Thornton Wilder - "The Skin of our Teeth". The female characters of the play

Isabel Zosig

• Publisher: GRIN Verlag
• Year: 2004
• Edition: 0
• eBook ISBN:
  9783638249843
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: North American Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 2 (B), University of Bamberg (Centre for British Studies), language: English, abstract: When Wilder's "The Skin of our Teeth" first came to the stage in 1942, the audiencehad difficulty understanding the play. Many of them left the theatre before the 3rd Acthad started. The audience hadn't shared the same background as Wilder and one couldsay that they weren't ready for his play yet. However, most of the critics favoured thenew play and Wilder received his third Pulitzer Prize for it."The Skin of our Teeth" is strongly influenced by Wilder's experience of two WorldWars and his visit of English cities, which had been destroyed by German bombs, in1941, where he was astonished by the "almost amused bewilderment"1 the Britishshowed whilst facing the disasters of war.2During the late 1930s Wilder studied the works of James Joyce and admits that "TheSkin of our Teeth" is "deeply indebted to James Joyce's Finnegans Wake"3, whilstcritics called it "an American re-creation, thinly disguised"4 with reference to theJoycean novel. He borrowed ideas from many other authors like André Obey.A second source of inspiration, every bit as important to "The Skin of our Teeth" asthe highbrow "Finnegan's Wake", was the lowbrow, popular entertainment of the day: the burlesque. Especially the work of the American comedians Olsen and Johnsonshows a certain affinity to Wilder's play.Wilder did not see himself as an innovator, but a man who tried to keep the craft ofwriting alive."I am not an innovator, but a rediscoverer of forgotten goods and I hope a removerof obtrusive bric á brac"51 Erwin Häberle, Das szenische Werk Thornton Wilders (Heidelberg 1967) pp. 912 ibid. pp. 91-1073 Thornton Wilder, Our Town and Other Plays (1962) p.144 Rex Burbank, Thornton Wilder (Boston 1961), p.1015 Thorton Wilder, Our Town and Other Plays (1962), p.14