Susan and God by Rachel Crothers

First published: 1938

First produced: 1937, at the Plymouth Theatre, New York City

Type of plot: Problem play; women’s

Time of work: A late 1930’s summer

Locale: The country homes of Irene Burroughs and Susan Trexel

Principal Characters:

• Susan Trexel, a charming but controlling thirty-five-year-old woman
• Barrie Trexel, her forty-year-old alcoholic husband
• Blossom Trexel, their fifteen-year-old daughter
• Irene Burroughs, an attractive, almost divorced woman in her late thirties
• Michael O’Hara, her lover in his late thirties
• Charlotte Marley, an unmarried, vital outdoors woman in her mid-thirties
• Leonora Stubbs, a tall, beautiful former actor in her late twenties
• Hutchins “Stubbie” Stubbs, her wealthy husband
• Clyde Rochester, a handsome actor in his late twenties

The Play

Act 1 opens in the glass-enclosed terrace of Irene Burroughs’s country house. As the curtain rises, Irene and Michael O’Hara enter. Concerned about the arrival of Susan Trexel and how she will react if she learns that Michael and Irene are living together, Irene warns Michael to be careful about what he tells Susan. He is annoyed at Irene’s lack of openness. They are interrupted by the arrival of Charlotte Marley, Leonora Stubbs, her husband Stubbie, and Clyde Rochester. It is soon clear that the group is not happy: Stubbie is jealous of the attention Clyde pays to Leonora, Leonora makes fun of Stubbie, and all focus nervously on Susan’s impending arrival. They dissect Susan’s troubled marriage to the alcoholic Barrie Trexel, and Charlotte criticizes Susan’s neglect of her teenage daughter, Blossom.

However, when the charming Susan appears, her friends respond immediately. They are fascinated by Susan’s story of meeting Lady Wiggam, a British woman who has begun a “movement” that emphasizes spiritual contact and a “practical” God. Leonora takes Susan to get settled, and the rest scatter when Susan’s husband, Barrie, arrives with Blossom, whom he has rescued from her lonely boarding school. While Barrie and Blossom wait to see Susan, they talk about Blossom’s dislike of the camp where Susan has sent her every summer. They discuss staying together as a family for the summer, using their own country house. It is clear that this can happen only if Susan agrees. The first scene ends when Irene’s butler lies for Irene, telling Barrie that Susan will not come until the next day. Barrie and Blossom leave together.

Scene 2 opens after dinner, with the group feeling guilty about their treatment of Barrie. Susan is expounding on the importance of being “God conscious.” She creates a problem by urging Clyde to confess his love for Leonora and make something “fine” of it. This sends Stubbie into a jealous rage. Barrie returns, a bit drunk, wanting to talk to Susan. The group distracts him, and Michael and Stubbie take him away just before Susan returns and tries to get her friends to confess their problems to her. Annoyed with her attitude, Michael, Charlotte, and Irene decide to stage a “confession” scene. Michael is in the middle of this when Barrie returns and hears Susan tell Michael that if he asks God for help, he can be “made over.” Barrie challenges her to help him change if she really believes what she is saying.

Act 2 opens the next morning in the guest room where Susan is staying. Barrie confronts Susan about the failure of their marriage and Blossom’s unhappiness. He persuades her to spend the summer as a family in their own country house. When Blossom enters, Barrie gives the reluctant Susan credit for the plan, which thrills their daughter.

In the second scene of act 2 Susan and her friends wonder where Barrie has gone, certain that he is drinking. When he returns, sober, he happily tells Susan that he has been making plans for opening their house. As the Trexels leave, Irene tells Susan that what she is doing is “magnificent”; Susan is less enthusiastic.

Act 3 opens three months later, in Susan’s sitting room in her country house. Irene finds Susan unhappy in spite of the success of the experiment—Barrie has stopped drinking, and Blossom has become a beautiful, sociable, happy young woman. Susan has been organizing two events: a meeting for Lady Wiggam and her movement and a party for Blossom. Having decided that her work is still more important than her marriage, Susan confronts Barrie, trying to push him toward Charlotte and away from their “spiritual” relationship. When she realizes that Blossom’s party conflicts with Lady Wiggam’s meeting, she tells Barrie the movement is more important. Barrie finally stands up to her, telling her she does not know anything about God and is only interested in “the show” and her own selfish excitement.

