Modern Drama: Themes, Movements, and Masterpieces

Posted on Sep 26, 2025 in English Studies

Susan Glaspell’s “Trifles”: A Feminist Perspective

In Trifles, a woman is taken into custody under suspicion of her husband’s murder. The play focuses on two women who enter her house with the sheriff and an attorney, who are searching for evidence. While the men are searching, the women discuss the case. During this play, the women end up finding more evidence than the men do, but because they are women, they aren’t taken seriously. Glaspell shows that women aren’t viewed as equal when Hale says, “Well, women are used to worrying over trifles.” The men in the play continuously make snide remarks toward the women. Another example is when they re-enter the room while the two women are discussing the accused’s stitching. The two women were examining it and noticed her stitching was uneven, which prompted one of them to wonder why she was so agitated. However, the men enter when they’re discussing the pattern, and the attorney asks in a condescending manner, “Well, ladies, have you decided whether she was going to quilt it or knot it?” This example shows that while the men aren’t taking the women seriously, the women are the ones who have it all figured out and possess evidence that could easily convict the wife, thus establishing the play as a feminist piece.

Gender Inequality and Sympathy in “Trifles”

There were not many prominent roles for women in literature and plays of that era. Until the early twentieth century, several significant female literary figures appeared. The female characters in Trifles are among them. Trifles is a play written by Susan Glaspell, an interesting female writer from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Trifles tells a story of a murder that takes place in John Wright’s farmhouse. While the men are trying to find the motive for Mrs. Wright killing her husband, John Wright, the two women following the men have already found the evidence. They deliberately hide evidence to protect Mrs. Wright. For example, they do not reveal the evidence they found in the sewing box until the end of the play.

Overall, there are several ways to understand the women’s decision to hide the evidence. One important reason that the two women decide to hide the evidence is the feeling of sympathy they have for Mrs. Wright. From the beginning of the play, the women start to pack up Mrs. Wright’s belongings while the men are searching for evidence. In the middle of the play, Mrs. Hale talks about Mrs. Wright’s past and tries to express that it is not fair to Mrs. Wright; however, Mrs. Peters answers, “The law is the law” (Glaspell 7), which implies that Mrs. Peters is accustomed to society and obeys the law that men enact. The reason why Mrs. Peters said this is that her husband is the sheriff, who is the representation of the law. As the women find out that John Wright wrung Mrs. Wright’s bird, it reminds Mrs. Peters of her childhood experience when a boy killed her cat, and she almost retaliated.

Gender Differences: Logic, Emotion, and Justice

In spite of the morality, we can also realize that gender difference plays an important role in decision-making throughout the play. Before delving into how gender differences influence women’s decisions, we need to talk about gender development. From a personal view, men and women often exhibit different thought processes. Men tend to prioritize facts and logical reasoning, while women often focus more on emotional responses and interpersonal feelings. According to Mael, “the process of becoming a male or female someone in the world begins in infancy with a sense of ‘oneness,’ a ‘primary identification’……; consequently, boys and girls experience individuation and relationship differently.” We recognize that there are no inherent differences between men and women; however, during development, “in order to become male, boys experience more strongly a sense of being ‘not female.’ For girls, because the primary caregiver is of the same sex, a basis for ’empathy’ is built into their primary definition of self.” That is how men and women differentiate. Holstein relates Trifles to some of Glaspell’s other works and recognizes that because women have different backgrounds and socioeconomic statuses than men, they have different opinions on justice and care.

“Trifles”: A Catalyst for Gender Equality

Overall, this play becomes very important since nobody was trying to change the situation of gender inequality at that time, and this social problem was intended to be noticed by the people through Trifles. Glaspell applies her thoughts of opposing the prevailing social system, empowering the two women in the play to inspire others to change their own situations. Later on, more and more women started to defend their own rights. However, nowadays, there are still some gender issues in society, such as the glass ceiling, which prevents women from achieving a higher status in some companies. Women have fought a long time in order to be viewed as equals in today’s society. Before achieving their current rights, they were treated as property, leading to widespread abuse. Glaspell’s play Trifles is a feminist piece of writing that focuses on a wife who murders her abusive husband. This play is a good example of showing how situations of abuse once were, and how things are different in today’s society.

