The Cambridge Companion to American Women Playwrights ed. by Brenda Murphy (review)

BOOK REVIEWS stakes of a young scholar, and of the narrative structure of any remembrance" (22). Brief fragments of personal reactions, by the final chapters they become integrated into the main text, where perhaps they should have been from the start; they disavow traditional, impersonal academic seamlessness, but to separate them out is also to capitulate to that normative discourse. Certainly, Basting positions her work as personal, since a study of "older people" is ultimately a study about everyone who has lived and will live to an advanced age. Her goal is to provide "... alternative models for aging that account for the whole life course and are not predicated on comparative binaries of youth/age and life/death" (23). This is necessarily a goal that concerns all of us; as Basting concludes, "... who I will be as an older person is not simply a shoddy replica of my youth, but a vital stage in (and on) which to perform new selves" (136). SHELL EY SCOTT, UN IVERSITY OF LET HBR ID GE BRENDA MURPHY, cd. The Cambridge Companion to American Women Playwrights . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1999. Pp. 285, illustrated. $54·95; $19·95, paperback. The voices of feminism emanate from a diversity of backgrounds and interests . This range of perspectives is one of the many delights of The Cambridge Companion to American Women Playwrights. The essays, edited by Brenda Murphy (author of American Realism and American Drama, 1880-1940), not only serve as a comprehensive and lucid introduction to American women playwrights for undergraduates - the target audience for the Cambridge Companions series - but also provide the cross-over scholar with a concise survey of the field. The resurgence of political feminism in the 1970S spurred activities in many literary disciplines, among them the rediscovery and restoration of forgotten women to the canon. "Pioneers," the first of the four sections, is dedicated to their work. The essays are genre studies. Amelia Howe Kritzer's historical and narrative explications in "Comedies by Early American Women" are beautifully complemented by Sarah J. Blackstone's appraisal of the problems confronting the researcher in "Women Writing Melodrama." "Realism and Feminism in the Progressive Era," the third article, introduces an ongoing controversy among feminist scholars. Written by Patricia R. Schroeder, author of The Feminist Possibilities of Dramatic Realism, it affirms the flexibility of the genre. Prominent critics, most notably Sue-Ellen Case and Jill Dolan, have contended that realism, by its conservative nature, is unsuitable for women's narratives. These theories and theorists color many of the essays. Book Reviews Focusing on modern women playwrights (from early through mid-century), the "Inheritors" section includes monographs on Susan Glaspell, Sophie Treadwell, Rachel Crothers, and Lillian Hellman. The rubric "New Feminists" contains articles by Helene Keyssar on feminist theatre, Janet Brown on feminist theory, and Jan Balakian on Wendy Wasserstein, as well as a survey of contemporary voices by Laurin Porter. Some of the writers fit the category better than others. A catch-all section, "Further Reading," includes Christy Gavin's overview of scholarship on contemporary writers. The many, often complementary, approaches to the field provide admirable models for new scholars. And some - because they situate the playwrights within a world of ideas and demonstrate their status as significant American artists - are important discussions. Veronica Makowsky reads the plays of Susan Glaspell as allegories of the modernist struggle against a conservative society. This unusual perspective re-conceives Glaspell as a political artist. Jerry Dickey positions Sophie Treadwell and Macltinal, the most famous of her forty plays, within a historical context that includes not just biography and current events (i.e., the murder trial of Ruth Snyder, which inspired the drama) but theatre praxis. In tracking Rachel Crothers'S long career on Broadway, Brenda Murphy confronts the problem of changing social values. She concludes that Crothers, although "ultimately unable to package the feminist ideology of the 1890S in a form that appealed to the 192os" (94), achieved success as a theatre professional by entertaining her audiences. In Thomas Adler's struggle to reread Hellman by considering literary theories on politics, feminist language, and identity, the author of The Children's Hour and Warch on the Rhine emerges as...