Author

Caren Carr

Date of Award

12-1-1986

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Theater

First Advisor

Dr. Cindy Melby Phaneuf

Abstract

This is a guide to survival in a hostile environment. The hostile environment is the patriarchy, the tools for survival are new conceptual patterns, and a guide to their use is found within the works of feminist playwrights. At the core of feminist thought is the mandate to change our way of thinking. The feminist point of view holds that the patriarchy is dangerous, not just to women, or feminists, but to the planet, and one of the fundamentals of the patriarchy is a rational, logical, linear, consciousness. In order to change this environment, feminists assert, a change in consciousness is necessary. The alternative includes intuitive associative, and arrational ways of thinking, and taken together, these can be called a nonlinear consciousness. A world in which a nonlinear consciousness is valued is certainly a goal of feminism, but feminism is also very much a process as well. Nonlinear consciousness can be used in the present in order to survive within and beyond the patriarchy. I assert that an examination of feminist plays offer nonlinear strategies for survival.

Comments

A Thesis Presented to the Department of Dramatic Arts and the Faculty of the Graduate College University of Nebraska In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts University of Nebraska at Omaha. Copyright 1986 Caren Carr.

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