Minnie Wright’s Unseen Influence in “Trifles”

Susan Glaspell’s Trifles is a play that presents a diverse view of male-dominated society. Susan Glaspell presents a somewhat critical view of society through a murder scene in which a woman is accused of murder, and an investigation takes place to determine her guilt (Glaspell). The investigation eventually divides into two teams: the first constituting the men, and the second constituting the women. The actions of the two teams present a view toward modern-day society that strongly brings the play forth as a feminist work. The character of Minnie Wright in Susan Glaspell’s Trifles is a very interesting character since she is never seen, yet she steers the play and influences it more than any other character. It is imperative to note at this point that Trifles is mainly a feminist work and advocates against the restrictive traditional housewife concept. In this regard, the character of Minnie Wright plays a key role by serving as the source for the turns that the plot takes (Glaspell). As the women look around the house, each object they find and scrutinize provides a deeper insight into Minnie Wright’s persona. Through this relationship, Minnie Wright continues to drive the other characters in the play. When the women come across the dead canary in Minnie Wright’s belongings, the dead bird serves as a crucial development in Minnie Wright’s character, immediately influencing the decisions made by the women in the play (Glaspell). It can therefore be observed that as Minnie Wright’s personality is explored through the investigation that the women carry out through the house, Minnie Wright’s character continues to develop significantly. Eventually, the plot’s resolution is also influenced by an act originating from Minnie Wright’s character. It can therefore be surmised that Trifles is mainly a feminist play. Through the character of Minnie Wright, the play seeks to speak out against the growing prevalence of the male-dominated model of society (Glaspell). The actions of the female characters in the play are symbolic of the manner in which Susan Glaspell seeks to highlight the vital role of women in society. Susan Glaspell stresses the need for women to stick together while casting a blunt and somewhat generalizing light on the men. She gives very little attention to the men but ensures that the men are consistently depicted as holding power. Susan Glaspell tops off her play by showing that the men believe they have done all the work, while the crucial decisions have been silently shaped by the women (Glaspell). By doing so, Susan Glaspell seeks to highlight the need to realize the actual power that women have in society. It can also be observed that Susan Glaspell highlights the need for women to assist each other. By concealing the dead canary, the female characters protect the accused, allowing her to potentially escape conviction, even though they recognize the legal implications. Through this act, Susan Glaspell highlights that the quest for justice requires the recognition of integrity and respect for women in society (Perkins and Perkins). It can therefore be justly concluded that Susan Glaspell’s Trifles is indeed a feminist work and seeks to engage in feminist objectives through the plot and the characters.

Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey into Night”

Long Day’s Journey into Night is undoubtedly a tragedy—it leaves the audience with a sense of catharsis, or emotional rebirth through the viewing of powerful events, and it depicts the fall of something that was once great. The play focuses on the Tyrone family, whose once-close family has deteriorated over the years, for a number of reasons: Mary’s drug addiction, Tyrone, Jamie, and Edmund’s alcoholism, Tyrone’s stinginess, the boys’ lax attitude toward work and money, and a variety of other factors. As the play is set, the parents are aging, and while they always hoped that their sons would achieve great things, that hope is beginning to be replaced by a resigned despair. The play is largely autobiographical; it resembles O’Neill’s life in many respects. O’Neill himself is represented in the character of Edmund, the younger son who, like O’Neill, suffers from consumption. Indeed, some of the parallels between this play and O’Neill’s life are striking. Like Tyrone, O’Neill’s father was an Irish Catholic, an alcoholic, and a Broadway actor. Like Mary, O’Neill’s mother was a morphine addict, becoming so around the time O’Neill was born. Like Jamie, O’Neill’s older brother did not take life seriously, choosing a life of dissipation, alcohol, and the fast-paced, reckless existence of Broadway. Finally, O’Neill had an older brother named Edmund who died in infancy; similarly, in the play, Edmund has an older brother named Eugene who died in infancy. The play, published posthumously, represents O’Neill’s last words to the literary world. It is important to note that his play is not condemning in nature; no one character is meant to be viewed as particularly worse than any other. This is one of the play’s great strengths: it is fair and unbiased, demonstrating that many character flaws can be perceived as positives when viewed from a different perspective. Thus, Long Day’s Journey into Night heavily invests in the politics of language. It is a world in which there is a significant weight placed on the weakness of “stinginess” versus the virtue of “prudence.” The play also creates a world in which communication has broken down. One of the play’s central conflicts is the characters’ uncanny inability to communicate despite their constant fighting. For instance, the men often fight amongst themselves over Mary’s addiction, but no one is willing to confront her directly. Instead, they allow her to lie to herself about her own addiction and about Edmund’s illness. Edmund and Jamie do not communicate effectively until the last act, when Jamie finally confesses his jealousy of his brother and his desire to see him fail. Tyrone, likewise, can only criticize his sons, but his stubborn nature prevents him from accepting criticism. All the characters have grievances, but they struggle to address them constructively. Most grievances stem from the past, which remains remarkably vivid for the Tyrones. Mary, in particular, cannot forget the past and all the dreams she once held of being a nun or a pianist. Tyrone, too, has always held high hopes for Jamie, who has been a continual disappointment. All the conflicts and problems from the past cannot be forgotten; in fact, they seem doomed to be relived day after day. It is important to note that Long Day’s Journey into Night is not only a journey forward in time but also a journey back into the past lives of all the characters, who continually revert to their old lifestyles. The audience is left realizing that the family is not progressing towards betterment but rather continually sliding into despair, remaining bound to a past they can neither forget nor forgive.

