Inheritors

Original Author: Mark Hurty, ENG348 FL09 Revision:  The main characters in the first act are Silas Morton, his mother and Felix Fejevary. Silas and Felix arrive home from some kind of ceremony celebrating the Civil War. (They’re both veterans and dressed in their uniforms.) The play is set in a town that strongly resembles Davenport.
 * Glaspell’s Inheritors **

Gainor's assertion that Inheritors is set in Northwest Illinois is problematic. There is textual evidence to suggest that the play is not set where the Black Hawk War was fought, as Gainor maintains, but in what is now the Iowa/Illinois Quad Cities, where Susan Glaspell and I were born and raised, and where Black Hawk lived and hunted before he and his people migrated northward in 1832. Most significantly, her description of Silas Morton and Felix Fejervary as neighbors (120) clearly puts the action in eastern Iowa (in or near present day Davenport) because the historical Fejevary estate, now Fejevary Park was given to the city of Davenport by the Fejevary family. Also, there are no "Blackhawk Indians" (115); Black Hawk belonged to the Sauk Tribe. (Noe)

In the first act, Silas Morton reveals his intention to donate a portion of his family’s land, their hill, for the building of a college. Not an educated man himself, he is quite passionate about the town’s need for this college. He also articulates a kind of spiritual sensibility about the relationship of the land (meaning the soil and the life force contained within) and humans—something that he learned from the Native Americans that live on this land before his family arrived.

At one point, Felix Fejevary explains Darwin’s theory to Silas. Silas grows even more excited about his plans. His Mother tries to convince him this is folly. But he becomes even more convinced of the need for the college. He tries to give the deed for the hill to his friend Felix and convince him to approach the town’s wealthy elders to build the college:

GRANDMOTHER (Silas’ Mother) Can’t you see, Silas, that we’re all against you?

SILAS (//to// FEJEVARY) But how can you be? Look at the land we walked in and took! Why, the buffalo here before us was more than we if we do nothing but prosper! God damn us if we sit here rich and fat and forget man’s in the makin’. (//affirming against this//) There will one day be a college in these cornfields by the Mississippi because long ago a great dream was fought for in Hungary. And I say, Wake up, old dream! Wake up and fight! (//holding it out, but it is not taken//) I give you this deed to take to rich men. Show them one man believes enough in this to give the best land he’s got. That ought to make rich men stop and think.

GRANDMOTHER Stop and think he’s a fool.

SILAS (//to// FEJEVARY) It’s you can make them know he’s not a fool. They’ll feel in you what’s more than them. They’ll listen. Thought is not something //outside// the business of life. Thought — (//with his gift for wonder//) why, thought’s our //chance.// I know now. Why I can’t forget the Indians. We killed their joy before we killed them. We made them less. (//to// FEJEVARY, //and as if sure he is now making it clear//) I got to give it back — their hill. I give it back to joy — a better joy — joy o’ aspiration.

The act ends and the play resumes several decades later. We’re now in the library of Morton College. Silas’ dream has become a reality. Felix Fejevary’s son, Felix is now the president of the board of trustees of Morton College. The college is celebrating its 40th anniversary and Felix Jr. is trying to secure a grant from the state legislature to grow the college into a University. One obstacle to that grant is Professor Holden. Holden has attracted the attention of one of the state’s senators. The professor is a supporter of conscientious objectors, which does not make the Senator happy. To secure the Grant, Felix feels he must convince Holden to tone down his rhetoric. Holden, recalling the inspiration he felt from his travels in Greece, and the enthusiastic support he received from the Silas Morton (before Silas died), insists to Felix that his position is righteous. He recalls that Silas convinced him to turn down an offer to leave the college for a position at Harvard.

The characters who represent the progressive ideals and who speak with what I sense are the playwright’s voice are Silas Morton, Professor Holden, and Felix’s neice (Silas’ grandaughter) Madeline. It’s fun to observe that Glaspell’s husband George Cram Cook played the role of Silas Morton in the original production of the play.

An incident has occurred in the previous first scene of Act Two which brings the situation to a head. Holden, who has been holed up in the library is unaware of the events:

HOLDEN Well, I seem to have missed something — disgraceful performance — the Hindus, Madeline — (stops, bewildered)

FEJEVARY Upon my word, you do lead a serene life. While you’ve been sitting here in contemplation I’ve been to the police court — trying to get my niece out of jail.

HOLDEN What happened?

FEJEVARY One of your beloved Hindus made himself obnoxious on the campus. Giving out handbills about freedom for India — howling over deportation. Our American boys wouldn’t stand for it. A policeman saw the fuss — came up and started to put the Hindu in his place. Then Madeline rushes in pounding the policeman with her tennis racket.

HOLDEN Madeline Morton did that!

FEJEVARY (sharply) You seem pleased.

HOLDEN I am — interested.

Felix is so preoccupied with the need for the financial support of the state senate that he is willing to throw away the ideals of the college that were so important to its founder. Holden brings up issues of academic freedom and the issues of social justice. The professor is offended by Felix’s expediency in dismissing the college’s hindu students in order to please a senator who objects to them on racial grounds. Glaspell gives voice to ideas that would have been present in the conversation of the day. She clearly favors the progressive ideals.

In the final act of the play, Glaspell deals with Madeline’s story. The girl engages in a second act of conflict with the town police, standing up for the hindu students at Morton College. She faces the possibility of going to jail for her actions, but her uncle, Felix Jr., has arranged a deal for her (which he conveys through his wife, Isabel) whereby Madeline can be spared jail time in exchange for recanting her actions. The now emasculated Professor Holden (he has chosen to bite his tongue and remain at the college in order to be able to support his ailing wife) tries to convince Madeline to take the deal. In the end, however, Madeline chooses to stick to her ideals. One cannot help but feel Glaspell’s personal sympathy for Madeline’s character. Perhaps the girl is an autobiographical proxy for the playwright.

Marcia Noe, Theatre Journal, Vol. 55 No. 3, October 2003, pp. 570-571 Review of the book by J. Ellen Gainor. Susan Glaspell in Context: American Theatre, Culture and Politics 1915-1948. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001
 * Works Cited **