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Reviewed by:
  • The Women of Provincetown: 1915-1922
  • Pam Cobrin (bio)
The Women of Provincetown: 1915-1922. By Cheryl Black. Tuscaloosa and London: University of Alabama Press, 2002; 245 pp.; illustrations. $29.95 cloth.

In The Women of Provincetown, Cheryl Black takes on the mighty task of rewriting women into the well-documented "masculine" legacy of the Provincetown Players. While Susan Glaspell has always been a presence in any Provincetown history worth its weight, many other women have been notably absent. Black writes all of the women back into the story of Provincetown— from Bernice Abbott to Marguerite Zorach. As for the men of Provincetown, in the introduction Black admits, "[A]lthough I do not dispute the significant contributions of these men, I wish to bring the achievements and experiences of women center stage, an objective that necessarily shifts men's experiences and contributions to the periphery" (4). And while Black's work is long overdue, well-researched, and unusually all-encompassing (most feminist theatre revisions concentrate on one woman in a critical biography format), her decision to privilege women's work over men's without critically engaging that choice raises the question of how to bring women to the forefront in a history that has minimized their contributions in a way that does not simply replicate the problems in patriarchal versions.

The Women of Provincetown is divided into chapters according to theatrical jobs: Creating Women (founders of the Provincetown Players), Managing Women, Writing Women, Performing Women, Staging Women, and Designing Women. The chapters are set up somewhat formulaically: each woman is introduced and her contributions to the group are chronologically listed. Black frames each woman, or at least her contributions, as feminist ("Among the company's female leadership, feminists were so numerous that it is almost permissible to use the terms 'women' and 'feminist' interchangeably" [145]). Yet, Black places heavy emphasis on the women's primary relationships, [End Page 178] which are almost always with the men in their lives. For example, when introducing Ida Rauh—a founder, director, and leading actress in the Province-town Players—Black first lists her significant activist credentials, including her leadership in "the Women's Trade Union League, the National Labor Defense Fund, Heterodoxy, the Lucy Stone League, and the 'Woman's Freedom Congress' of the Women's International League" (11). She then dedicates the same amount of space to Rauh's relationships and doomed marriage to Max Eastman. In fact, Black ends Rauh's introductory paragraph with Rauh's sexual exploits: "After Eastman's departure, Rauh began an intimate, probably sexual, relationship with Jig Cook, who was married to Susan Glaspell at the time" (12). Black's juxtapositions offer an interesting possibility for discussion focused on the paradoxical environment Provincetown women found themselves in: radical feminists living what seemed to be radical feminist and bohemian lives, yet still caught within the traditional/Victorian boundaries of patriarchal familial structures. However, Black does not explore this point until the last two chapters, appropriately titled, "Backlash and Aftermath" and "Valedictory." Unfortunately, at this late juncture, the paradoxes and contradictions are used to explain women's disappearance from the Provincetown Players. A theoretical or critical reading of the women's accomplishments in the main body of the book is largely absent.

Black's narrative choices speak to larger feminist historical research concerns. For example, until the reader reaches the last two chapters, it is easy to forget that the Provincetown Players was not a women-run theatre group; after reading Black's book one might categorize the Provincetown Players with the Neighborhood Playhouse or the Gamut Club, or any of the other groups of the period actually run by women. Men, in The Women of Provincetown, slide easily into the margins of the primary narrative, much as the women do in patriarchal versions of theatre history (with some odd departures, such as the previously mentioned tactic of introducing almost all of the women through their husbands and lovers). Black mirrors "traditional" male historian tactics without commenting on this strategy. Yet, without critically engaging her methodology, it seems as if Black simply inverts problematic narrative strategies— albeit to women's advantage—without critiquing those very tactics.

Certainly...

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