american drama and feminist criticism by alexis ingram

American Drama and Feminist Criticism

By Alexis Ingram

On Feminism“I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is . . . I only know that other people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.”

Rebecca West

“[Feminism is] the place where in the most natural, organic way subjectivity and politics have come together.”

Adrienne Rich

Feminist Literary CriticismWomen have always been considered “the other gender,” and categorized as mysterious and impossible to understand, in comparison the the rational and understandable men. Aristotle said “the female is female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities,” and St. Thomas Aquinas believed that a woman was an “imperfect man.” Selden and Widdowson point out that in Aeschylus’ Oresteia, that “the victory of the male principle of intellect brings to an end the reign of the sensual female Furies and asserts patriarchy over matriarchy.”

Feminist Literary Criticism Continued

Selden and Widdowson continue to say that “feminism [. . .] has sought to disturb the complacent certainties of such a patriarchal culture, to assert a belief in sexual equality, and to eradicate sexist domination in transforming society.” It even challenges the idea of “theory,” which Selden and Widdowson call “male, even macho,” setting the intellectual realm in the world of men. By calling feminist literary criticism a “cultural politics” rather than a theory, we allow ourselves to acknowledge that feminist criticism’s “approach” to literature is one of disruption of the accepted.


Feminism’s great problem is it’s insistence on the binary, that on one hand is the masculine, the intellectual, the objective, the public concept of theory; on the other hand is the feminine, the personal, the subjective, and the private concept of experience. This leads feminism to separate itself from the academic completely, and embroil itself in the “unauthorized politics of personal experience.” However, feminism does dialogue with other theoretical approaches, such as the Marxist or psychoanalysis or postmodernism, poststructuralism, and postcolonialism because “there is no ‘free’ position ‘outside’ theory’.”


Feminist literary criticism is not, as Toril Moi observes, “just another interesting approach” like “a concern for sea-imagery or metaphors of war in medieval poetry.” Feminist literary criticism deconstructs language to show gender bias and patriarchal systems of oppression, and gives language to the silent women of the past and present by first acknowledging them, and then by giving them a voice.

Women in Men’s WritingWhen doing a feminist criticism of men’s writing, one must focus on the roles the women play in the works. In American drama, women often take a secondary role, as does Linda Loman in Death of a Salesman. Sometimes the richest role goes to the female characters, as Amanda Wingfield does in The Glass Menagerie, and Blanche is as equally a meaty role as Stanley in A Streetcar Named Desire. It is the role of women in the function of the play which is to then be examined when there is a male author, and one can look towards the authorial intent for that author’s view of women.

Women in American Drama

Women in American drama are an important element in the plays in which they reside. They can be central figures, such as Ana in Real Women Have Curves and Mama Nadi in Ruined. They can share the spotlight in plays with small, intimate casts such as the women of Tennessee Williams in The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. They can be part of the main conflict, as Berneice is in The Piano Lesson and Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. They might also be side characters, overlooked characters, such as Linda in Death of a Salesman.

Women in American Drama Continued

I have decided to look at eight plays through the lens of gender criticism. How these women relate to the men in their lives is at the heart of much American drama. We will look at women living in the realm of men in the works of Tennessee Williams, Linda Loman and the feminine side to the American Dream in Death of a Salesman, the role infertility plays in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Berniece Charles and the experience of African American women, and we’ll conclude with the feminist class consciousness of the characters in Real Women Have Curves.

Women in the Realm of Men in the Works of Tennessee

WilliamsIn The Glass Menagerie, Amanda and Laura rely solely on Tom for their survival, and in Amanda’s desperation lies the fear that Tom will abandon the two, which he eventually does. In A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche duBois is reliant on her brother-in-law, Stanly Kowalski, and “the kindness” of male strangers for her continued existence. As Southern Gentlewomen, the three have fragility in common, as well as an excess of the feminine. This is in contrast to the world of men in which they live.

