| Summary: | Susanna Centlivre, active in the post Restoration Theater, wrote nineteen plays from 1700
to 1723. A few of her plays were popular until 1900, but thereafter fell into limbo. By studying
three of her plays, The Perjur’d Husband, The Busy Body, and The Wonder, A Woman Keeps a
Secret, one can decide whether she can receive the classification of a protofeminist. This topic is
important in helping to trace the evolution of women’s writing, and their movement toward the
development in the novel. One must understand the issues involved for women writers as they
struggled for recognition in the field of literature.
Centlivre’s history prior to 1700 remains shadowy. Her early life is oft repeated with
little or no substantiation of the facts. The study of situations and characters in her plays reveal
attitudes of the interactions between men and women. The ideas about forced marriages and
paternal attitudes toward children reveal themselves through both comedy and sorrow. Though
Centlivre married three times no children came from those marriages; the plays she wrote
reflected the manners of those times.
Assigning the arbitrary label of protofeminist or feminist to Centlivre at this time might
place her into a genre from which she could not escape. She should receive the same treatment
as any male writer: a fair and balanced approach to her words based on equality between the
sexes. === Thesis (M.A.)--Wichita State University, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Dept. of English.
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