Women's Predicament: Between Traditional And Feminist Expectations

Wendy Wasserstein is one of the most important female playwrights in America since WWII. Born in the conservative 1950s and coming of age in the 1960s with the rising feminism, she keenly recognized the predicament that women felt in negotiating between traditional and feminist expectations. Consequently, Wasserstein's plays repeatedly dramatize women caught up in the two conflicting sets of values in post-feminist America with ingrained patriarchal values.It is on this realization that I base my analysis of the predicament and suffering of the female characters in Wasserstein's four plays. Chapter I elaborates Wasserstein's breakthrough work Uncommon Women and Others. Immersed in a transitional world, five Mount Holyoke seniors are confronted with the coexistence of conflicting signals in the college education which contributes to their identity crises. Chapter II discusses Isn't It Romantic and The Heidi Chronicles. In the two plays, Wasserstein continues her exploration of the impact of feminist movement on personal life. Now the protagonists, embracing independence and autonomy extolled by feminism, have already stepped into the world outside the college and struggle to begin, or have already begun, their career life. But to the characters, family and career are still in imbalance. As a result, they are caught either in a struggle to "have it all", like Janie and Harriet, which proves to be a fantasy, or in an "either/or" choice, like Heidi, which proves to be a dilemma. In An American Daughter analyzed in Chapter III, Wasserstein turns her focus to women in the political arena. Having reaped some benefits from feminism, Lyssa still can't escape from the trap designed by feminist development and traditional remains. Despite her political capability and professional competence, Lyssa's political life fails because of deep-rooted prejudices about women's roles. Moreover, probing into Lyssa's story, we find that her final political result emanates initially from her marital crisis, caused by her husband's fear of her subversion of subordination, which drives him to betray her to the media. Lyssa's experiences prove that women are still kept apart from glory in the 1990s.By describing women's predicament in the transitional era, Wasserstein challenges the existing traditional values and expresses her emphasis on intellectual independence, individual autonomy and personal achievements for women. Believing every woman has the right to fulfill her potentials and consciousness of the complicated relationship between career and family, she insists that a woman should never give up the former for the sake of the latter, which means dependency and subordination. Despite the awareness of specific female problems, Wasserstein doesn't offer any cheap solution. Examining carefully, however, we can see a female community in Uncommon Women and Others, which provides support for the fellow members of the group they form. Unfortunately, this group tends to be more shrinking and less supportive than it first appears, as is shown in Isn't It Romantic, The Heidi Chronicles and An American Daughter. Accordingly, Wasserstein thinks that feminism has a long way to go to unite women in their struggle for equal rights with men.