Women in the Realm of Men Continued

In Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, Amanda Wingfield is an aging Southern belle trapped in her ideals of the past. Intent on finding her daughter Laura a “gentleman caller,” like she herself had back when she was a girl, Amanda displays a desperation covered with graciousness. This desperation for a gentleman caller really covers up the problem of the Wingfields: the need for a man to provide economically for the crippled Laura, and ostensibly, for Amanda as well.


Blanche duBois is homeless and reliant on the good graces of her brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski, for her economic well-being. Kowalski is heavily masculine and prefers homosocial relationships with other men to the company of women, and having his sister-in-law living with him and his obedient wife causes friction in the household.


Maggie the Cat is reliant economically on her husband, Brick, and his family, having no claim to their fortune. Like Stanley Kowalski, Maggie the Cat’s husband, Brick, prefers the company of men. In this case, however, the homosocial moves into the homosexual – Brick’s relationship with his deceased friend Skipper being shown as closer than just friends.


The men these delicate women are involved with are “often closeted homosexuals or at any rate men who strongly prefer the company of other men“ (diShiavi). This realm of men is where the four women are exiled, and it is this exile that they – especially Amanda – cannot acknowledge. It is the pathos of the four women that they are forced to live in a man’s world, and they resort to extreme femininity in response.


These Southern women suffer from living in a man’s world and having the South of their memories fade away. Amanda Wingfield’s “gentlemen callers” were no more than a fable she began believing, and Blanche duBois’ “strangers” upon whose kindness she relies on are usually delusions. Williams’ sensitivity towards women and their plight has caused some to name him an early feminist, connecting with women as an outsider himself.

Linda Loman and the American Dream: A Gender Studies Look at

Death of a Salesman

Death of a Salesman is at it’s heart, the story of a common man. Scholar Kay Stanton notes that the word “man” always refers to the male gender and not to mankind in general. Death of a Salesman, according to Stanton, is a very masculine play, where “all conflicts seem to be male-male – Willy versus Biff, Willy versus Howard, and Willy versus Charley.” Women in the play take a backseat to the men – in her essay on the topic of women in the play, Stanton reaches and discusses hinted at or one-note characters like Willy’s mother and Jenny, Charley’s secretary. Willy’s wife Linda, the only major female character, is demeaned and belittled by her husband, earning only the rare compliment of being Willy’s “foundation.”

Linda Loman ContinuedMale Conflict in Death of a Salesman and the

Role of Women

“The roots of Willy’s tragedy seem to be rooted in his lack of attention from his father and his perceived inadequacy to his brother, Ben. All conflicts seem to be male-male – Willy versus Biff, Willy versus Howard, Willy versus Charley – so it has been easy for productions, audiences, and commentators to overlook, patronize, or devalue the significance of women in the play.”

Kay Stanton

Linda Loman Continued

The American Dream

“The American Dream as presented in Death of a Salesman is male-oriented, but it requires unacknowledged dependence upon women as well as women’s subjugation and exploitation.”

Kay Stanton

Willy’s American Dream isn’t Linda’s; she is merely the caretaker of Willy’s dream, without a real dream of her own. She isn’t given the chance to dream herself.

Linda Loman ContinuedStanton describes the three masculine worlds in which Willy resides – the Green World, where his feelings towards his father and brother reside, as they were adventurers out in the wilderness, and where his feelings towards his mother are. This is represented by Willy’s planting of seeds in the play. There is also the Business World, where Willy hopes to find success, but only comes up as a failure. Then there’s the World of the Home, where Willy is ‘king of his castle,’ and where Linda is the keeper of the pretense that he is such. Women have a place in all three worlds, but as Stanton points out, “the trivialized Earth Mother of the Green World becomes Woman as trivialized Bitch-Goddess Success in the Business World.”

