Revolution in Manners and Morals

236 Pages·2017·8.01 MB·English

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LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School
1965
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James Morris Salem
Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College
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Salem, James Morris, "Revolution in Manners and Morals: the Treatment of Adultery in American Drama
Between the Wars." (1965). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 1089.
https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/1089
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SALEM, James Morris, 1937-
REVOLUTION IN MANNERS AND MORALS:
THE TREATMENT OF ADULTERY IN AMERICAN
DRAMA BETWEEN THE WARS.
Louisiana State University, Ph.D., 1965
Language and Literature, modern
University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan
REVOLUTION IN MANNERS AND MORALS:
THE TREATMENT OF ADULTERY IN AMERICAN DRAMA BETWEEN THE WARS
A Dissertation
Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the
Louisiana State University and
Agricultural and Mechanical College
in partial fulfillm ent of the
requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in
The Department of English
by
James Morris Salem
B.S., Wisconsin State University-LaCrosse, 1961
August, 1965
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
X wish to express ray sincere gratitude to Professor James T.
Nardin for his guidance in the writing of this dissertation. I am
also indebted to Professor Thomas A. Kirby, Professor Otis B.
Wheeler, Professor Nicholas Canaday, and Professor Malcolm Ware.
ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
TITLE PAGE......................................................................................................................... i
ACKNOWLE DGMENT......................................................................................................................i i
ABSTRACT.............................................................................................................................. v
CHAPTER
I. AMERICAN DRAMA BETWEEN THE WARS: REVOLUTION,
SOCIOLOGY, AND SEXUAL MORALITY ........................................................ 1
II. ZOE AKINS AND THE BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION..................... 34
III. ADULTERY IN THE SERIOUS PLAYS OF ELMER RICE,
SIDNEY HOWARD, CLIFFORD ODETS, AND EUGENE
0' NEILL........................................................................................................... 49
Elmer R ic e ............................................................................................. 50
Sidnery Howard .................................................................................... 61
Clifford Odets ...................................................................................... 71
Eugene O'Neill ...................................................................................... 80
IV. ADULTERY IN THE COMEDIES OF RACHEL CROTHERS,
MAXWELL ANDERSON, PHILLIP BARRY, S. N. BEHRMAN,
ROBERT E. SHERWOOD, AND CLARE BOOTHE .......................................... 107
Rachel Crothers .................................................................................... 110
Maxwell Anderson .................................................................................... 121
Phillip Barry ......................................................................................... 125
S. N. Behrman..............................................................................................141
Robert E. Sherwood........................................................................... 147
Clare B oothe......................................................................................... 157
V. ADULTERY IN OTHER PLAYS BETWEEN THE WARS............................. 171
The influence of Sidney Howard and ElmerR ic e ...........................171
Moral conservatism and the minor d ram atist................................178
Adultery and other sociological problems.................................... 185
Progress of the revolution in manners and
m o rals...................................................................................................................201
VI. CONCLUSION...........................................................................................................210
BIBLIOGRAPHY.....................................................................................................................216
VITA........................................................................................................................................227
iv
ABSTRACT
This study is concerned with the treatment of adultery in
published American drama between the wars and with the sociological
developments in American life which allowed the playwright, after
World War I, to treat a sexual issue with honesty and complexity.
Some of the more important of these developments were the change in
the theater audience, the revolution in manners and morals, the revolt
of the younger generation, and the emergence of the new woman--the
result of which enabled our dramatists to make a significant comment
on sexual problems of American life. And comment they did. Over
four hundred plays produced between the 1919-1920 and 1941-1942
seasons deal with real or suspected m arital infidelity.
Of the major dramatists treated in this study, only one,
Sidney Howard, adopts a middle-of-the-road approach to adultery.
In Dodsworth and They Knew What They Wanted, the playwright is
willing to forgive a single adulterous affair in order to preserve
a marriage, provided that the guilty partner resolve to behave better
in the future. Other dramatists adhere more closely to a strictly
liberal (advanced) or conservative (conventional) view of sexual
morality. In serious drama, for example, Elmer Rice endorses adultery
in Street Scene, by showing how a woman is driven to infidelity but
is punished too severely for her infraction of the moral code; in
The Adding Machine, by presenting a character who did not commit
v
divorce nor adultery is ever acceptable.
It is significant that neither of the m o r a l l y conservative
playwrights was as successful in his moral m e s s a g e a s his liberal
counterpart--0'Neill was frequently m is in te rp re te d and Crothers
was criticized for her lack of profundity. I £ > 5 u r drama does re­
flect the attitudes of the period in which i t w a s w ritte n , we must
conclude that theatergoers of the time did not s e e adultery as so
horrible a sin as O'Neill and Crothers would h a v e le d them to
believe. The fact that adultery was discussed s o o fte n , however,
indicates that the issue was still vital and s u b j e c t to debate and
analysis, as, indeed, it is today.
vii
CHAPTER I
AMERICAN DRAMA BETWEEN THE WARS;
REVOLUTION, SOCIOLOGY, AND SEXUAL MORALITY
America did not have a playwright of the stature of novelist and
poets such as M elville, Whitman, or Dreiser until after World War I.
The theater would not allow it, and the theater, limited and in­
fluenced as it was by sociological factors, paid the fiddler and
called the dramatic tune. The tune it called before the Great War,
moreover, was one which did not offend the sensibilities O’f its
audience. Rather, it reflected the attitudes, morals, manners, and
mores of the American people, a charge that can hardly be made against
the writers mentioned above. This is not to say that novelists and
poets can disregard completely the morals and manners of their read­
ing public, though they frequently do, but rather that playwrights
ordinarily cannot. They must be constantly aware of the many restric­
tions which lim it what can be said and done on the stage. In a general
way we can consider the dramatist as a victim of censorship, though
censorship in the sense that the w riter of plays knows, even before
he begins w riting, what is acceptable and what is not. He is free to
write whatever he pleases, but he is narrowly limited in what he can
publicly present on stage. The final result is the same: he is not
permitted to offend the moral taste of his audience. A play which
does offend remains in manuscript and is never produced or published.
On the other hand, a play which is acceptable in treatment and theme
1
2
to a sufficient number of playgoers to merit its continued production
has a reasonable chance of being issued in printed form. What drama
we have, then, is the product of successful theater, subject to and
influenced by all the lim itations of the theater.
The dramatist must be aware at a ll times of the problems and
lim itations of the theater. The novelist or poet, anxious as he is to
find a publisher, cares little about the problems and lim itations of
the publishing business--he need not satisfy the general public so
completely that he must be concerned with extra-literary matters. As
Elmer Rice sees it, the vast difference between a novelist's publica­
tion and a dramatic production existed even before the period we are
consideritn here:
Even in the nineteenth century, the difference in cost
between publishing a book and producing a play was
enormous. Further, the publisher's expense after the
book comes off the press is triv ia l, while the pro­
ducer, in order to keep the play alive, must contlnously
incur very heavy operating expenses, as must the theatre
owner. Immediate and widely popular success is essential
if the play producer is to avoid disastrous losses. To
recoup his investment he must count upon an audience of
many thousands. Therefore, his choice of plays to be
produced is determined by his judgment of their potential
popularity. The state of things does not make for the
choice of plays in great depth or literary value. Most
readers pretend, at least, to an interest in literature;
most playgoers do not.*
It is interesting to speculate on the possible playwriting success
that M elville, Whitman, and Dreiser would have achieved. If Melville
had been a playwright and his plays had been received with as little
enthusiasm as were some of his novels, his plays would have been
quickly closed and a Mobv Dick lost to later students of American