Customer Reviews

Miss Lulu Bett: Birth

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Lulu Bett, 34, lives with her sister and brother-in-law, and they have both turned her into a drudge and taken away her self-esteem and confidence. She hastily marries the brother of her brother-in-law, only to learn he was married before and his wife might still be alive. She leaves him and comes home. The abuse continues, only worse: they won't let her tell people the truth about what happened, making her take on the blame. She eventually builds up courage and leaves, to marry quickly again. This second marriage is a major fault in the book - it's too tacked on and hasty. Gale's tone and focus, though, are sharp.

This book is a journey for one woman who seems solidly real while surrounded by outlandish characters. There is something to gain in realizing that part of yourself is found in the title character, and something to learn when she takes her own route forward into the world. The book is outdated, but is still modern in its approach to women's place in society. I highly suggest the reading and research of this understated story. The play is also a worthwhile reading, and piques more interest as it adds a revised ending that was more pleasing to the crowd of the 1920's. It is an added interest that Zona Gale (the author of the book as well as the screenplay) is the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for "Miss Lulu Bett." Overall, Zona Gale is an amazing author, as everything she writes, every little word and sentence, was certainly well thought out and was meant to matter. The book is a trip to the past as well as a peek into a woman's part in life.

Zona Gale's "Miss Lulu Bett" was one of the greatest bestsellers of 1920: this was largely due to its unique style. Gale's prose is very terse: she avoids any kind of effusion, yet her disciplined, minimalistic sentences hint at so much, that there is a huge "weight of the unsaid." This style is appropriate to her subject matter: the lack of communication and the hypocrisy in a typical small town Midwestern family. Her characters always imply more than they say, and their lack of honesty wreaks havoc. Behind their shallow statements lurk desperation and unfulfilled longing. This novel is powerful in its own terse and reticent way.

Dramaturgically scrimpy in dialogue, plot, character development and visualization, Miss Lulu Bett is anything but an American comedy of manners; it is American manure, at best. A jejunely piece of writing, it belongs in a literary purgatory, bouncing back and forth like a ping pong ball with its other run-of-the-mill literary ilk. It is neither evocative nor emotive of the human spirit, human desires or gashing human pains. It is an annoying lump in the stomach that goes nowhere. Hailed by critics and theatre-goers alike (squarely for its stripped emotional armor and restraint) when it debuted in 1921, Miss Lulu Bett eventually garnered the coveted Pulitzer Prize for Drama - a drama that was based on Zona Gale's novel of the same title (which must have been a wonderful reading experience). The play evolves around Miss Lulu Bett, a homely spinster whose life is her servitude to her waspish sister (Ina Deacon) and her hubristic 'man-of-the-house' brother-in-law (Dwight Deacon). Lulu is not goal-oriented, interesting or witty; she is overly ordinary, mousy by degrees and excessively hesitant about everything and anything. And when she does do something extraordinary, i.e. taking control of her life and future, even that seems bland - which was not the intent. Lulu is written in a fashion that is as exciting as staring at a piece of tarp. But in the play, that is precisely her role - to be the protective cloak that covers the exposed areas of vulnerability, and there are many gaping holes in the Deacon household. The writing structure and voice is inelastic and archaic. Like chalk dust, it can be easily blown away and dismissed. As the family doormat, whatever is festering in the family is eventually heaped upon dear, old, reliable, compliant Lulu. As the repetitive ruts within the play's confines march ahead, the drudging cycle is eventually broken when Lulu is introduced to Dwight's charismatic brother, Ninian Deacon, the one glimmer in the whole play. He encourages her to see her 'good' qualities (Were there any to start off with?), then proposes marriage to her in a manner that is neither legitimate or credible. And the fact that the proposal passed off as something plausible is still very questionable. Ultimately, the marriage is not acknowledged or spoken of because of the most absurd circumstances. In her brief union/respit, Lulu finds a kind of independence that she never felt before, and when the marriage is no more, she uses her past marital experience as a catalyst to start a new life away from her annoyingly ungrateful family. Miss Lulu Bett perhaps works better as an insignificant period piece. But as true drama, I don't think so.