"The Women Inside": A Spatial Reading Of Susan Glaspell’s Plays

The thesis aims to provide an analysis of the ways in which space is utilized to depict power struggles and the representation of independent women who resist patriarchal control in Susan Glaspell’s plays.It mainly focuses on her three typical plays: Trifles,The Outside and The Verge for they can be similarly interpreted from a spatial perspective.This thesis adopts Lefebvre’s theory of spatial triad,and the Foucault’s theory on the interplay between space and power.This thesis attempts to reveal the incremental development of the feminist consciousness of women characters in these three plays by tracing their spatial practice,namely,their dishonorable marriage,respective banishment or punishment,and the actions as response by the media of discourse and body.Chapter One gives an introduction of Susan Glaspell and her plays.Chapter Two discusses the representational spaces in her plays – the abandoned spaces that are reserved for “abandoned” women,and the conflicts that arises between patriarchal representational spaces and its female counterparts.Negotiations are displayed on the stage between the intervention of the open outside space and the enclosed inner space,which are respectively dominated by male and female characters,involving the construction and collision of both physical and psychological spaces.Chapter Three reveals the representations of space that involve the system of symbolism,which mark the subversion of gender discipline by deconstructing the spatial order.It is demonstrated in three aspects: discourse and anti-discourse in patriarchal dominance,body performativity and the manifestation of violence,the imagery of death and heterotopias.Verbal violence and body conflicts implicate the production of anti-hegemonic discourse.The presence and absence of body(subject)in and out of the space symbolize the dis-appropriation of conventional spatial images and help condense or expand the space in a time-limited play.The murder scenes and cemetery-like spaces in the plays echo with Foucault’s heterotopias,revealing the psychological distortion of protagonists.Two dimensions discussed in the chapters are based on spatial practice throughout the three plays,whether inside or outside of the plays,for the stage itself is a representational space for Glaspell’s theatre practice,showing an organic cultural identity by profiles of rural lifestyles,thus construct the space for sense of home.This is elaborated in Chapter Four.It illustrates how Glaspell configures the geographical elements in the plays as a mirror to the reality,and the way they are presented as gender-related metaphors.The three plays present a progressive shifting of the dominant power in dynamically changing space,negotiating between the men “outsiders” and the women “insiders”.