THE POWER IN THE TEXT READING WOMEN WRITING DRAMA

This essay looks at texts by women dramatists from around the turn of the last century. One of them, Elsa Bernstein‐Porges, was well‐known in her day and has to some extent survived in literary histories. The other two, Gertrud Prellwitz and Julie Ktihne, have remained almost entirely unknown. The ambiguity in the title is deliberate. I consider the effects of a masculinist literary discourse on women who wrote drama ‐ traditionally the ‘masculine’ genre ‐ as well as the importance of the ideological position and experience of the reader in any assessment of literary ‘value’. This leads me to try to analyse what it is that makes a text powerful ‐ a moving or exciting reading experience ‐ and to consider the significance of this in the context of feminist literary criticism.