Violence as an Act of Freedom in Selected Plays by Sophie Treadwell, Susan Glaspell and maria Irene Fornes

The aim of my thesis is to investigate the various modes and ways that women attempt to escape from the oppression of patriarchal society as represented in four twentieth-century female playwrights’ drama: Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal (1928), Susan Glaspell’s Trifles (1916), Maria Irene Fornes’s The Conduct of Life (1985), and Fefu and Her Friends (1977). In these works I will investigate the following issues: the reasons for marriage for both of the sexes, the nature of marriage for women, the relationship of men and women, their alienation from one another, how women can cope with their situation, whether there is a way out of this repressed and unendurable state or not, what the nature of life would be without men as represented in Fefu and Her Friends, reasons for women’s violent acts and violence against women.egyetemiangol nyelv és irodalo