Henry Becque Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Frank Wadleigh Chandler

Critical Essay by Frank Wadleigh Chandler

SOURCE: Chandler, Frank Wadleigh. “Family Studies.” In Aspects of Modern Drama, pp. 210-22. New York: Macmillan, 1916.

In the following essay, Chandler compares marital relationships in plays by Bjornson, Mirbeau and Barker to Becque's The Vultures (translated by Chandler as The Ravens).

I. The family study an outgrowth of the domestic drama. The family in relation to commercialism, as exhibited by Björnson, Becque, Mirbeau, and Barker: Björnson's A Bankruptcy, a family which has forfeited the higher values of life growing regenerate through a business failure; Becque's The Ravens, a widow and her children becoming the prey of her husband's former business associates; Mirbeau's Business Is Business and Sowerby's Rutherford and Son, the blight of commercialism falling upon a family through the exclusive devotion to business of its head; Barker's The Voysey Inheritance, proposing a problem in practical ethics and answering it in the spirit of Ibsen and Shaw; Barker's The...
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