Plays of Beth Henley: A Critical Study

Beth Henley s twelve complete plays (three of which have been turned into films) have achieved worldwide production. At age 29, she produced her first full-length drama, Crimes of the Heart, which won a Pulitzer Prize and garnered three Academy Award nominations as a film. Her Mississippi upbringing and her penchant for the eccentricities of southern culture, however, have caused critics to categorize her writing as a kind of southern gothic folklore inspired by feminist ideology.

This book, the first critical study of Henley s complete plays, attempts to dispel the common stereotypes that associate Henley s work with regional drama and sociological treatises. It argues instead that Henley can best be perceived as a dramatist who delineates an existential despair manifested in various forms of what Freud calls the modern neurosis. The book maintains that Henley s plays must be understood as universal statements about the angst of modern civilization, and Henley s characters are assessed in light of Freud s proposition that cultural restrictions create neurotic individuals. The introduction provides a brief account of Henley s childhood and career. Early chapters summarize the theory of the modern angoisse espoused in Freud s Civilization and Its Discontents, while later chapters relate this theory to thematic and stylistic elements of Henley s most popular play, Crimes of the Heart, as well as Am I Blue, The Wake of Jamie Foster, The Miss Firecracker Contest, The Debutante Ball, The Lucky Spot, Abundance, Signature, Control Freaks, Revelers, L-Play, and Impossible Marriage.

Gene A. Plunka is Professor of English at the University of Memphis, where he teaches modern and contemporary drama. He lives in Bartlett, Tennessee.