Class Act(resses): How Depression-Era Stage Actresses Utilized Conflicting Gender Ideals to Benefit Their Community

{ 3 } \ Class Act(resses) How Depression-Era Stage Actresses Utilized Conflicting gender Ideals to Benefit Their Community —KELLY CAROLYN gORDON During the mid-eighteenth century, when professional theatre companies first began to appear in the United States, dominant culture held that women must devote their time and energy strictly to the private sphere: home, church, and charity. Historians refer to this era as having an ideology of “ideal” or “true” womanhood. Historian Barbara J. Harris defines“true womanhood”as“a compound of four ideas: a sharp dichotomy between the home and economic world outside that paralleled a sharp contrast between female and male natures, the designation of the home as the female’s only proper sphere, the moral superiority of women, and the idealization of her role as a mother.”1 Ultimately, this collection of ideas held that women were the natural, moral guardians of their husbands and children. However, implicit in the true woman ideal was the notion that a woman’s moral superiority was fragile and easily destroyed. Exposure to the corruption of the public world of business, government, education, and entertainment might very well transform true women into depraved and wanton hussies, destroying not only their moral nature but also that of their husbands and children and, by extension, society as a whole. The ideology of true womanhood was a dominant belief upon which Western society depended. Toward the end of the 1800s, this concept of true womanhood was severely challenged by the suffrage and abolitionist movements and the changing realities of women’s lives. Gradually, myriad opportunities emerged for women in { 4 } KELLY CAROLYN gORDON the public sphere, a domain that had previously been closed to most women. Women began to carve out a stronger place for themselves outside the home, joining the workforce, the political realm, and institutions of higher education. Historian Deborah S. Kolb points out that “the abolitionist cause trained women orators and writers and demonstrated the power which organized women might yield. Within twenty years, from 1865 to 1885, America saw the opening of Vassar (1865), Smith (1875), Wellesley (1875), and Radcliffe (1882), and women were also accepted into more than fourteen state universities. The dearth of men due to the Civil War and to westward migration, in conjunction with the opening of industry and higher education to women, instilled a new feeling of selfreliance and independence in women.”2 The ideal of the“new woman”provided U.S. culture with a new “sense of the female self; independent, athletic, sexual and modern.”3 The new woman was “unafraid to challenge male decisions and male dominance. While she might retain the status of wife and mother, [she] frequently demanded new respect and responsibility as career woman.”4 The period of the new woman culminated in the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, which gave women the right to vote. After the amendment was passed, feminist Carrie Chapman Catt aptly stated,“We are no longer petitioners , we are not wards of the nation, but free and equal citizens.”5 With the 1929 collapse of the New York Stock Exchange came a backward step in the progress that women had been making during the 1920s. Having won their fight to vote, attended college, and joined the workforce in increasing numbers, women were now told, “Don’t take a job from a man.” One example of this pervasive attitude was the firing of married female teachers and government employees, who were given the rationale that each family really needed only one breadwinner and that the breadwinner should be a man. The main question on the minds of many suffragettes was posed by Genevieve Parkhurst in the title of her article published by Harper’s Magazine in 1935: “Is Feminism Dead?”6 Clearly, the Depression era marked a return to the true woman ideal; the era of new women had been short-lived. Throughout the decade of the Great Depression, as American culture returned to the ideal of true womanhood, a number of ingenious projects were implemented to help unemployed theatre workers. For the most part, these charities were created and run by women. Playwright Rachel Crothers created the Stage Relief Fund, which raised money...