Linda Loman ContinuedLinda is the “foundation” and support of the home that Willy can leave and come back to after all of his failures. This architectural language shows that the realm of the Home that Willy has created rests on the shoulders of Linda. “The Loman men are less than they hold themselves to be, but Linda is more than she is credited to be.” One relies on the foundation to keep the house standing, but one often doesn’t think about or appreciate it. Linda “embodies” the perfect post-World War II wife – “infinitely supportive of her man” (Stanton).

Linda Loman ContinuedThe stockings represent the toil of Linda’s life – she is the mended stockings, the bastion of reality. She lives outside the world that Willy has made up. She doesn’t emphasize success or physical attractiveness, and she has no use for glamour. She is herself, and as such is able to stabilize Willy’s fantasies. It is Willy who emphasizes physical appearance, Willy who thanks God for his boys’ good looks. As for Willy, he calls himself “fat” and “foolish to look at.” Stanton points out that it must be Linda, then, to whom the boys owe their appearance, but Linda is not given credit, God is.

Linda Loman ContinuedIt rests on Linda’s shoulders to make a plea of sympathy towards Willy to her sons and to the actual audience. She “articulates [Willy’s] value and notes the real worth beneath the sham presentation” (Stanton). However, both boys have been taught Willy’s love for grandiose appearances and fake pretenses. They absolve themselves of any contribution to Willy’s plight, and show little sympathy as Willy’s imaginary world falls apart.

Linda Loman ContinuedThe realm of sports serves to suppress Linda and undermine her influence in the house. As Stanton puts it, “the Loman men’s idolatry of aggressive male-male competition relegates women into being the devalued objects and instruments of sports.” Happy likens his promiscuity and conquests to bowling, and The Woman in Boston calls herself a “football.” “As instruments of sports,” Stanton continues, women are the means for starting the competitive game, the object they fight over and the possession that marks the winners and assures them of being ‘well liked.’”

Linda Loman ContinuedLinda Loman stands as the only thing between her husband and abysmal failure, but even she cannot stop Willy once he decided to set himself on his self-destructive path. Once Willy succeeds in killing himself, she remains the only solid foundation her boys have. She doesn’t understand why Willy did what he did, but she believed in him until the end, even past his death, referring to him as a “prince.”

The Pain of Infertility: Who’s Afraid of Virginia

Woolf?Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a vile creature. Capable of horrible cruelty, she harasses her harried husband while drinking like a fish. George, said husband, is no better. More subtly manipulative and cunning, he can cut Martha like a knife using only a word. The question that haunts critics is why would two people who obviously hate each other stay together? Busiel suggests that “there is a loving bond between [George and Martha] which persists even in their assaults.” I believe that their mutual contempt for each other, and their mutual affection, stems from the pressures of being an infertile couple.

The Pain of Infertility Continued

The psychological impacts of infertility are considerable stress leading to clinical depression. While I don’t believe either George or Martha are depressed, another psychological symptom of infertility does sound like them: marital discord caused by the pressures of infertility. The infertility is possibly at the root of George and Martha’s marital problems. Neither one blames the other, but one can imagine the self-blame is mutual.

The Pain of Infertility Continued

The imaginary child, discovered to be fake at the climax of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, is a reaction to infertility. Hays states that “George and Martha create a child to hold their marriage together, as have many others, but their child is a fictional one, an imaginary offspring, allowing them to play their many rituals or games.” The use of an imaginary child, borne of the pain of their infertility, serves as something they have in common, something to keep them united while they verbally batter each other. The marital discord so many critics comment on is rooted in infertility, and the reason George and Martha stay together, the imaginary child, is also a product of the pain of infertility. Martha in particular feels the shame and pain of her lack of fertility, and acts out to cover it.

