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INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI film s the text directfy from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any ^pe of conq)uter printer. Hie quality of this reproduction is dqiendent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandardmargins, and improper alignment can adversefy affect reproducdoiL In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there arem isring pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back of the book. Photogr^hs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6" x 9" black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations sqrpearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. UMI University Microfilms International A Bell & Howell information Company 300 North Zeeb Road. Ann Arbor. Ml 48106-1346 USA 313.'761-4700 800.521-0600 Order Number 9427665 “This fundamental challenge to identity”: Reproduction and representation in the drama of Adrienne Kennedy Barnett, Claudia, Ph.D. The Ohio State University, 1994 UMI 300 N. Zeeb Rd. Ann Arbor, MI 48106 THIS FUNDAMENTAL CHALLENGE TO ID E N T m r: REPRODUCTION AND REPRESENTATION IN THE DRAMA OF ADRIENNE KENNEDY DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University % Claudia Barnett, BJL, MA The Ohio State University 1994 Dissertation Committee: improved by Walter A Davis j / i J ^ Adviser Department of English ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to Walter A. Davis for five years of guidance and fireedom and to Barbara Rignqr and Jessica Prinz for their advice and encouragement on this project. Special thanks to my father, Richard Barnett, who has prompted me to write a doctoral dissertation firom the time 1 was five years old. Thanks to my entire family for their love and support, and to Edna Levine for being the world’s best grandmother. Thanks to Theresa Henley Doerfler for her inspirational pregnancy, to Jasper for taking me for walks, and to Gay Brewer for making it all seem so ea^. ii VITA October 21, 1966 ............................................. Bom - Bronx, New York 1 9 8 8.................................................................... BA., cum la u d e in English Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 1988 - present..................................................Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of English, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1 9 9 0 .................................................................... MJL, Graduate School, Ohio State University 1990 - present...................................................Graduate Administrative Assistant, Ohio State University PUBLICATIONS “The Death of Graffiti: Postmodernism and the New York City Subway." Studies in Popular Culture 16.2 (1994): 25-38. “A Movie Star Has to Star in Hypertext: Storyspace and the (Re-) Interpretation of the Printed Play Script.” C o m p u te r Graphics 28.1 (1994): 33-34. Door to Door. Dramatics Magazine. March 1993. 24-29. “The Metadramatic Prison of BetrayoL" The Pinter Review: Annual Elssays, 1992-93. 69-72. iii FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: English Studies in: Drama; twentieth century literature; popular culture; composition; computer-assisted Instruction. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS....................................................................... ill VITA............................................................................................................ iv INTRODUCTION...................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER I _____________________________________________ 15 CHAPTER II.............................................................................................. 4 2 CHAPTER III............................................................................................. 73 CHAPTER IV ............................................................................................ 108 BIBLIOGRAPHY......................................................................................... 152 INTRODUCTION Adrienne Kennedy and Shakespeare’s Sister In A Room of One's Own, ^^ginia Woolf tells the story of the fictional sister of William Shakespeare, whom she names Judith. Suppose, she asks us to imagine with her. that Shakespeare had a sister: What would have become of her? If Shakespeare had a sister—a sister as talented and ambitious as himself—could she have shared his success? Woolf has heard men declare “that is was impossible for any woman ... to have the genius of Shakespeare” (48). and she questions the truth of this assertion. In answer, she traces the life of this fictional Judith, who. unlike her brother, never went to school, never learned Latin, never read Ovid. Virgil, and Horace, never had time to read at all because she had to “mend the stockings or mind the stew” (49). Judith’s illustrious sibling escaped to London and became a theatrical success. Meanwhile, her father informed her of her imminent marriage and. when she protested, he beat her. Then he begged her and attempted to bribe her to avoid a scandal. Finally, she ran away to London at the age of seventeen, hoping, like her brother. to Join a theatre. “Men laughed in her face” (50). The upshot: At last Nick Greene the actor-manager took pity on her; she found herself with child h y that gentleman and so—who shall measure the heat and violence of the poet’s heart when caught and tangled in a woman’s body?—killed herself one winter’s night and lies buried at some cross-roads where the omnibuses now stop outside the Elephant and Castle. (50). According to Woolfs illustration, it was impossible for any woman to have the genius of Shakespeare—and live. “Any woman bom with a great gift in the sixteenth century,” Woolf concludes, “would certainly have gone crazed, shot herself, or ended her days in some lonely cottage outside the village, half witch, half wizard, feared and mocked at” (51). Women could not write, not because of some innate flaw in themselves, but because thqr were not allowed. If th ^ wanted to write, they had to write in their families’ parlors, without privacy and with constant criticism, where they were disparaged for their frivolity and for neglecting their household chores. Woolf begins her essay as a quest for ancestry, for women’s history. She finds none. Women abound as characters in plays and prose, but are absent from the annals of England: Imaginatively she is of the highest importance. Practically she is completely insignificant. She pervades poetry fiom cover to cover; she is all but absent from history. She dominates the lives of kings and conquerors in fiction; in fact she was the slave of any boy whose parenfe forced a ring upon her finger. (45) In her pursuit of history, Woolf seeks her identity: “For we think back through our mothers if we are women” (79). Yet she carmot think back through her mothers, for all she knows of them is silence. “Masterpieces are not,” writes Woolf, “single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice” (68-9). Woolf sees in writing an amalgamation of voices and she notes the imposslhllity of hearing voices which never speak. When Woolf first delivered her essay as a series of speeches in 1928, she emphasized the recent changes in the law that would forever alter women’s position in society and their sense of self: women could now vote and own their own money, and therefore, they could write. ‘ But they would have to create new traditions. She presumes that women have attempted novel-writing more than any other genre because it is the newest and most malleable form, and thqr can adapt it as their own: “There is no reason to think that the form of the epic or of the poetic play suits a woman any more than the sentence suits her. But all the older forms of literature were hardened and set by the time she became a writer. The novel alone was young enough to be soft in her hands” (80). Thirty-six years after Woolfs clamour to women to write “books of travel and adventure, and research and scholarship, and history and biography, and criticism and philosophy and science” (113), Adrienne Kermedy began to write plays. Her plays, however, are devoid of Woolfs revelry; they exude no sense of fireedom. Instead, they reiterate, time and again, the tale of Shakespeare’s sister—not as sixteenth century myth, but as twentieth century reality. Woolf had assumed that privacy and money would make all the difference in women’s lives; Kennedy presents a more complex and cynical view of the world. Her characters are thwarted by their identities and their births; they are trapped by mental and emotional prisons imposed on them firom without and within. Her women are poverty-stricken, not in terms of money,