Enduring Legacy of O’Neill’s Masterpiece

The play is all the more tragic because it offers little hope for the future; indeed, the Tyrone family’s future appears to be an endless cycle of a repeated past, bound by alcohol and morphine. This play was awarded the Pulitzer Prize upon its publication and has remained one of the most admired plays of the 20th century. Perhaps most importantly, it has achieved commercial success because nearly every family can find aspects of themselves reflected within the play. The Tyrone family is not unique, and it is easy to identify with many of its conflicts and characters. The play holds a unique appeal for both individual audience members and scholars of American drama, explaining its popularity and enduring acclaim.

Key Characteristics of Theatre of the Absurd

• Cycle: Act II repeats elements from the previous act, creating an endless series of repeated events.
• Monotonous nature of reality: Illustrated through the play’s cyclic structure.
• Balance with comic routines: Repetition of language, rapid speech delivery, and actor movement.
• Moments of stillness and silence.
• Juxtaposition: Brief, simple dialogue with moments of poetic language.
• Sarcastic use of formal language: Or upper-class pronunciation (e.g., Vladimir’s).
• Conversations that lead nowhere: Often bordering on nonsense.
• Symbolic objects and images: Highlighted through repetition.
• Exceptions to repetitions: Speeches about the nature of reality, often poetic and/or incoherent.

Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” Analysis

Waiting for Godot is often described as a play in which nothing happens, twice. The ‘action’ of the second act mirrors and reprises what occurs in the first: Vladimir and Estragon passing the time waiting for the elusive Godot; Lucky and Pozzo arriving and then departing; and the Boy delivering his message that Godot will not be coming that day. With this structure in mind, it is hardly surprising that the play is often interpreted as a depiction of the pointless, uneventful, and repetitive nature of modern life, which is often lived in anticipation of something that never materializes. It is always just beyond the horizon, in the future, arriving ‘tomorrow.’ However, contrary to popular belief, this is not what made Waiting for Godot such a revolutionary piece of theatre. As Michael Patterson observes in The Oxford Guide to Plays (Oxford Quick Reference), the theme of promised salvation which never arrives had already been explored by a number of major twentieth-century playwrights, including Eugene O’Neill (The Iceman Cometh) and Eugène Ionesco (The Chairs). So, what made Beckett’s play so innovative for 1950s audiences? The key lies not so much in what happens as in how it happens. The other well-known thing about Waiting for Godot is that Vladimir and Estragon are tramps – except that the text never mentions this fact, and Beckett explicitly stated that he ‘saw’ the two characters dressed in bowler hats (otherwise, he said, he couldn’t picture what they should look like) – hardly the haggard and unkempt tramps of popular imagination. Precisely what social class Vladimir and Estragon belong to is not known. However, it is clear that they are fairly well-educated, given their vocabularies and frames of reference.

