The Role of Women
Of all of the characters in the play Dorothea’s life is the most heavily shaped by the changing women’s right movement. Here is a brief overview of some of the major historical events that would have shaped Dorothea’s life.
Woman Suffrage and Birth Control
At age 11 in 1920 Dorothea witnessed women gaining the right to vote. During this time period women started asking for even more rights.
Margaret Sanger was an advocate for women’s birth control. In 1912 she started writing a weekly newspaper column call “What Every Girl Should Know” aiming to educate more women about reproduction and birth control. In 1921 she founded The American Birth Control League, which we know today as Planed Parenthood. The Birth Control movement during this time period may have been one of the influence. Dorothea would have been exposed to some of these ideas as she was growing up and this may be part of the reason why she is so willing for Artie to have an abortion.
The Roaring 20’s
Dorothea came of age during the Roaring 20’s. During the roaring 20’s women known as flappers were dismantling traditional gender roles. Flappers worse short skirts, had short hair and wore makeup. Flappers were made up primarily of middle class women from northern states. The rise of the flappers was in part because of the number of men who died during World War I, there were now openings in the work force that women wanted to fill. Dorothea may have been a part of the flapper movement while she was growing up, how ever any involvement she had with the flappers would have ended when she was married. Dorothea would have had a taste of some of the new found freedoms that other women were finding before having it ripped away from her.
World War II
During World War II women made up 35% of the work force. Dorothea’s class worked against her in this instance. We know that she is rich, upper class women. During World War II many women had to get work outside of the house because their husbands were off at War. However as Dorotheas husband was so wealthy he might may have been able to avoid the Draft and avoid being sent off to war. Even if her husband was enlisted in the military she would not have needed to get a job to support herself and her children, and it may have been deemed improper her for her to work because of her class. Dorothea lived in a time when she other women were making lives for them selves outside of the home, something Dorothea longed to do, how her husband and her standing in society would have prevented her from doing this.
Eleemosynary 