Over the years an important aspect of my quest has been to find a new script for women. We all know the old scripts. On the one hand there’s the love script that is still so prevalent today in all forms of popular culture, some form of Sleeping Beauty or even Pygmalion, a woman being rescued or saved by the love of a man. Or the self-destructive script, the female protagonist in The Black Swan, for example. Women who try to have it all, to be as Gwen John described herself “a woman with love in her life” but also have some sort of creative outlet are doomed to failure. In late 19th century texts, women who attempted to have an autonomous sexual life always had to die, like the protagonist in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, or in the play by Victoria Benedictsson, The Enchantment.
Hence, I was utterly delighted to come across two plays by the twentieth century writer, K. Githa Sowerby, whom I’d never even heard of before: Rutherford and Son (1912) and The Stepmother (1924). Both productions were excellent and engrossing, although played in very different venues and hence with differing feels. In both plays, Sowerby offers female characters who gain personal power in the changing world of the early 20th century, through challenging the tyrannical face of patriarchal control. But in the later play Sowerby pushed towards a much more definitively positive script for her female protagonist and also for the young women around her, her stepdaughters. Whereas in Rutherford and Son the power gained is equivocal and involves a big risk and compromise, in The Stepmother we are presented with an image of a woman who is able to achieve financial success and independence. She loses her husband, but that’s for the better in many ways.
Rutherford and Son is based on details of Sowerby’s family. An autocratic male figure has built up a glass-works company in the north of England, but in so doing he has managed to alienate all of his children – a weak son who has returned home with his wife of a lower class and their infant son, another son who is a member of the clergy, and a daughter who is known for her sharp tongue but who, it turns out, is carrying on an affair with Rutherford’s foreman, a stalwart employee of 25 years. The household, like that of The Stepmother includes a “maiden aunt,” in each case a female figure who reinforces the values of the patriarchy and women’s tradition roles within it, particularly their financial dependence. From the beginning, the Rutherford household is pictured as a loveless environment, and we see how the whole family both quakes and sits in submissive silence when John Rutherford returns home for dinner.
The plot revolves around a formula for metal that the weak son has devised and believes will give him his fortune independent of his father, and intertwines with the outing of the affair between the daughter and foreman. Rutherford tricks the foreman into revealing the formula and then fires him for carrying on the affair. In the end, the son flees the country leaving his wife and child behind, the foreman who once he has been discovered no longer is interested in the daughter and berates himself for being a disloyal employee, and the daughter, realizing that her alleged great love was an illusion, walks down the road alone wrapped in her shawl.
In the end Mary, the wife of Rutherford’s son, the most mousy, seemingly most passive character, is the only one who stays and stands up to him. She is driven by her desire to seek position for her own child, and she boldly offers to make a deal with Rutherford - she will raise the child for his first ten years and then after that Rutherford can have him to train as the heir to his business. To make her offer she moves her chair from the side of the table to the end opposite Rutherford, literally moving from a subordinate to a more prominent position. During the conversation she comments that this is only time in the months she’s been living in his house that he has deigned to converse with her, and that he can continue to ignore if he likes. She also makes it clear that because she is a woman who has worked, she understands that the wealth he has achieved is way beyond what she could hope to earn by herself, that the advantages that would accrue to her child through Rutherford’s wealth and position far surpass those she could provide for him using her own limited skills on the open market. Her transformation and growth is dramatic and palpable, one of the thrills of the play.
But it strikes me that her bargain is fraught with risk and compromise. Not only is she consigning herself to stay under a cold and loveless roof (albeit one that includes free food and shelter for her and her child), but she is wagering that the ten years of her tutelage will be able to counter-balance Rutherford’s toxicity. After all, he is a man who has ruined all the people who have been around him for any length of time. Although she has the wit and presence of mind to seize the moment and better her position, she still remains under his financial thumb.
The Stepmother revolves around Lois Relph who initially, also, seems to hold a weak position, the companion of Eustace’s recently deceased sister, who is about to be cast out on her own. The sister has left Lois her fortune, however, and although Eustace tricks her into letting him manage it and ultimately into marrying him, by the time the second act opens, we see that she has used the money to make good for herself, establishing a thriving business in haute couture.
As the play develops, Lois becomes a progressively stronger character whereas Eustace shows himself to be weak, conniving, a spendthrift who is living off her earnings and good financial management. Lois is also clearly beloved as the stepmother to Eustace’s two motherless daughters, and she intervenes and facilitates on behalf of the eldest who wants to marry a young man whose father has a very low opinion of Eustace. The fact that the stepdaughters admire her, like her, and want to protect her feelings is yet another way in which Sowerby proposes a different script, the idea of the wicked stepmother being deeply embedded in western mythos.
And although Lois “strays” and there is a certain degree of hand-wringing around her having slept with her neighbor - and in fact Eustace uses that as a means of tormenting her – her “transgression” does not ruin her life. Peter her lover is waiting in the wings for Eustace to decamp, in a reversal the older step-daughter now facilitates their relationship, and the play concludes with the three female protagonists sitting down to tea, that well-established means of domestic bonding among women.
Whereas in Rutherford and Son the patriarchy lives and is still viable – the strong female character secures a place for herself and her child within it under the protection of a male who maintains financial control – in The Stepmother the economic stability is matriarchal. Lois inherits her money outside of the expected path for the transmission of wealth, from a woman with whom she had an emotional bond; she uses her inheritance wisely to the common good of the family into which she marries; she works hard to earn her own money to maintain and expand the inherited wealth; and she continues to support herself and her stepdaughters, and even provides the financial assurance that will allow one of them to make the marriage of her heart.
Furthermore, in this new script for women, men also fare better. The male characters in Rutherford and Son are all flawed, most despicable. In The Stepmother however, while the traditional patriarch is shown to be a weak-willed, conniving wastrel, the other male characters are far more nuanced. The reluctant prospective father-in-law correctly sees Eustace’s flawed character, and the two love-interests seem to be decent and sympathetic sorts. In fact, Sowerby presents not only a new script for women but also for relationships between the sexes.
NB: I saw The Stepmother at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond, and Rutherford and Son at the Rose Theatre, Kingston, Surrey in March 2013
