Susan Keating Glaspell, Suppressed Desires: A Comedy in Two Scenes

Noelia Hernando-Real (Universidad Autonoma de Madrid)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.3: American (US) Writing and Culture: The Early Twentieth-century , 1900-1945.
Vol. editors: J. Michael Duvall (College of Charleston), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Tony Papanikolas (San Jose State University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1916

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Play

Resources

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When Susan Glaspell and George Cram Cook wrote

Suppressed Desires

in the winter of 1914-1915, they could not imagine the transcendence this hilarious one-act play would achieve. Rejected at first by the famous Washington Square Players, who considered it “too special” for them to be performed (Glaspell

Road

192),

Suppressed Desires

contributed to mark the beginning of the modern theatre in the United States.

Suppressed Desires opens in the living-room of Henrietta and Steve Brewster's “studio apartment in […] Washington Square south” (33), a prototypical home environment in Greenwich Village. The set design features an enormous window in the back wall through which the Washington Square Arch can be seen. As Noe and Marlowe suggest, “the prominence of this landmark, a

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2470 words

Citation: Hernando-Real, Noelia. "Suppressed Desires: A Comedy in Two Scenes". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 19 August 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=15993, accessed 25 April 2024.]

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