August Wilson, Bernice Charles, and the Black Woman’s Experience

The plays of August Wilson primarily concern themselves with black men and black men’s issues. The women of his plays, “who, in his male-dominated dramatic vision, not only exist in subordinate positions but also operate solely in reaction to men and are defined and confined by these relationships” (Elam). Wilson himself explained in a 1996 interview with Nathan L. Gran,

“It probably has to do with the fact that I'm a man. I do create some black women characters and try to be honest in their creation, but it's hard to put myself in their space. I don't know. ... It's very hard to do. For instance, Risa in Two Trains Running--I felt I was right in having her refuse to be defined by her genitals, and I felt this was a blow for self-definition by having her define herself as other than a body by cutting her legs. But I couldn't go beyond that into making some heavier interior psychology of it. Not that I didn't want to, I guess, but I don't know it.” (Elam)

August Wilson ContinuedWilson’s plays offer a chance to see how women handle the double oppressions of gender and race, though they operate in the constraints of their sociohistoric class. In Wilson’s work about the discourse between African American men, there is often the appearance of an African American woman who “manages to wrestle free from prevailing social restraints or domestic concerns to, in some way, affirm a separate identity” (Shannon).

August Wilson ContinuedBerniece Charles’ present life is dictated by images of the past. The piano represents the past slavery from which the family originates, and it also represents the family lost – her mother, her murdered husband and father, for whom she perpetually grieves. As the guardian of the piano she stands as guardian of the family history. She is a complex woman whose scars are hidden under a cloak of bitterness towards her brother, whom she blames for her husband’s death.

August Wilson ContinuedElam notes that, like many of the women in Wilson’s plays, Berneice in The Piano Lesson suffers from the “my men left me blues,” with her husband dead, Berniece migrates up north from Mississippi to Pittsburgh, where her brother and uncle are constantly absentee.

August Wilson ContinuedBerniece’s mother lost her husband, Papa Boy Charles, over the piano; her uncle Doaker constantly leaves the women who await him at his various railroad stops; Doaker leaves Berniece and her daughter Maretha to their own devices; and Winning Boy left his wife years ago, creating the motif of men leaving women throughout the play. Berniece, representing all these abandoned women, doesn’t sing the blues until the climactic final scene when she dares play the piano, but the blues are there in her bones.

August Wilson ContinuedBerniece takes her mother’s part in arguments about the piano, gendering her interaction with her brother, Boy Willie. As Elam puts it, “Berniece, as she reflects on her mother, represents and defends the world and worth of women because she believes that women’s suffering and sacrifice have been devalued in the traditions and rituals of the patriarchy.”

August Wilson ContinuedBerniece is a character of contradiction: she is protector and guardian of the family’s legacy in the piano, and yet she won’t play it. It rests in her house, unused, and yet the removal of the piano from its place in her home is a desecration of her parents’ memory and the legacy of the past.

August Wilson Continued“Originally I had Berniece in Piano Lesson utter some very feminist ideas,” says Wilson, “These were not ideas that were even in the world that she would have been aware of in 1936. I had to take them away from her” (Elam). Berniece, while not being anachronistic, still has the ability to rail against the dominion of the men in her life. Wilson may not have set out to write female characters or portray a woman’s view, but he manages to show the black woman’s experience through Berniece Charles.

Gender, Class, Race and Ethnic Acceptance in Real Women Have

CurvesJosefina Lopez’s Real Women Have Curves “addresses the body as a site where the female experience and history are vividly recorded” (Aliva). Ana, a young, independent feminist woman works in her sister’s sewing factory while waiting to get financial aid to go to college. To Ana, the promise of upward mobility through education means an escape from the barrio lifestyle she grew up with. Ana critiques and rejects the “traditional gender norms and roles in both mainstream, Anglo culture and in her Mexican American, working class background” (Launius).

Real Women ContinuedAna and the women at the factory share their experiences and views on beauty, body image, domestic violence, sexuality, marriage, motherhood and work. Lopez takes on issues of class, gender, race and ethnicity through the dialogue of the women at the factory. Immigration status also factors in, and “Lopez often shows the interconnected and simultaneous nature of these oppressions by emphasizing, for example, the ethnic dimensions of their gender oppression, and the way their class position is impacted by their immigrant status” (Launius).

