Teresaknight

HOME GIRLS AND UNDERSTUDIES: SHY WOMEN IN COLD WAR THEATRE AND FILM A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Teresa Jean Knight May 2016 © 2016 Teresa Jean Knight HOME GIRLS AND UNDERSTUDIES: SHY WOMEN IN COLD WAR THEATRE AND FILM Teresa Jean Knight, Ph.D. Cornell University 2016 In contrast to studies of U.S. Cold War theatre and film which typically focus on the era’s “crisis of masculinity,” portrayals of mother-son relationships, and portrayals of dynamic and ‘dangerous’ women, this project examines constructions of shy young women. Primary play and musical texts, their film adaptations, and original films are read through a lens of feminist materialism and emotional labor, in tandem with mid-twentieth century texts on popular psychology, psychosociology, self-improvement, and sexuality. Such texts show how shyness in young women is negatively constructed as a threat to personal and professional efficiency, as selfishness which breaks familial and social bonds, as a precursor to mental and physical collapse, as a symptom of modern urban alienation, as a sign of emotional vulnerability, and as a tool for infiltration. The shy girl’s weakness thus rhetorically links her with other ‘threats’ to national security in the early Cold War era: communists, racial/ethnic Others, homosexuals, and other subalterns. Consequently, these suspicions about shyness lead to the physical, mental, and emotional disciplining of young women who would otherwise pursue solitary and independently meaningful interests. !iii BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Teresa Jean Knight holds a B.A. in English from Westminster College, an M.A. in Comparative Literature from King’s College London, and an M.A./Ph.D. in Theatre Arts from Cornell University. !iv For Moose and Squirrel !v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Many, many thanks first to my Special Committee at Cornell University: Sara Warner, Nick Salvato, and Sabine Haenni. You’ve been gracious in giving thoughtful guidance, helpful questions, and your time. And I always appreciate laughing with you! Thanks also to the late Donald Fredericksen, who served on my committee, and whose reading of introversion and extroversion in Bergman’s Persona partly inspired my investigation of shyness. Thanks, too, to the other professors at Cornell who brought me much insight and offered encouragement: Margo Crawford, Mary Pat Brady, Sara Pritchard, Jeffrey Rusten, Byron Suber, and E.D. Intemann. I’m also grateful to have had guidance and support from many professors as an undergraduate. Thanks in particular to Sydney Cheek O’Donnell, Tim Slover, Bob Nelson, and Jesse Portillo at the University of Utah; to Nick More, Fatima Mujcinovic, Susan Gunter, Emily Smith, Peter Goldman, Doug Wright, Michael Popich, David Stanley, and Michael and Nina Vought at Westminster College; and to Beth Leonard at Stephens College. To my family and friends: I love you, and I deeply appreciate your kindness and patience, always. Thank you for whispering support for my writing efforts even when you could hardly talk anymore, Grandpa Del. And special thanks to Ducky: you are my moose, my squirrel, my everything. !vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Biographical Sketch . iii Dedication . iv Acknowledgements . v Introduction . 1 Part I: Home Girls . 41 Chapter 1: Personal Inefficiency in The Glass Menagerie . 45 Chapter 2: Selfishness in The Dark at the Top of the Stairs . 71 Chapter 3: Vulnerability in The Heiress . 89 Chapter 4: Mental Collapse in The Three Faces of Eve . 107 The Problem of Home Girls . 134 Part II: Understudies . 136 Chapter 5: Professional Inefficiency in Gypsy . 141 Chapter 6: Physical Collapse in Limelight . 171 Chapter 7: Alienation in Show Boat . 187 Chapter 8: Infiltration in All About Eve . 221 The Problem of Understudies . 241 Conclusion . 244 Bibliography . 262 !1 INTRODUCTION Upon seeing his daughter Catherine’s socially awkward behavior at a party, Dr. Sloper gives his usual lament about the young woman’s shyness and failed marriage prospects in The Heiress (1947): She has gone to the best schools in the city. She has had the finest training I could get her in music and dancing. She has sat here with me evenings on end, and I have tried to make conversation with her, and give her some social adeptness. […] I have given her freedom wherever I could. The result is what you see—an entirely mediocre and defenseless creature with not a shred of poise. What did I do wrong, my dear sister?1 Catherine’s lack of social graces, compounded by her plain appearance, lead her father to conclude that she is “dull”; she must be “stupid” because she is a conversational bore and has no overall charm. Upon seeing the play on Broadway in 1947, New York Times theatre critic Brooks Atkinson declared, “It is difficult to make a stupid woman the heroine of an interesting drama. Probably that is the basic infirmity of this elusive play. […] The heroine cannot be acted; she can only be acted against.”2 Atkinson’s criticism of the lead character Catherine thus matches that of her father, who vehemently desires her to be more social, less withdrawn, and a more “clever” and “entertaining companion.”3 Because Catherine ultimately tricks and rejects a returning suitor who once deceived and spurned her, some have more recently cited her as a feminist heroine.4 But Atkinson concludes that Catherine’s “revenge is tiny compensation for the desolation of an old maid’s life.”5 This suggests that the central conflict of the play is Catherine’s wavering 1 Ruth and Augustus Goetz, The Heiress (1948; repr., New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1975), 18-19. 