SOURCE: Ellis, Helen E. “MacLeish and the Nature of Woman.” In The Proceedings of the Archibald MacLeish Symposium, May 7-8 1982, edited by Bernard A. Drabeck, Helen E. Ellis, and Seymour Rudin, pp. 88-95. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1988.

In the following essay, originally presented as a lecture in 1982, Ellis discusses MacLeish's poetic rendering of the nature of women as closer to the “truly true” than the nature of man.

Edward Mullaly points out in his introduction to Six Plays that at the center of MacLeish's work is “an exploration of the nature of man.” Mr. Mullaly, of course, means to include women in that word “man” and thus to say that Mr. MacLeish's work explores the nature of the human. Mr. MacLeish himself frequently uses the word in the same sense, implying that men and women share certain traits that are uniquely human. His exploration of human...