Susan Glaspell: Essays on Her Theater and Fiction

Susan Glaspell: Essays on Her Theater and Fiction Susan Glaspell: Essays on Her Theater and Fiction. Edited by Linda Ben-Zvi. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1995; pp. 360. $44.50 cloth.

Feminist scholarship during the past decade has firmly established Susan Glaspell's place in American drama, and an anthology of criticism devoted to her work has long been overdue.

This volume is intended both for those unacquainted with Glaspell's work and for those who know it well. Ben-Zvi's meticulous organization ensures that it fulfills this difficult brief. Moving from the one-act Trifles, Glaspell's best known play, to her full-length works, particularly The Verge and Alison's House, the essays examine her drama and fiction from a range of critical perspectives that, as Ben-Zvi notes in her introduction, always take care to "reflect the social, cultural, and political forces that shaped them" (7). As a result, the essays enter into a dialogue with each other, offering complementary rather than competitive readings of the work.

Part 1 offers three essays on Trifles and its short-story version, "A Jury of Her Peers." Ben-Zvi's own "Murder, She Wrote" examines the murder case which Glaspell covered as a journalist and on which she based her play and story. By exploring the class and legal issues implicit in these works, her essay offers a subtle and accessible...