The Women by Clare Boothe Luce

First published: 1937

First produced: 1936, at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, New York City

Type of plot: Satire; women’s

Time of work: The 1930’s

Locale: New York City and Reno, Nevada

Principal Characters:

• Mary Haines, a society wife and mother
• Sylvia Fowler, a society wife and malicious gossip
• Edith Potter, a pregnant society wife
• Nancy Blake, a professional writer
• Little Mary, the daughter of Mary and Stephen Haines
• Mrs. Morehead, Mary Haines’s mother
• Crystal Allen, Stephen Haines’s mistress
• Peggy Day, a recently married society girl
• Countess de Lage, an aging society woman
• Jane, Mary’s Irish American maid
• Maggie, Mary’s cook
• Miriam, a flashy young woman involved with Sylvia’s husband

The Play

The first act of this two-act play, presented in seven scenes, shows the destruction of Mary Haines’s marriage. When the curtain opens, Mary is absent. Four women sit playing bridge, smoking and gossiping as Sylvia Fowler complains about her husband. He expects her to stay home and keep house despite their wealth and servants. The other players include the young Peggy; Nancy, a writer; and Edith, a colorless and sloppy woman unhappily pregnant. When Edith leaves the room, Sylvia tells the others of Edith’s husband’s unfaithfulness. Sylvia has also heard that Stephen Haines has a mistress. By the end of the scene, Sylvia plans to take Mary to the beauty shop, where Mary will hear about her husband. The second scene takes place in that shop. Nancy, a professional woman whose next book, she later suggests, will be titled Gone with the Ice-Man or Sex Has No Place in the Home, tries to convince Mary that appearance does not matter if a man loves a woman, but Mary accepts the superficial values of her other friends. She stays, and a manicurist, making conversation, reveals Stephen’s affair with Crystal Allen. In the third scene, in Mary’s sitting room, her mother, Mrs. Morehead, tries to persuade her to ignore the affair. Mrs. Morehead whisks her daughter off to Bermuda.

In the fourth scene, two months later, Mary has returned and meets Crystal in a dressmaker’s shop. Sylvia, upset by Mary’s acceptance of the situation, hints that Crystal will alienate the affections of Mary’s children. This is pure malice: In a later scene, it is obvious that Crystal wants nothing to do with the Haines children. Sylvia’s suggestion, however, causes Mary to ignore her mother’s advice and to confront Crystal. Sylvia keeps Mary’s friends informed, and, in scene 5, in a beauty shop, Edith reveals that she told a newspaper gossip columnist about the Haines’s marriage. She claims to have forgotten she was talking with a gossip columnist. The affair now is made public, and Mary feels compelled to confront Stephen. In scene 6, Mary’s maid, an Irish American girl, Jane, and the new cook, Maggie, discuss the confrontation during which Mary felt it necessary to ask for a divorce. Marriage, Maggie points out, exists for the family, not for the pleasure of husband and wife. By scene 7, however, Mary is packed to leave for Reno, Nevada, then the only American city where divorces could be obtained easily and relatively quickly. She does not want a divorce, but, thanks to her friends and the values of her social world, she feels she must obtain one.

The second act, made up of five scenes, begins in the room where Edith is recovering from childbirth. She complains of her misery. Her nurse cannot persuade Edith to refrain from smoking while nursing, so Edith carelessly drips cigarette ash onto the head of her newborn. Peggy enters to explain that she and her husband are getting a divorce and that Howard Fowler has thrown the unfaithful Sylvia out of the house. In the second scene, the women meet again in Reno, where they are joined by the Countess de Lage, who is looking for a fourth husband although two of her earlier husbands have tried to murder her. Miriam, a flashy young girl, advises the countess to take her current boyfriend Buck to Hollywood and make him a star. Sylvia enters, complaining about her abandonment, but a gossip column reveals that her husband will marry Miriam. Sylvia physically attacks Miriam. Mary throws out Sylvia. Peggy has announced that she is pregnant, so Mary calls Peggy’s husband and sends Peggy back to New York. When Stephen calls Mary, she is prepared to admit the divorce is an error, but it is too late. He is to marry Crystal the next day.

