Ethnicity And Gender In Adrienne Kennedy’s The Owl Answers (1965).

Résumé: This dissertation attempts to study Ethnicity and gender in Adrienne Kennedy’s play The Owl Answers (1965). The aim is to provide an analysis of the way the playwright reveals how the intersection of Ethnicity and gender contributed to the marginalization of black women in the American society. To achieve this aim we have borrowed Kimberlé Crenshaw’s theory of Intersectionality developed in her book: Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex (1989). In the first chapter, we have examined the socio-historical context of the 1960s. We have argued that the major events of the era had inspired and influenced the playwright’s work, and that this period had excluded black women from social, economic, and political institutions. In the second chapter, our study focuses on the issue of intersectionality in relation to Kennedy’s female protagonist Clara Passmore, who keeps struggling against both racial discrimination and sexism. Our main argument is that this intersection has led her to be marginalized from American society because of being “black” and a “woman” at the same time. After analyzing the work from the perspective of “intersectionality”, we have deduced that the playwright’s antiracist feelings stand for the call for black women’s equal status in society.

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