Real Women ContinuedThe women are engaged in a process of consciousness-raising through their conversations at the factory, and a change occurs over the work week. The change isn’t spelled out, but it is in the way their discourse is utilized that highlights the simultaneous and convergent nature of the oppressions the women discuss.

Real Women ContinuedLaunius suggests that in order to see the “convergence and divergence of the discourses on feminism and class consciousness” in Real Women Have Curves, one must see the play as a working class text. While most critics have focused on gender and ethnic issues in the play, reading it as class-conscious allows one to view the American Dream’s classed dimensions.

Real Women ContinuedLaunius finds a critique of the American Dream in Ana’s wish for upward mobility through education, much like other 20th century ethic writings about upward mobility. Because Ana desires this upward mobility Real Women Have Curves is about a feminist Mexican-American from a working class background and her experiences leading up toe the leaving of that background.

Real Women ContinuedThe normative standard of beauty is critiqued even as the women realize their labor is being exploited. They may desire the dresses the work on in the factory, but none of them have the slender beauty to wear the size 0-12 dresses. Their feminist consciousness is raised as they realize the standard of beauty excludes them and the difference between them, the workers who make the dresses, and the department stores that will sell the dresses raises their class consciousness as well.

The climax of the play comes when, sweaty and hot from working all night to complete an order on time, Ana strips off her shirt and proceeds to iron in her bra. The other women follow her cue and strip, liberated as they compare bodies, scars, stretch marks and stomachs in a cathartic act of rebellion against normal propriety. They accept their bodies, their ethnicity, and their class by seeing each other stripped of clothes without shame.

ConclusionWomen in American drama are complex, well-rounded characters even without their relation to men. Whether they are stranded in the realm of men, as Tennessee William’s female protagonists are, the overlooked bastion of strength amidst a crumbling, masculine idea of the American Dream as Linda Loman is, they’re reacting to the pain of infertility as Martha from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is, describing the experience of African American women dealing with the legacy of slavery as Berniece Charles does, or looking at gender, race and class in a particular ethnic group as Ana of Real Women Have Curves does, women in American drama are able to tell their stories themselves and be critiqued from a feminist standpoint.

Works CitedAliva, Kat. “Josefina Lopez.” Chicano Writers: Third Series. Ed. Francisco A. Lomeli and Carl. R. Shirley.

Detroit: Gale Group, 1999. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 209. Literature Resource Center. Web. 27 Dec. 2011.

Busiel Christopher G. “An Essay on Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Drama for Students. Detroit: Gale. Literature Resource Center. Web. 24 Dec 2011.

DiShiavi. Michael. “Tennessee Williams’ Women in a Man’s World.” The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide. 15.4 (2008): 18. Literature Resource Center. 23 Dec. 2011.

Elam, Harry J. Jr. “The Woman Question.” The Past as Present in the Drama of August Wilson. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004. 88-126. Rpt. In Drama Criticism. Vol. 321. Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 23 Dec. 2011.

Guerin, Wilfred et al. A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature. Fourth ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Hays, P. L. “Child Murder and Incest in American Drama.” Twentieth Century Literature. 36.4 (1990): 434. Academic Search Elite. 26 Dec. 2011.

Launius, Christie. "Real Women Have Curves: a feminist narrative of upward mobility." American Drama 16.2 (2007): 15+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 31 Dec. 2011.

Selden, Raman and Peter Widdowson. A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory. Third ed. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky.

Shannon, Sandra G. “The Ground on Which I Stand: August Wilson’s Perspective on African American Women.” May Your Fences Have Gates: Essays on the Drama of August Wilson. Ed. Alan Nadel. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1994, 150-164. Rpt. In Contemporary Literary Criticism, Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 222. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Literature Resource Center. Web. 23 Dec. 2011.

Stanton, Kay. “Women and the American Dream of Death of a Salesman.” Willy Loman. Major Literary Characters. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1991.

american drama and feminist criticism by alexis ingram

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