APOLLONIAN FORM AND DIONYSIAN EXCESS IN SUSAN GLASPELL’S DRAMA AND FICTION

Martha C. Carpentier

Is Susan Glaspell’s fiction simply not as good as her drama? Was she inspired by her thrilling environment during those years with Jig and Gene and the Provincetown to produce work that exceeded her native capabilities? Or is this merely a persistent critical shibboleth lingering from the days when it was considered necessary to create such hierarchies as “major” vs. “minor,” “cosmopolitan” vs. “regional,” “experimental” vs. “sentimental”? It seems more accurate to observe that a writer who, within the space of one year (1916-1917), wrote a play (Trifles) and a short story (“Jury of Her Peers”) narrating the same events with the same characters and with equal success in both dramatic and fictional forms, was not only profoundly interested in generic intertextuality, but was able to move between these genres with rare facility. This unique ability of Susan Glaspell’s does not end with those two works. As evidenced by her 1916 story, “Unveiling Brenda,” and similar 1917 play, Close the Book; her 1917 one-act play, The Outside, and “A Rose in the Sand,” its 1927 short story version; her 1919 story, “Pollen,” progenitor of the 1920 play, Inheritors; as well as the 1922 play, Chains of Dew, and its 1931 novel version, Ambrose Holt and Family, Glaspell often stretched generic boundaries by transposing and experimenting with the same narrative in two genres. Examining the connections between her work in different genres presents a far more interesting critical challenge than assuming her work cannot be equally good in two genres, then imposing a critical hierarchy in order to make the work fit the assumption. If we look at Glaspell’s mature novels, written after she and Cook left the Provincetown Players and after his death and her return from Greece in 1924, it is clear that Glaspell became a far better 36 Martha C. Carpentier novelist as a result of her playwriting career. The techniques she mastered as a dramatist continued long after to invigorate the narrative structure of her novels and the often theatrical, staged interaction of her characters, with the result that there is a demonstrable continuum between these two bodies of her work. In theme, also, Glaspell continued to incorporate the Nietzschean ethos that dominated Jig Cook’s dramaturgy from the inception of the Provincetown to his futile attempts at the end of his life to stage plays with the peasants of Delphi on the ruins of the Dionysian theater. All of the protagonists of Glaspell’s later novels oscillate, to some degree, between the poles of Apollonian form and Dionysian excess. As one example, I would like to compare her play The Verge with her novel Fugitive’s Return, looking at their overall structure, costume and setting, language, and conclusions. By comparing these two works it becomes evident that regardless of form—drama or fiction—Glaspell pursued a similar philosophic and thematic agenda as well as similar structural experimentation in both genres, an intertextuality that enriched her later fiction just as Trifles did “A Jury of Her Peers.” The structure of Fugitive’s Return is in three-acts, as is her play, The Verge. Although the narrative appears traditionally divided into chapters (forty-eight in all), in locus and chronology there are two main breaks, creating a three-part structure that echoes the structure of the play. Chapters 1-18 open with the protagonist, Irma Lee Shraeder, about to commit suicide because of the death of her little daughter, as well as the preceding failure of her marriage and her divorce. Her cousin Janet intervenes and saves her; using the passport and ticket of another woman who is unable to travel, Irma is sent to Greece to recover. The rest of this first part charts her life in a primitive Greek village near Delphi and her relations with the villagers. The middle section of the novel, Chapters 19-34, set in Iowa and Cape Cod, provide a lengthy flashback of the events leading up to her suicide attempt, beginning with her childhood, her parents’ demise, her own marriage and the reasons for its failure. The third and final part, Chapters 35-48, returns to the present in Greece and recounts Irma’s resolution in the Greek setting of the inner conflicts deriving from her past. Greece, Iowa, Greece—just as in The Verge, there is a return in the third act to the locus of the first act—greenhouse, tower, greenhouse. Similar to an actress preparing for a role, Irma is transformed through costume into another character upon her arrival in Greece.