Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    A Study Guide for Susan Glaspell's "The Verge"
    A Study Guide for Susan Glaspell's "The Verge"
    A Study Guide for Susan Glaspell's "The Verge"
    Ebook40 pages29 minutes

    A Study Guide for Susan Glaspell's "The Verge"

    By Gale and Cengage

    4/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Susan Glaspell's "The Verge," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Drama For Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Drama For Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateAug 3, 2016
    ISBN9781535840316
    A Study Guide for Susan Glaspell's "The Verge"

    Read more from Gale

    Related to A Study Guide for Susan Glaspell's "The Verge"

    Related ebooks

    Literary Criticism For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Book Club

      Nov 9, 2023

      Book Club
      5 min read

    • Article

      What a Great Talker She Was

      Sep 1, 2020

      What a Great Talker She Was
      8 min read

    • Article

      Poltergeist At 40: Spielberg’s Haunted House Hit Brought Horror Home

      Jun 4, 2022

      In the summer of 1982, Steven Spielberg released two movies in consecutive weeks, Poltergeist and ET the Extra Terrestrial, that now seem like mirror images of each other. Both are about suburban enclaves visited by supernatural phenomena – one a hau

      3 min read

    • Article

      THE Reading room

      Dec 2, 2020

      Trent Dalton’s ambitious tale combines a dreamy aura of magical realism with scenes rooted in the Australian landscape. At its heart is Molly Hook, the “poor little gravedigger girl”, age seven when the story opens in Darwin in 1935. Molly’s mum, Vio

      7 min read

    • Article

      Great Read

      Apr 19, 2023

      Great Read
      7 min read

    • Article

      Don’t Call Me Kitsch!

      Dec 17, 2021

      Don’t Call Me Kitsch!
      9 min read

    • Article

      Away With The Fairies

      Nov 11, 2020

      FROM where I was, I could see the hatpins holding up the figures. I’ve always marvelled that anybody ever took it seriously,’ admitted Frances Griffiths in 1981, more than 60 years into the greatest hoax of the century. However did they get away with

      4 min read

    • Article

      Traveling (at Last)? Take Along The 10 Best Books Of May.

      May 18, 2021

      When travel beckons, be sure to pack the 10 best books of May. Any journey feels more meaningful with a good novel or nonfiction title at hand.

      2 min read

    • Article

      Book Club

      Oct 12, 2022

      Book Club
      5 min read

    • Article

      Cathedrals Made of Bricks

      Nov 25, 2019

      Cathedrals Made of Bricks
      6 min read

    • Article

      THE Reading room

      Dec 2, 2020

      Trent Dalton’s ambitious tale combines a dreamy aura of magical realism with scenes rooted in the Australian landscape. At its heart is Molly Hook, the “poor little gravedigger girl”, age seven when the story opens in Darwin in 1935. Molly’s mum, Vio

      6 min read

    • Article

      SUMMER Reading SPECIAL

      Dec 28, 2022

      In last year’s Booker Prize shortlisted Oh William! we found narrator Lucy Barton reconnecting with her first husband, William, following the death of her second husband. In this sequel COVID has hit New York and William takes control. As a scientist

      10 min read

    • Article

      Books

      May 29, 2023

      Books
      6 min read

    • Article

      Walter Sickert

      Nov 26, 2021

      Walter Sickert
      5 min read

    • Article

      Book Club

      Dec 8, 2021

      Book Club
      5 min read

    • Article

      Tenor Of The Times

      Aug 7, 2022

      Tenor Of The Times
      4 min read

    • Article

      Alice: Curiouser And Curiouser

      Jul 15, 2021

      Lewis Carroll’s two Alice books were probably the first introduction for many of us to the weird and wonderful, to absurdity and contradiction, to the Other. The young Charles Dodgson’s headmaster wrote that the 12-year-old was “marvellously ingeniou

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Old Un's Notes

      Feb 8, 2023

      The Old Un's Notes
      4 min read

    • Article

      Jo Hopper, Woman in the Sun

      Feb 26, 2018

      Jo Hopper, Woman in the Sun
      10 min read

    • Article

      Cinema Connection

      Nov 16, 2021

      Cinema Connection
      7 min read

    • Article

      Spellbinding Reads

      Nov 11, 2022

      READ THIS BY RACHEL JOYCE DOUBLEDAY In The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, the title character set off on foot on his unlikely trek across England to find his old friend Queenie Hennessy, while 1his embittered and grieving wife, Maureen, was le

      3 min read

    • Article

      Innovators

      May 28, 2022

      Innovators
      10 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for A Study Guide for Susan Glaspell's "The Verge"

    4/5

    1 rating0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Susan Glaspell's "The Verge" - Gale

      1

      The Verge

      Susan Glaspell

      1921

      Introduction

      The Verge was one of Susan Glaspell's first fulllength plays and is considered by many to be the most complex of her career. The play grew out of Glaspell's recognition of the way in which Victorian society left some women feeling trapped in roles for which they were unsuited. Because of the play's non-realistic speech patterns and expressionistic elements, it was dismissed by most critics as being muddled and confusing. It has recently been rediscovered by feminist theorists, however, who see the work as an important contribution to theater history. At the time of the play's first production in 1921, women were still expected to stay at home and be dutiful wives and mothers. This mindset was meeting with increased resistance. Many women began to voice dissatisfaction with their lack of opportunities and tried to change the situation. Thus, the feminist movement began to take hold. Other women rebelled by retreating into despondency, depression and, sometimes, madness. The Verge also reflects the fascination with Freudian theory that was sweeping the United States at the time. Freud had delivered his first U.S. lectures in 1909, and his theories of psychoanalysis and dream interpretation were widely discussed in many popular publications of the day.

      The Verge is a somewhat difficult play to comprehend upon first reading. Characters sometimes speak in sentence fragments and have strange syntactical patterns that are closer to poetry than to everyday speech. The play also employs a heavy dose of symbolism to deliver its message. If one pays careful attention to the visual and poetic elements contained within the text, however, the work reveals a fascinating portrait of a woman trapped in a situation that slowly pushes her to madness.

      Author Biography

      Susan Glaspell was born on July 1, 1882, in Davenport, Iowa. She was the middle child and only daughter of Elmer and Alice Feeney Keating Glaspell. By the time of her graduation from high school, she had already formed an interest in writing. After high school, from 1894 to 1897, she worked for two local newspapers. In 1897, Glaspell enrolled in Drake University, graduating with a degree in philosophy in 1899. After graduation, she accepted a job as a political reporter for the Des Moines Daily News and eventually began writing her own column. She discovered that she was well suited to the writing

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1