The final scene opens two days later. Barrie has disappeared; Irene blames Susan for this as well as for Irene’s loss of Michael. She tells Susan to leave others alone and to attend to her own growing problems. Charlotte returns. She has been nursing Barrie, who got drunk after his fight with Susan, and she tells Susan she will go after Barrie if Susan gives him up. Barrie returns, and he and Susan finally reconcile. A contrite Susan recognizes that God is inside them and will help only if they work on their own problems.

Dramatic Devices

Susan and God is a problem play, a realistic drama focused on social issues in the tradition of Henrik Ibsen. It follows the conventions of a well-made play, with complex plot development and characters who are realistically developed both physically and psychologically.

The characters are upper middle class, with enough leisure time to have choices about how they live their lives. The portrayal is sometimes depressingly, and sometimes humorously, realistic—they bicker, whine, play mind games, and mock one another. Yet, they also have genuine friendships and can support one another when the need arises—for example, Charlotte nurses Barrie, and Barrie, when he understands Blossom’s real feelings, works hard to be the kind of supportive parent that she needs. He also recognizes Susan’s importance to Blossom and is careful to portray Susan’s actions in the most positive light possible.

The settings are realistic but also serve a symbolic function. For example, Irene’s terrace room, which features long, wide windows, wooden tubs of ivy, and chintz-covered garden furniture, seems like a part of the outdoors, an ironic point, given the claustrophobic atmosphere of the first scene. The characters are always seen indoors, in the terrace or sitting rooms, and rarely venture out, except to play tennis, ride horses, or drink on the terrace. The settings emphasize their artificial, shallow lifestyle. Even Blossom’s name is ironically symbolic. At first she is ugly and neglected but she later “blossoms” in the company of her parents.

Crothers also enriches the problem aspect of the play by examining religious fraud and alcoholism in addition to women’s issues. She clearly demonstrates that her characters’ problems come from a variety of sources, and she portrays them in a sympathetic light.

Critical Context

Rachel Crothers wrote, directed, and produced plays for almost forty years. Susan and God was her final play. Crothers was interested from her early life in social problem plays, including Ibsen’s Et dukkehjem (pr., pb. 1879; A Doll’s House, 1880; also known as A Doll House). In spite of her family’s objections, she studied acting and taught at New York’s Stanhope-Wheatcroft School, where she began writing plays for her students to perform. Believing in the importance of being trained in stagecraft, she directed, designed, and produced most of the professional productions of her own plays—unusual for any playwright, but astonishing for a woman working in American theater in the first half of the twentieth century. She credited other women in theater for helping her get these opportunities.

Her own experiences led her to focus on feminist heroines throughout her career. Her early plays portray women as reformers. He and She (1920) is the best known of these plays, featuring protagonist Ann Herford beating her husband in an important competition for an artistic commission, then being forced to choose between her child and her work.

From 1914 to 1919, Crothers wrote a series of sentimental plays with more conventional women characters. In the 1920’s, she returned to a feminist perspective, but with comic rather than dramatic protagonists. Her last four plays, including Susan and God, are more complicated, as was the status of the feminist heroine in the 1930’s. These final plays focus on the new challenges for women, who had more choices but still found fulfillment difficult to achieve. Crothers’s heroines of this period take a long-needed look at the idealized man and consider more honestly the relationships they have with men, with children, and with their careers. Crothers also examined the importance of women’s relationships with other women.

Rachel Crothers’s examination of the double standard and of the independent woman’s search for her place in society remain timely. Crothers understood these were complex issues without easy answers, and her best plays reflect that understanding.

Sources for Further Study

Abramson, Doris. “Rachel Crothers: Broadway Feminist.” In Modern American Drama: The Female Canon, edited by June Schleuter. London: Associated University Presses, 1990.

Friedman, Sharon. “Feminism as Theme in Twentieth-Century Women’s Drama.” American Studies 25 (1984): 69-89.

Gottlieb, Lois. “Looking to Women: Rachel Crothers and the Feminist Heroine.” In Women in American Theatre, edited by Helen Krich Chinoy and Linda Walsh Jenkins. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1987.

Gottlieb, Lois. Rachel Crothers. Boston: Twayne, 1979.

Lindroth, Colette, and James Lindroth. Rachel Crothers: A Research and Production Sourcebook. New York: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1995.

Sutherland, Cynthia. “American Women Playwrights as Mediators of the ‘Woman Problem.’” Modern Drama 21 (1978): 319-336.