Irreconcilable Differences: Divorce and Women's Drama before 1945

Abstract

Modern British drama, influenced by Ibsen and the feminist movement, is replete with criticisms of the institution of marriage — re-evaluations of traditional gender roles, condemnations of the sexual double standard, and critiques of the various social, economic, and psychological inequalities arising from the marriage contract. British dramatists nevertheless resisted ending their plays with the parting of husband and wife, despite the impact of Ibsen 's A Doll House through the first half of the twentieth century. Divorce seldom received serious treatment on stage, although the issue attracted lively sociopolitical debate during this period. After World War I, mainstream theatre and film began to exploit the comic potential of the subject, but few dramatists ventured to represent divorce as a serious alternative to reconciliation. Two little-known plays, however, both written by women and produced in London between the wars, take up the issue in all its complexity: Clemence Dane's A Bill of Divorcement (1921) and Elizabeth Baker's Penelope Forgives (1930). These bold and provocative treatments of divorce remain quite distinct from those of more prominent male dramatists of the period, such as Shaw and Coward, as well as from mainstream farce and film. Like many women playwrights of the period, Dane and Baker engage directly with political and intellectual debates of their day, and they are best understood within that context. Both write from feminist perspectives, but they take different approaches to the divorce question as it was conceived in their time, Dane emphasizing eugenics, and Baker, class and economics. However, their plays are of interest not on)y for their response to the immediate political situation but also for their departure from the conventional comic — romantic structure shaping so many representations of marriage and even divorce in British drama before World War II.