Rethinking Motherhood: Instances of Proto-Feminism

Abstract

Characteristic of the thematic and stylistic diversity of women’s theatrical production in mid-fifties Britain, was the fact that playwrights continued to utilize the conventions of commercial theatre yet moved on to previously unexplored subjects, while a new generation of authors emerged who radically changed style and introduced working-class experience into mainstream drama. Through cases studies such as Enid Bagnold’s The Chalk Garden (1956), Shelagh Delaney’s A Taste of Honey (1958), Doris Lessing’s Play With a Tiger (1958) and Ann Jellicoe’s The Sport of My Mad Mother (1958), this chapter shows that women playwrights predominantly focused on the domestic or female-only environments to revisit received notions of social and psychological issues. In fact, playwrights embarked on a fresh examination of women’s roles, examinations that often led to a subversion of mainstream ideology. The authors considered here investigated different perceptions of the fifties family as a structure of social organization, and often scrutinized conflicts between generations, focusing on the figure of the mother. They depicted extended families incorporating several generations and classes, units led by single mothers, as well as alternative arrangements disconnected from marriage and direct bloodlines. The playwrights also presented parenthood in a variety of manifestations.