Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2001. [Vol. 7.] Eger Journal of American Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 27)
Studies - Lenke Németh: David Mamet's Women Characters: Conceptions and Misconceptions
the women protagonists that Mamet actually offers a profound critical angle on an America that is falling apart. With reference to a corpus of six plays and one screenplay by Mamet, I will demonstrate the "parodying double" role of the women characters. Based on a tendency of rendering the women characters with increasing subtlety over the past few years, Mamet's dramatic output lends itself to a division into periods. Thus, I distinguish three phases: the early plays in which the women are treated as objects of male desire; the second stage of the so called "business plays" with the appearance of a "new woman" who does not merely challenge but also subverts male dominance; and finally, "family plays" with women situated in a domestic environment. The three stages I propose come to full circle in terms of the sites where the women characters' lives unfold: there seems to be a movement from the private realm of life into the public and a shift back again to the private domain. Also, the three phases testify significant shifts in the author's gender focus. The first phase extending from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s includes predominantly all-male cast plays such as Lakeboat (1970), The Duck Variations (1976), A Life in the Theater (1977), American Buffalo (1975), Glengarry Glen Ross (1983); also, plays where women appear only as sex objects of male desire as in Sexual Perversity in Chicago , The Woods (1977) or are simply family members as in Reunion (1976). Even in the early plays with women characters in them, Chicago and The Woods , the apparently stereotypical female protagonists debunk conventional sexual roles ascribed to them by patriarchal society. Through the subversion of a former male-centered sexual myth, "[t]he birthright priority whereby males rule females" (Mil lett 25), the women characters expose their traditional role as objects of male perception and desire. They revolt against being treated as sex objects by, ironically, objectifying their male counterparts. In Chicago , two woman characters act as the "parodying doubles" of Bernie, a loudmouth male chauvinist who keeps bragging about his sexual performance. A nameless off-stage woman character and Joan, one of the on-stage women protagonists, adopt male role models in their acts and discourse whereby they expose and challenge the male prerogative to sexually subordinate women. The objectification and 39