Yet, cutting across their philosophical and theological discussions is their plain-speaking and unpretentious attitude toward these topics. Waiting for Godot is a play that cuts through pretense, revealing both the comedy and the quiet tragedy in human existence. Among Beckett’s many influences, we can detect, in the relationship and banter between Vladimir and Estragon, the importance of music-hall theatre and the comic double act; vaudeville performers, after all, wouldn’t last five minutes on stage if they indulged in pretentiousness. In this regard, comparisons with Albert Camus and existentialism make sense, as both are often perceived as more serious than they actually are; or rather, they are deadly serious but also attuned to the comedy in everyday desperation and futility. (An important aspect of Camus’ ‘Myth of Sisyphus’ is the ability to laugh at the absurdity of human endeavor and the repetitive, futile nature of our lives – a description that closely aligns with Waiting for Godot. In Camus’ essay, Sisyphus survives the pointless repetition of his task, rolling a boulder up a hill only to see it fall to the bottom just as he’s about to reach the top, by recognizing the ridiculousness of the situation and laughing at it.) The discrepancy between the deeply philosophical and complex topics the play addresses and how Beckett’s characters discuss them is one of Waiting for Godot‘s most distinctive features. When French playwright Jean Anouilh saw the Paris premiere of the play in 1953, he described it as ‘The Thoughts of Pascal performed by clowns.’ Given the similarity between ‘God’ and ‘Godot,’ some critics have analyzed the play as fundamentally about religion: God(ot) is expected to arrive (possibly a second coming, as Vladimir and Estragon cannot recall whether they’ve met Godot before), but his arrival is always delayed with the promise that he will come ‘tomorrow.’

In the meantime, all the play’s two main characters can do is idle away the time, doomed to boredom and repetitive monotony. The anti-naturalist detail about the leaves on the tree – implying that, in fact, more than a ‘day’ has passed between the first and second act – supports the notion that we should extrapolate the play’s action and consider it representative of a longer span of time. But to view the play through a narrowly religious lens ignores the broader ‘point’ Beckett is making. And what is that point? That everything in life is monotonous, dull, faintly absurd, and above all, pointless? Perhaps, but with the crucial follow-up point that, despite this futility and absurdity, life continues. Vladimir and Estragon’s decision to leave at the end of the play is contradicted by their physical unwillingness to move, suggesting they have no intention of ‘leaving’ life. Indeed, although they agree to end it all and hang themselves from the tree, their attempt ends in absurdly comic farce, with Estragon’s trousers falling down. They may well make another attempt the next day, but one of the key messages of Waiting for Godot is strikingly similar to what we find in Camus: an ability to see the comic absurdity amidst the tragedy of living, and to ‘go on’ despite everything.

“Angels in America”: Themes and Influences

• Influences:
  • Eugene O’Neill’s large plays Morning Becomes Electra and Strange Interlude. They deal with the inner workings and stories of individuals, couples, and families.
  • Brechtian elements of popular political theatre of the 1930s, particularly Mother Courage and Her Children and his essay Short Organum for the Theatre.
  • Walter Benjamin’s thesis on history.
  • Tennessee Williams’ lyricism in character creation, particularly A Streetcar Named Desire.
  • Conventions of musical theatre and theatrical spectacle. Fast-paced, strong visual elements.
• Angels in America:
  • Subtitle: ‘A Gay Fantasia on National Themes.’ Commentary on the concept of the U.S. as a country through the lives of individuals.
  • Setting: Takes place over the course of three months, fall-winter 1985-1986. Early years of the AIDS crisis during Ronald Reagan’s administration.
  • Reagan’s Administration:
    • Promised in its first election campaign to ‘restore pride and optimism in America’ after the pessimism of the 1970s.
    • Cut taxes as part of their ‘supply-side economic theory.’ Critics argued that these measures only made the rich richer and the poor poorer, leaving vulnerable people behind.
    • Reagan aimed to ‘reconstruct’ a nation he believed had ‘gone astray’ with the liberation of minorities. He campaigned against the sexual freedom of gay men, manifested through increased visibility, emphasizing morality, religion, and family values.
    • His administration did not address the AIDS epidemic, which already existed in 1985, until 1987. Gay men were blamed for their disease, with claims that it was a choice.
  • Structure: Divided into two parts: Millennium Approaches (three acts) and Perestroika (five acts + epilogue).
  • All acts have titles (an influence of Bertolt Brecht), suggesting the main subject or function of the act.
  • Several characters are played by the same actor (doubling).
  • Fantasy elements (visions, hallucinations, ‘threshold of revelation’):
    • Bring the play beyond domestic realism.
    • Allow access to a grander vision of society and the world.
  • Split scenes:
    • Allow juxtaposition of the personal and the political, the real and the fantastic, and the relationships between characters.
    • Indicate simultaneity.
    • Intertwined nature of the characters’ lives and struggles.
    • The spectator can draw parallels.
  • The Angel:
    • ‘Angel of America.’ The main otherworldly character of the play.
    • Combines the real and the fantastic.
    • Reference to the visitation of Joseph Smith by the angel Moroni, founder of Mormonism. The angels are constructed primarily from Mormon and Jewish traditions.
    • Angels have no imagination and cannot create change (‘bureaucrats’). God, by creating humans, created the possibility for change and randomness. God left heaven on April 18th, 1906, the day of the San Francisco Earthquake.
    • Contradictorily, the Angel can be read through binaries: powerful and weak, heavenly and earthly, male and female. Her fury contradicts conventional ideas about angels.
    • According to the angels, humans must stop migrating and intermingling. The Angel wants Prior to stop the world from moving forward.
    • Kushner’s deconstruction of our idea of the angel suggests she is wrong. They have a reactionary agenda, desiring stasis rather than change.
    • She speaks in an almost incomprehensible language.