2 Brooks Atkinson, “The New Play,” New York Times (New York, NY), Sep. 30, 1947. 3 Goetz, The Heiress, 9; 57. 4 See, for example, Neil Sinyard, A Wonderful Heart: The Films of William Wyler (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2013), 130. 5 Atkinson, “The New Play,” 22. !2 between unsociability and attachment, wherein her solitary equilibrium is regained but at the expense of the heteronormative happy ending of coupledom. In this sense, The Heiress puts a twist on socialization narratives which bring socially awkward characters peace in the form of social integration. And in the postwar U.S., the drama also acts as a cautionary tale about both the need for charismatic social performance and the danger of deception. The present study examines how U.S. theatre and film of the early Cold War (1945-62) depict shy young women. Analyzing socialization narratives about “home girls” who enter society through heterosexual courtship rituals, and shy female understudies who enter society through the successful performance of captivating entertainment, I argue that shyness is treated as an undesirable, masculine trait that threatens the shy characters’ economic and social success. Moreover, because shyness may be read as secrecy, socially withdrawn behaviors can be used as ciphers for treachery. Thus, in the paranoia of a spy and surveillance culture, shy behaviors seem to threaten personal and national security. We might wonder why The Heiress, an adaptation of Henry James’s 1880 novel Washington Square, was adapted for and successful with audiences during the Cold War. Why would a stifling Victorian worldview resonate in the mid-twentieth century? To begin, there was the matter of re-domesticating women after their expanded involvement in the WWII workforce; in a postwar natalist frenzy, women were encouraged to marry and have children. As in Victorian Anglo-American culture, the housewife—a domestic goddess of fecundity and tranquility—was the glue that held the family unit together.6 James’s character, whom he dubbed “Poor Catherine,” was a tragic figure who was too headstrong and awkward to take a chance on 6 Bruce McConachie, American Theater in the Culture of the Cold War: Producing and Contesting Containment, 1947-1962 (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2003), 130. !3 matrimonial bliss. In one especially tearful scene, Catherine gives away the fancy Parisian baby clothes she had thought she would one day use. Overall, she fails to achieve the ideal postwar American femininity—the supposedly happy convergence of repopulation, consumption, and nurturance within a nuclear family unit—envisioned by Broadway’s largely white, upper-midde- class audience.7 Though Catherine’s inheritance guarantees that she can afford to live alone if she chooses, her choice is unwise in the context of Cold War U.S. culture. Nuclear families were upheld as the basic unit of national character and security. Not only did a family offer safety and the possibility of regeneration in the event of a nuclear disaster, but single family units, with their houses, participation in the workforce (father) and in child-rearing (mother), and consumption of commercial goods, signaled all that was unique and desirable about life in a developed capitalist nation. Soviet communism, on the other hand, had supposedly dissolved traditional family units through an expanded workforce, and limited the consumption of goods.8 Moreover, in the context of anti-communist rhetoric and Cold War paranoia, having a family and friends to vouch for one’s character, and not being seen as a secretive (read: suspicious) person, were important safeguards against ostracism. It is partly the need for openness and sociability, and partly the need for heterosexual nuclear arrangements, that makes “Poor Catherine” a cautionary figure to postwar critics. Her shyness is a threat to the U.S. social order and to national security. 7 McConachie, American Theater in the Culture of the Cold War, 3. Luxury ads in playbills suggest that the average Broadway patron between 1947 and 1962 was upper-middle-class, a supposition further supported by the high cost of tickets. It is estimated that only 10 percent of 1950s Broadway patrons were from the working classes, 1.

Load more