Crothers wrote well over a dozen plays in her time, most of which were well-made plays focused on a woman’s story, usually with strong comic elements. He and She (1909) is one of her more famous plays, and it is about a husband and wife who are both trying to have careers as sculptors. They both submit work to a competition, and the wife wins over the the husband, which he does not take well. The wife ultimately decides to leave her work in order to take care of her teenage daughter who is having issues. Although she was very successful in getting the play to production on Broadway, the critics had overall negative feedback, especially with regards to her treatment of men (Lindroth and Lindroth 44). One critic “treated Crothers’s ideas seriously, but declared himself ‘in complete disagreement’ with them, protesting an ‘anti-feminist’ tone on the contemporary stage in general” (Lindroth and Lindroth 44). This back and forth debate happens with a lot of Crothers’ plays – she is writing a female-centered story, which angers the anti-feminists, but is not pushing a radical feminist agenda, angering the feminists.

Susan and God (1937) was Crothers’ last play, and was very successful. It deals with a restless and dissatisfied modern woman, who ultimately ends up happy in the arms of man, trusting God. It was a popular play, but critics had trouble with it’s merit as a piece of writing. One wrote about how the “’animation and high jinks’…made the audience forget that the plot didn’t necessarily make sense” (Lindroth and Lindroth 73). Although it was a commercial and critical success, it has had mixed historical analyses. Some “critics see a disillusionedment in Crother’s later plays which they believe reflects the decline of feminist activity” (Friedman 72). Susan and God is a great example of this conflict, because the main character ultimately finds happiness in a very conventional way, by falling in love with a man. Thus, the “feminist merit” of the piece is called into question.

Rachel Crothers directing a production of A Man’s World Program, A Man’s World, Billy Rose Theatre Collection, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

A Man’s World (1910) was a play that really “reflect[ed] the social forces that shaped women’s activities, aspirations, and values at the time that she wr[ote]” (Friedman 78). It tells the story of Frank, a strong independent woman in a boardinghouse , who ends the pay by turning away from love. This is one of Crothers’ most explicitly feminist plays, and it led to Augustus Thomas writing his own play in rebuttal because he was so upset by the “unfair picture of men” that she had painted (Lindroth and Lindroth 23). Several critics responded to the feminist message, such as Theater Arts Magazine, who called it “wholesome and defended Crothers’ demand for a single standard of morality between men and women” (Lindroth and Lindroth 23). It is curious to compare how Crothers’ earlier and late plays fare in terms of modern feminism and how they were viewed by contemporary critics.

 

Sources:

Friedman, Sharon. “Feminism as Theme in Twentieth-Century American Women’s Drama.” American Studies, vol. 25, no. 1, 1984, pp. 69–89. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40641831

Gottlieb, Lois C. Rachel Crothers. Twayne, 1979.

Lindroth, Colette, and James R. Lindroth. Rachel Crothers: a Research and Production Sourcebook. Greenwood Press, 1995.