The last three scenes take place back in New York. The first is set in Crystal’s trashily decorated bathroom, where she is talking on the phone to Buck, her lover and the countess’s new husband. She also makes plans for Stephen, whether Stephen likes the plans or not, and tries to force Little Mary into a show of affection. Instead, the child criticizes Crystal’s vulgar taste and reveals Stephen’s increasing dissatisfaction. Sylvia, prowling in Crystal’s bedroom, finds a key to the apartment where Crystal meets her lover, recognizing the key because Sylvia and her own lover met at the same place.

The fourth scene takes place in Mary’s bedroom. It has been two years since Mary and her friends have gone Reno, and they have just returned from an anniversary dinner. The other women want to go on to a nightclub, but Mary, who, to the despair even of her mother, is still mourning the loss of Stephen, refuses to go out until Little Mary enters and reveals that Crystal is having an affair with Buck and that Stephen is unhappy. Mary gets out of bed and dresses, and the final scene takes place in the women’s lounge of the Casino Roof nightclub. The countess is hysterical, having discovered that Buck is unfaithful. Mary tricks Crystal into revealing that she is Buck’s lover. Ignoring what they themselves have done, Crystal and Sylvia both scold Mary for underhanded behavior, but Mary has finally taken her life into her own hands. She bares her bright red, clawlike fingernails at them and goes out to reclaim Stephen as the play ends.

Dramatic Devices

Luce was an admirer of Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, even visiting Shaw at his home in England. Shaw’s Candida: A Mystery (pr. 1897, pb. 1898) was among her favorite plays, and Mary, in her warmth, home-centered values, and sympathy for others, strongly resembles Shaw’s heroine. While Candida’s marriage is threatened by a young artist who wants to save the heroine from the boring life of middle-class marriage, in Luce’s play the enemies of marriage are more impersonal. Sylvia, Edith, and Crystal resemble the figures of a medieval morality play. Sylvia embodies the traditional sin of envy: Discontented with herself, her husband, and her life, she enviously tries to destroy the happiness of others. Edith is a figure for laziness, traditionally called sloth: Her unwanted pregnancies, her inadvertent talk with the gossip columnist, and her sloppy appearance and behavior betray a person who cannot exert herself to care about others. Crystal embodies greed. The helpless anger of the poor is made understandable through many of the minor characters, but Crystal wants more than just survival; she wants wealth, pleasure, lovers, and to see the last of Little Mary. The minor characters who share their hardships and misery constitute a traditional dramatic chorus.

Critical Context

The original production was not favorably reviewed by New York critics, who generally focused on the upper-class characters. Most found the play unpleasant. Nonetheless, the play ran for 657 performances, commanding record attendance from audiences. This was followed by a twenty-city tour, frequent revivals, and film and television productions. Viewers, unlike the critics, apparently recognized the social satire. In real life, Luce acted out the beliefs expressed in the play. Born out of wedlock, to a poor letter copier and an unsuccessful piano salesman, Luce could have settled into the role of pampered wife after her marriage to wealthy alcoholic George Tuttle Brokaw or her second marriage to Time magazine publisher Harry R. Luce. Instead, although her first divorce settlement made it unnecessary for her to work, she worked for Vogue and Vanity Fair magazines, and continued her career after her second marriage.

By the time of her death, Luce had written other plays and Hollywood scenarios, served as a war correspondent during World War II, entered Congress as a liberal Republican (in 1944, she was considered a possible vice-presidential candidate), and served as a U.S. ambassador to Italy. Her life registered her contempt for women preoccupied with personal pleasures. This contempt for a leisured and irresponsible class is depicted, in lighter tone, in stories published as Stuffed Shirts (1933) and, with deepening earnestness, in such anti-fascist plays as Kiss the Boys Goodbye (pr. 1938, pb. 1939), in which southern aristocracy is specifically associated with Nazism.

Sources for Further Study

Fearnow, Mark. Clare Boothe Luce: A Research and Production Sourcebook. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1995.

Lyons, Joseph. Clare Boothe Luce. New York: Chelsea House, 1989.

Martin, Ralph G. Henry and Clare: An Intimate Portrait of the Luces. New York: G. P. Putnam, 1991.

Morris, Sylvia Jukes. Rage for Fame: The Ascent of Clare Boothe Luce. New York: Random House, 1997.

Shadegg, Stephen. Clare Boothe Luce: A Biography. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970.

Weintraub, Rodelle, ed. “The Gift of Imagination: An Interview with Clare Boothe Luce.” In Fabian Feminist: Bernard Shaw and Women. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1977.