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

arrogant attitude, and even her hunger for power is just as ravenous as the professor's. In exchange for withdrawing her accusations against the professor, she intends to ban all his books from the university curriculum, an unacceptable ultimatum for the professor. As a result he will be dismissed from his post. Adopting the "parodying double" role, the women characters in the above plays succeed in subverting the initial hierarchical order that ascribes subordinated position to them in patriarchy. With the exception of Karen, who can only momentarily invert the patriarchal structure, dr. Ford and Carol are able to confirm their newly gained empowerment and assume not only their former oppressors' discourse and value system but also their dominant positions. "The new woman" gains power by embracing male values such as deception, venality, hypocrisy, violence, and transgression of rules and laws. Yet, she is at a transitory stage, the ambivalent nature of which can be elucidated by Simone de Beauvoir's note concerning this stage in the new woman's evolvement: "disguised as a man she feels herself as ill at ease in her flesh as in her masculine garb" (10). Arguably, the comic aspect of parody, inherently present in the "parodying double" role, is gradually muffled and reduced almost to a minimum in the portrayal of Mamet's women characters, and especially in the family plays. Nevertheless, the shift in the nature of parody from loud to "reduced laughter" (Bakhtin 166) or bitter irony does not lessen either the importance or the legitimacy of the parodying double role of the women characters. As Bakhtin asserts, "reduced laughter in carnivalized literature by no means excludes the possibility of somber colors within a work" (166). In the third phase, extending from the mid-1990s up to the present time (2002) two major works, The Cryptogram (1994), and The Old Neighborhood (1997)—comprising three short plays, The Disappearence of the Jews, Jolly, and Deeny

—display thematic shifts from the public into the private realms of life. Family life becomes foregrounded and, following the conventions of the American family plays by Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams, and Arthur Miller, the domestic setting is the locale where the characters' lives unfold and their relationships are played out. While the women protagonists in the canonical forefathers' family plays could retain their vigor as well 42