Authors

Pamela L. Wells

Type

Text

Type

Thesis

Advisor

Helen O. Choi. . | Ayesha Ramachandran.

Date

2011-12-01

Keywords

attitudes, feminine, Gilman, Ibsen, O'Neill, Shaw | American Literature

Department

Department of English

Language

en_US

Source

This work is sponsored by the Stony Brook University Graduate School in compliance with the requirements for completion of degree.

Identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/11401/71726

Publisher

The Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY.

Format

application/pdf

Abstract

This paper explores the plays of Eugene O'Neill through the eyes social conventions. Social conventions are infused within and influence individuals in all walks of life. Authors, as well, record these social conventions in their writing, either consciously or subconsciously. Studying these social conventions can give us a new perspective of man during different periods of history. In the plays Anna Christie, Desire Under the Elms and Mourning Becomes Electra, Eugene O'Neill's female characters display attributes that stray from what society believes as acceptable behavior for woman. These unwritten rules of behavior I call social conventions. This paper examines the female social conventions of 1850-1930 in both fiction and non-fiction works and then discusses them in the above plays by O'Neill.

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