Periodicals that Filled the Silences: The Case of New Woman on Stage and the New Reviews

One needs no allusion or reference to argue that the role of women in theatre has been minimal as in most other discourses. There is not much difference in her role as spectator, actor, playwright or back stage artist. While this being the fact, the documentation in the histories of the very few women who could ‘trespass’ into this domain of male domination has been more pathetic. While major histories written by men virtually omitted the case of women, many celebrated women historians were reluctant to include those women theatre activists who do not satisfy their standards of ‘femininity.’ By the last decades of the Victorian era, a shift in social attitudes regarding gender relations was happening in England and elsewhere. This was marked by a constant move away from the accepted pattern of male supremacy and female dependence towards the new pattern of gender equality.

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