Understanding Beth Henley (Understanding Contemporary American Literature)

by Robert J. Andreach

"Beth Henley remains best known for Crimes of the Heart. In this introduction to the Mississippi-born playwright and her body of work, Robert J. Andreach presents Henley's plays as a unified whole, considering both her more accessible work of the 1980s and the commonly misunderstood - and often overlooked - plays of the 1990s. Andreach fills the gap in scholarship about the later plays and, in doing so, argues that they recast familiar themes, images, and motifs into new modes of self-discovery and expression." "Andreach's analysis features close readings of Henley's entire corpus. He positions her final three works of the 1990s as a trilogy that reconciles differing modes of self-discovery."--Jacket.