American Dramatist Susan Glaspell

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Susan Glaspell (1876 – 1948) was an American Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright actress, novelist, and journalist. She graduated from Drake University in 1899 during which it was difficult for women not only to vote but also to get a university degree . Women in the early 20th century were still fighting for their rights. After her graduation Glaspell worked as a reporter for the Des Moines Daily News that provided her a great wealth of knowledge and inspired her starting writing that is composed of nine novels, fifteen plays, over fifty short stories. In her writings, Glaspell dedicated her efforts mainly to portray feminist issues such as woman’s struggle for proving her identity in a patriarchal society, the relationships between daughters …show more content…

Her work as a dramatist was widely respected, as summarized by the critic Ludwig Levisohn in 1922: “This power of creating human speech which shall be at once concrete and significant, convincing in detail and spiritually cumulative in progression is, of course, the essential gift of the authentic dramatist… Glaspell has now brought it to a rich and effective maturity.” Susan Glaspell gained her outstanding place due to the fact that she rebelled against the gender standards of her society and played a crucial role in the American theatre that was appreciated by Britain's leading theatre critic Michael Billington, "Susan Glaspell was American drama's best kept secret." With the re-emergence of the feminist movement in the late 1960s , Glaspell Trifles and its short story “A Jury of Her Peers” were republished . The two works became central texts in gender studies that read around the world .Trifles was re-performed frequently as it tackled timeless issues and provided significant document of life in America as seen through the eyes of a pioneering woman in the first half of the twentieth