramatists such as Glaspell who have the courage to

Chapter Three Speaking up for the Disadvantaged and the

3.1 Concern with Domestic Violence against Rural Women in Trifles

When I was a newspaper reporter out in Iowa, I was sent down-state to do a

3.2 Exposure of Prejudice and Assimilation Toward Native

Inheritors was undoubtedly a play about the complex social problems of

moving describes of their life in imprisonment or execution of Hindus who were

3.3 Compassion for the Professor’s Silence and Compromise in

Chapter Four Being Outspoken in Criticism of the Power

4.1 Empowering Marginalized Women in Trifles

say boldly…(qtd, Ben-Zvi, 2005, p.69)

American law at the time.

4.2 Arguing against War in Inheritors

In Glaspell’s time, World War I was an inescapable topic, references to war

consumerism that prevailed in postwar American society were also reflected in

4.3 Expressing Apprehension about Free Speech in Inheritors

Whoever, when the United States is at war,...shall wilfully cause or attempt to

The outbreak of global violence and America’s suppression of free speech

The implementation of the Act destroyed the college’s founding principle. If it

Chapter Five As an Advocate of Social Progress

5.1 Gender Edification in Trifles

Furthermore, plays by female playwrights began to explore issues deriving from

5.2 Advocacy of the Independence of Newspapers in The People

5.3 An Appeal to Reconstruct American Idealism in Inheritors

If the history of literature, dramatic or non-dramatic, teaches us anything, it is

With the attributes of public intellectuals, Glaspell’s dramatic engagement ushers

Alkalay-Gut, Karen. (1984) Studies in Short Fiction.

Li, J. M. (李剑鸣) (1992). Dazhuanzhe de niandai——meiguo jinbuzhuyi yundong yanjiu(大转折的

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公共知识分子之声：格拉斯佩尔戏剧研究盛文琪

公共知识分子之声：格拉斯佩尔戏剧研究盛文琪