THEMES: Family RelationshipsThemes:War as BusinessVirtue in WartimeMusicBusiness practicesCapitulationMaternitySymbolsThemes:The Sacrificial Role of WomenParental and Filial ObligationsThe Unreliability of AppearancesNora’s Definition of FreedomLettersSymbols:The Christmas TreeNew Year’s DayAnalysis:Family Drama, TragedyThemes:The Incomprehensibility of the WorldThe Difficulty of Making Meaningful ChoicesThe Relationship Between Life and the StageMotifsShakespeare’s HamletThe Lord’s PrayerGamblingSymbolsThe CoinsThe BoatMiss Lulu BettGeneral Background: Miss Lulu Bett is a 1920 novel by American writer Zona Gale, and later adapted for the stage. It was a bestseller at the time of its initial publication, but gradually fell out of favor with changing tastes and social conditions.Synoposis: Lulu Bett and her mother live with her sister, Ina, and brother-in-law, Dwight, and their two daughters - Diana, an older teenager, and a younger daughter, Monona, the typical pesky adolescent. Lulu is the housekeeper, cook and all-around "drudge" for the household and, although a relative, is treated with no more compassion than hired help and possibly with more disdain.Her domineering brother-in-law apparently takes great pleasure in cruel teasing, even his own children. His teasing toward Lulu is a constant reminder that she is notattractive and has no suitors. One day Dwight's world-traveling brother, Ninian, comes along after 20 years absence and falls for Lulu. Basically as an "I'll show you"reaction to her brother-in-law's teasing, she agrees to Ninian's marriage proposal. Later, however, he reveals that his wife left him 15 years ago, and he is not sure if she is alive or not. Lulu decides to go back home rather than risk living with a bigamist.This only intensifies the difficult situation at home as she has now embarrassed the family, a fact Dwight wants to keep quiet. The handsome schoolteacher, Neil Cornish, begins to show an interest in her, but Dwight does not approve - after all, Lulu may still be married. Lulu tells Neil about her marriage and the dilemma of not knowing if she's legally married or not. This does not dissuade him, and he continues to see Lulu.Diana is just as dissatisfied with the home as Lulu and decides to elope with Bobby Larkin. When Lulu learns of this, she goes to the train station and convinces Diana to come home. She promises not to tell Diwght and Ina. At home Diana has gone to her room, when Dwight and Ina come in and see Lulu wearing her hat and holding Diana's suitcase. They immediately assume she is running away with Neil and beginto berate her for trying to further disgrace the family. Dwight orders her to leave. Lulu's life seems to be crashing down all around her - she doesn't know if she's legally married or not, she can't return Neil's love for her, and she has no home or means of income.The novella's original ending—which saw Lulu wedded to a neighbor after her first "marriage" was voided by her "husband's" prior marriage—was changed so that Lulu went off in the world on her own, telling her family, "I thought I wanted someone of my own—but maybe it was just myself I wanted." Gale asserted she hadchanged the novella's ending because it would stretch the audience's credulity to have one woman marry two men in the course of two hours. However, the second ending caused an uproar among theater-goers, who craved a happy resolution. Obligingly, Gale wrote a new ending in which Lulu's first marriage turns out to be legitimate and she and her husband are happily reunited. The audience, if not the critics, were thus satisfied, and Miss Lulu Bett went on to enjoy a successful run andimmense popularity. For this play, Gale became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama.Despite the controversy over the ending, Miss Lulu Bett shows a woman who makes the choice to assert her identity and independence. As such, the play conveyed Gale's feminist politics, which she made an important part of her fictional work. The play also is significant in Gale's body of work, marking her transition from sentimental works of fiction to more realistic, sharp-edged works of fiction. Miss Lulu Bett can be found in Plays by American Women, 1900–1930 (1990), edited by Judith Barlow.THEMES: Family RelationshipsThe play is set within the Deacon family home, where three generations of the Bett-Deacon family live together. Dwight regularly extols the virtues of family life and relationships, speaking often of the solidarity among kin. He remarks that people "don't know what living is if they don't belong in a little family circle," crows of "the joys of family life as Ina and I live it," and speaks in platitudes such as there is "no place like home." However, the way the family members treat each other belies his words. For fifteen years, Dwight and Ina have used Lulu like a household drudge. Inaberates her for burning Monona's toast and Dwight berates her for spending his money—25 cents of it—on fresh flowers.Dwight also uses the sanctity of the family to make others submit to his will. He orders Lulu not to let the townspeople know that Ninian may be a bigamist because of the disgrace that it will bring upon himself and his family: "What about my pride?"he asks Lulu. "Do you think I want everyone to know that my brother did a thing likethat?" Despite this rhetoric, Dwight is convinced that Ninian made up the story about a previous marriage to get free from a life with Lulu. …Impact: Gale received the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for drama for this work.Link to the play: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10429/10429-h/10429-h.htmThe OresteiaBackground: Written by Aeschylus. Aeschylus was the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays can still be read or performed, the others being Sophocles and Euripides. He is often described as the father of tragedy. Our knowledge of the genre begins with his work and our understanding of earlier tragedies is largely based on inferences from his surviving plays. According to Aristotle, he expanded the number of characters in plays to allow conflict among them whereas characters previously had interacted only with the chorus. Synoposis: A generation before the Trojan War, two brothers, Atreus and Thyestes, contended for the throne of Argos. Thyestes seduced his brother's wife and was driven out of Argos by Atreus, who then established himself as sole king. Eventually Thyestes returned and asked to be forgiven.