Inheritors was first performed in 1921 by members of the Provincetown Players,

a group founded by Susan and her husband, George Cram Cook, which

began as a troupe of amateur actors and grew into one of the foundations for

the American regional theatre movement that began to blossom in the 1960s.

The mission of the Provincetown Players was to produce original plays by

American writers that reflected the American society of their day. Out of

Provincetown would come two prolific and award winning playwrights:

Susan Glaspell and Eugene O’Neill. 

 

Glaspell wrote Inheritors while on sabbatical from the troupe, staying with her

husband in their hometown of Davenport. The Midwestern setting gave her

the inspiration to draw from her family’s own history as settlers of the area and

friends of Black Hawk. Her grandfather, also named Silas, was one of the

inspirations for the Civil War veteran determined to found a college in the play’s

first act. The events that transpire on Morton’s campus reflect Susan’s critiques

of World War I and the Espionage and Sedition Acts that came in its wake. These acts created legal penalties for those who hampered the war effort by criticizing the government and continued into the first Red Scare of the 1920s. With many of her companions being avowed socialists, some of them even journalists for the socialist publication The Masses, Susan knew some of those who were investigated under the Espionage Act and sought to critique these injustices through her work. Inheritors itself was visited by a censor during its original run, though, according to a reviewer, he did not stay long enough past the first act to find anything objectionable.

 

In this production, a decision was made to cast Professor Holden as a woman. While this may appear anachronistic based on how we think of the progress of women’s roles in society, women were holding roles in America’s higher education even in the 19th century. At Cornell College in Mount Vernon, IA, Harriette Jay Cooke became the first woman promoted to a full professorship with the same salary as a man. In his critique of American universities (another inspiration for the events of Inheritors), George Cram Cook mentions two women operating in the higher levels of academia.

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Suggestions for Further Reading

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Ben-Zvi, Linda. Susan Glaspell: Her Life And Times. Oxford Univ Pr, 2007. Print.

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Black, Cheryl. The Women of Provincetown, 1915-1922. U of Alabama, 2002. Print.

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Gainor, J. Ellen. Susan Glaspell in Context: American Theater, Culture and Politics 1915-48. U of Michigan, 2002. Print.

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Glaspell, Susan, Linda Ben-Zvi, and George Cram Cook. The Road to the Temple: A Biography of George Cram Cook. McFarland, 2005. Print.

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Glaspell, Susan, Linda Ben-Zvi, and J. Ellen. Gainor. Susan Glaspell: The Complete Plays. McFarland, 2010. Print.

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Glaspell, Susan, Patricia L. Bryan, and Martha Celeste. Carpentier. Her America: "A Jury of Her Peers" and Other Stories. U of Iowa, 2010. Print.

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The International Susan Glaspell Society. blogs.shu.edu/glaspellsociety Web.

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McCarter, Jeremy. Young Radicals: In the War for American Ideals. Random House, 2017. Print.

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Ozieblo, Bárbara. Susan Glaspell: A Critical Biography. U of North Carolina, 2000. Print.