Susan Glaspell's Century of American Women : A Critical Interpretation of Her Work

An accomplished playwright and co-founder of the Provincetown Players, Susan Glaspell was an artist of formidable but ill-acknowledged talent. In this revolutionary study, Makowsky seeks to combat the forces of literary obscurity that have nullified the writer''s reputation, and to reinstate Glaspell in the canon. Makowsky''s inquiry into the circumstances that lead to `greatness'' in the literary world offers fresh insight into the debate over the canon in academia.

As a female writer in the shadow of the cultural nimbus generated by her male peers, and as a transcendentalist in the spirit of Emerson among modernists, Susan Glaspell has suffered from literary obscurity from the start. An accomplished playwright, and co-founder of the Provincetown Players, Glaspell created self-reliant female heroines in works which were often dismissed as "experimental" by her colleagues. Makowsky''s engagingly written study, by focusing on the women of Glaspell''s writing and their struggles with the issues of motherhood and social limitation, seeks to vindicate Susan Glaspell and to offer her work to the attention of a new generation of readers. At the same time, Makowsky offers a valuable and topical inquiry into the nature of the cultural and political forces that shape our perceptions of literary "greatness" and, ultimately, the canon.