My purpose in this work is to examine the major social problems with which the playwrights of the decade between 1930 and 1940 have dealt.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 226-238). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Virginia, 1923. / Autographed on one side of leaf only from typewritten copy. Bibliography: numb. leaves [i]-xv.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Florida State University, 2003. / Advisor: Dr. John Degen, Florida State University, School of Theater. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Sept. 29, 2003). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2003. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 261-271). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Kentucky, 2003. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on May 7, 2006). Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 62-68).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2003. / Title from first page of PDF file. Document formatted into pages; contains vii, 233 p. Includes abstract and vita. Advisor: Stratos E. Constantinidis, Dept. of Theatre. Includes bibliographical references (p. 214-233).

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Edward Albee's late-career plays contain realistic characters who struggle to create identities for themselves in an America still clinging to misbegotten cultural ideals of the 1950s (e.g. power, money, the "perfect" family). This thesis seeks to give these relatively unexamined later plays the attention they deserve. Therein, Albee's conception of the American Dream is defined through an analysis of essays on post-World War II American domestic social attitudes. The playwright's biography is also examined. I then discuss Albee's stylistic and thematic groundwork by way of criticism of several early plays (The Zoo Story, The American Dream, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), followed by original textual analysis of three later plays (Three Tall Women, The Play About the Baby, The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?) in an attempt to uncover how Albee's comment on American cultural mythology has changed since the beginning of his career.

Despite the growing feminist discourse in America, ageism continues to be a problem, partially due to stereotypical representations of aging women in the media and in literature. This thesis examines the portrayals of aging women in four American dramas: Zona Gale’s Miss Lulu Bett, Edward Albee’s The American Dream and The Sandbox, and Tracey Letts’ August: Osage County. Each of the aging matriarchs in these dramas plays a different role within her family structure; however, all employ others’ perceptions of them as a means of gaining or keeping control over their own situation. Chapter 1 examines Mrs. Bett from Zona Gale’s Miss Lulu Bett, and how she uses the way she is perceived by her family as a means of helping her daughter, even though her own fate is set. Chapter 2 explores the character Grandma from Edward Albee’s The American Dream and The Sandbox, and the ways in which Grandma uses her family’s perception of her, as well as her own rhetoric about aging, to establish her own selfdefinition. Chapter 3 discusses Violet, the matriarch of the family in Tracey Letts’s August: Osage County, and how she uses the way her family perceives her as a way to control the family’s destruction.