The Women | Comic Textures and Female Communities 1937 and 1977: Clare Booth and Wendy Wasserstein
In the following essay, Carlson examines two female-dominated plays—Boothe’s The Women and Wendy Wasserstein’s Uncommon Women and Others— and explores the roles of the female characters in each.
Although comedy’s Lysistratas and Rosalinds have prompted general critical agreement that comedy promotes sexual equality, the women in two twentieth- century comedies by women suggest how easily such conclusions may be called into question. As they create all-female comic worlds, both Clare Boothe in The Women and Wendy Wasserstein in Uncommon Women and Others magnify some of the special dissonances which accompany the appearance of any woman in comedy. Neither Boothe’s nor Wasserstein’s is a major achievement, but as solid, successful plays, both tell us a great...
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