Sarah Kane’s “4.48 Psychosis” Analysis

• First production: June 2000 at the Royal Court’s Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, directed by James McDonald. Three actors to represent the voices in the play.
• Five actors in director Grzegorz Jarzyna’s 2002 production.
• One actress in Sebastian Schug’s 2005 Heidelberg production.
• 4.48: A moment when the speaker experiences clarity and truth is revealed.
• The impossibility of grasping the play’s meaning in a coherent interpretation is extremely productive and creative for both critics and artists.
• Five dashes separate the sections (‘scenes’). This is a central motif, creating fragments.
• Special arrangement of words on the page.
• Missing punctuation.
• The play depicts a borderline existence, characterized by:
  • Voice breaking down.
  • Balancing between life and death.
  • Continuity and discontinuity.
  • Materiality and immateriality.
  • Experience of Eros and Thanatos.
  • Her split self.
• Impossible synopsis. This forces spectators and critics to consider many interpretive options, removing security and clarity and creating space for a plurality of meaning.
• Thematization of this formless quality.
• The play may be considered a thematic exploration of a depressive female character who cannot find her own identity, is deeply disappointed with love and life, and struggles with the decision to commit suicide.
• Themes:
  • Search for an Other (self, lover, God).
  • Contemplation of suicide.
  • Reckoning with God.
  • Commentaries on the futile procedures of therapy.
  • (Any summary of themes is reductive).
• Indeterminacy of the character(s) and gender(s):
  • No list of dramatis personae; characters are marked with a dash.
  • Undecidable which voice belongs to each character.
  • Identity crisis. Refers to self as hermaphrodite.
  • Every statement is unreliable.
  • Many critics have read the play as an expression of different voices within a female persona, often in dialogue with a therapist or her more rational self.
  • Some critics have identified the protagonist with the author.
  • The characters are not more defined by the end of the play.
  • Some critics have argued that pushing the category of character to its generic limits places 4.48 Psychosis outside the frame of the dramatic genre. Postdramatic theatre.
• The audience:
  • Is invited to fill in the gaps with their own experiences and thoughts.
  • Participates in the annihilation of the character, a sort of sacrificed victim.
  • Simultaneous experience of life and death, creation and destruction of meaning.
• Possible interpretations of the ending: ‘watch me vanish’ → ‘please open the curtains.’ (Everything is left to speculation.)
  • No clear evidence of the speaker’s death, only of her liminal existence.
  • The idea of death at the end provides a certain degree of closure.
  • New beginning: the persona’s reconciliation to the world’s imperfection and liberation from their psychosis.
  • Possibility of transformation for the audience and the world.
  • Metatheatrical interpretation.
  • More dashes at the end suggest fragmentation and an open ending.
• The speaker balances between opposites (love and hate, life and death, absence and presence, sanity and insanity, body and mind). These concepts blur into one another.
• In-Yer-Face theatre:
  • New sensibility and dominant theatrical style of the 1990s.
  • “[…] any drama that takes the audience by the scruff of the neck and shakes it until it gets the message. It is a theatre of sensation: it jolts both actors and spectators out of conventional responses, touching nerves, provoking alarm. […] Unlike the type of theatre that allows us to sit back and contemplate what we see in detachment, the best In-Yer-Face theatre takes us on an emotional journey, getting under our skin. In other words, it is experiential, not speculative,” Aleks Sierz.
  • Shock tactics create urgency.
  • Taboos.
  • Features:
    • Provocation.
    • Controversy is usually present, though not always essential.
    • Irrationality and evil as common topics.
    • Blatant language.
    • Linked to Ancient Greek tragedy.
    • Compared to absurdist theatre.
    • In opposition to tradition (‘well-made plays’).
    • Importance of non-textual elements.
    • Setting: not naturalistic but self-referential.
    • Dream-like atmosphere.
    • Characters connected to the spaces.