“The Critical Entangled in the Creative”: Modernist Credos and Female Egoism in Susan Glaspell’s The Verge

Abstract

Written as her last collaboration with the Provincetown Players, SusanGlaspell’s The Verge is an exceptional play in that its formal experimentand modernist theme are clear of her general modernist ambivalencewhich combines a uniquely American and feminist expression of themodernist spirit with rather conventional forms. Following critics’ briefand generalizing comments on the play’s protagonist embodying modernistformalism and alienation, this paper offers a full and concrete surveydetailing the tenets and the slogans of Modernism inlaid in the play. Its main argument is that Glaspell strategically deployed the metaphysicsof egoism, anarchic hostility to the collectiveness of bourgeois society,and formalist preoccupation in Modernism in representing a female egoist’slonging for a new order of society, illustrating an intersectionbetween Modernism and feminism. It concludes that The Verge is anextremely rare case of modernist literature where a play, allegedly theleast modernist genre of all according to Christopher Innes, exemplifiesthe “eloquent critical acts entangled in the creative work” which MichaelLevenson lists as a distinct feature of modernist texts.