Rachel Crothers

Rachel Crothers studio portrait, circa 1895-1915

Studio Portrait of Rachel Crothers 

Portraits of Rachel Crothers, 1878-1958

"Women are learning co-operation...but they work together, not primarily for love of one another, but for achieving an immediate object. I have observed that during my membership in the Civic Federation. Without regard as to liking or disliking, women work beside each other to get things done."
                      
   — Rachel Crothers

Rachel Crothers was an Illinois State University High School alum and a famous playwright. Crothers was born in Bloomington, Illinois December 12, 1878. After graduating from University High School in 1891 at the age of 13, she attended the New England School of Dramatic Instruction in Boston, Massachusetts. After her education in Boston, Crothers returned to Bloomington and founded the Bloomington Dramatic Club. At the age of 19, Crothers moved to Manhattan to pursue a career in acting.

During Crothers' career as a playwright, she focused on creating plays that challenged gender roles and highlighted feminist ideals. A common theme in her work was the unjust treatment of women in marriage and as independents. Crothers was one of the first women in American history to write, stage, and direct plays. Paving the way for future female playwrights, Crothers created several organizations to improve the lives women who followed. Rachel Crothers earned a national achievement award from the Chi Omega Sorority presented by Eleanor Roosevelt on April 25, 1939. Crothers died at her estate in Danbury, Connecticut, in 1958.

From the Dr. JoAnn Rayfield Archives, Illinois State University, Normal, Illinois

1909-1939

1909-1939

Scrapbook Pages with News Clippings About Crothers

Rachel Crothers
1909-1939

Crothers was exactly the kind of voice that formed the underpinnings of the Women's Suffrage Movement. Although she notes here a sense of distance and vague frustration, her creative and financial success, the topics she covers in her plays, and her visibility in society are elements that helped to build the momentum of the movement. Working women are by this time, she notes to be envied rather than pitied. Women's voices are being heard.

From one of the newspaper articles in the scrapbook:
"It is fashion today to say that women have arrived. They aren't; they have a long way to go. What do women think of other women? There are millions, in this country alone, who think nothing of them. There are millions who scarcely think at all, who don't want want to think, except a very little about their clothes and other intensely personal matters. Then those of us who are working creatively, who are trying to see life whole, are too busy to concern ourselves exclusively with woman and her destiny. We're too busy even to devote any large amount of time to suffrage, although all honor to the Suffragists who in five years have turned their cause from a joke into an issue! There is left the small group who are giving themselves to the promotion of woman. They exult over what she has accomplished, but they seem blind, some of them to the immense amount she has yet to do."

Miss Crothers ended, on a note of not unjustified weariness.