Why Marry?

The first Pulitzer Prize for Drama, given 100 years ago, went to a play that is completely forgotten today (except for that prize distinction). Why Marry? by Jesse Lynch Williams, is interesting only as a historical curiosity, although with some judicious pruning it could be an entertaining evening at the theater, as it is at times funny (both intentionally and unintentionally) and an absurd look at state of marriage and divorce a century ago.

The play is about the shifting attitudes about marriage and divorce. At the center are two sisters--Jean, who is proposed to by Rex, a very rich young man who really loves her sister, Helen, a scientist who represents "the new woman." She is in love with her boss, Dr. Ernest Hamilton, but throughout the play they vacillate on whether they want to marry or not.

The sisters' brother, John, represents all the old attitudes, as she is easily angered and shocked by anything outside of tradition. He is always saying things like "Poppycock!" He is married to Lucy, a wife so doting it's almost like slavery. One scene, which seems incongruous, has her telling him off and asking for a divorce.

Two other major characters are the Judge, an older man who is happily divorcing his wife, who is in Reno. He casts a gimlet eye on everything unfolding around him, getting a big kick out of everyone. Theodore, a cousin, is a rector who has the church's attitude about marriage--it is sacred.

Why Marry? is typical of the era with its witty banter. When asked how she made Rex mad, Jean says that she said she was for women's suffrage. Lucy replies, "That gets them every time."  Someone says of Helen, "Men admire these independent women, but they don't marry them. Nobody wants to marry a sexless freak with a scientific degree." And Helen says, "I can't marry Ernest Hamilton. I love him."

The point is made in the play that divorce is getting more common--one out of eleven marriages end with it. Of course, that's fifty percent now, but it was still shocking back then. Williams takes this even further when Helen suggest that she and Ernest have a relationship without marriage--not living together, but having separate abodes. Of course this is beyond the pale, and would exclude them from society. It might even effect their families. But Williams, mindful of the time period, backs off from this at the end.

The third act is fairly ponderous as it gets very serious and Helen changes her mind almost by the second on whether to marry or not. If I were to tackle this play, I'd cut much of it, as it is repetitious, and have the actors perform in a broad, theatrical style, as these characters aren't really real people.

I'd love to know how timely this play was. Williams writes in the foreword of two people who were scandalized by the play, and they were both old. A young person told him, "We are too young to be shocked." Williams notes, "That little incident also struck me as socially significant. There never were two generations inhabiting the same globe simultaneously with such widely separated points of view." Of course, every generation goes through the same thing. Those young people grew up to the stuffy old-timers in the 1950s and 1960s. And so it goes.