Early American Women Dramatists, 1780-1860 - Studies in American Popular History and Culture

First published in 1999. Although contemporary feminist criticism has mainly focused upon American women playwrights of the twentieth century-women, there is evidence that a feminist tradition rooted deep in the nationalistic and democratic impulses of the American nation existed more than a hundred years before these women started writing. It may come as a surprise to some readers that a significant but overlooked number of women playwrights vitally contributed to the development of early American drama. This study covers the period between 1775 and 1860, a time when American men and women struggled to define themselves and their place in response to the radical economic and institutional transformations which characterized that period. Based on the assumption that women's experience of the world differs from men's, the author tries to show that the plays of my study are sites of gender inscriptions as well as collective evidence that late-eighteenth and nineteenth-century men and women were affected differently by the economic, political, and social changes that were taking place in America at that time.