Jane Bowles

Jane Bowles (/boʊls/; born Jane Sydney Auer; February 22, 1917 – May 4, 1973) was an American writer and playwright.

Early life

Born into a Jewish family in New York City on February 22, 1917 to Sydney Auer (father) and Claire Stajer (mother), Jane Bowles spent her childhood in Woodmere, New York, on Long Island. She developed tuberculous arthritis of the knee as a teenager, and her mother took her to Switzerland for treatment, where she attended boarding school. At this point in her life, she developed a passion for literature coupled with insecurities. As a teenager she returned to New York, where she gravitated to the intellectual bohemia of Greenwich Village.^[1]

She married composer and writer Paul Bowles in 1938. The location of the honeymoon inspired her the setting for her novel Two Serious Ladies.^[1]

Personal life

Bowles had a rich love life. In 1937, she met Paul Bowles and in following year (1938), they were married and went to a honeymoon in Central America. She visited lesbian bars while they traveled together in Paris. The marriage was a sexual marriage for about a year and a half. After the initial year, Jane and Paul were platonic companions. They both were bisexual, and mainly preferred to have sex outside of their marriage. They were unashamed of their bisexuality and marriage allowed them to express it.

After this, Jane and Paul went to Mexico where Jane later met Helvetia Perkins, who became her lover.

Career

In 1943 her novel Two Serious Ladies was published. The Bowleses lived in New York until 1947, when Paul moved to Tangier, Morocco; Jane followed him in 1948. While in Morocco, Jane had an intense and complicated relationship with a Moroccan woman named Cherifa. She also had a close relationship with torch singer Libby Holman.^[2]

Jane Bowles wrote the play In the Summer House, which was performed on Broadway in 1953 to mixed reviews. Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, and John Ashbery all highly praised her work.^[3]

In the Summer House

In the Summer House was her only full-length play. It was first performed in 1951 in the Hedgerow Theater in Moylan, Pennsylvania (Blogspot). The Broadway play opened at the Playhouse Theatre December 29, 1953 with music by Paul Bowles, her husband, where it ran for two months to mixed reviews and low attendance (The New York Times ). Around 1963, the play was revived. The play was revived again in 1993 At the Vivian Beaumont Theater with incidental music by Philip Glass. In 1994, the revival was nominated for outstanding director of a play, set design, supporting actress, JoAnne Akalaitis, George Tsypin, Frances Conroy, respectively (Playbill).

The overarching plot is the comparison of an overbearing mother and gentle daughter and a gentle mother and an overbearing daughter.^[4] The plot is driven by character interaction and not action. Begins with a monolog by Ms. Gertude Eastman Cuevas, an isolated widow from southern California who marries a rich Mexican (with a singing and dancing comrades), who is oppressive towards her daughter. The other widow is Ms. Constable and her challenging daughter. The daughters are both unstable. Miss Cueva has a suitor which makes the mother feel like she needs to be more overbearing.^[5] The first act closes on Ms. Cuevas and her new husband reading newspaper silently. The second act occurs in a restaurant named The Lobster Bowl and uses intensive food imagery. There were a lot of drunk scenes.

Bowles' complex relationship with her mother could have been inspiration for the plot.^[6]

Death

Bowles, who suffered from alcoholism , had a stroke in 1957 at age 40. The stroke affected her sight and capacity to imagine, however, she pushed through her health issues and continued to write. Her health continued to decline, despite various treatments in England and the United States, until she had to be admitted to a clinic in Málaga, Spain, where she died in 1973.

References

• Dillon, Millicent (1981), A Little Original Sin: The Life and Work of Jane Bowles, Berkeley: University of California Press, ISBN 0-520-21193-6 

Further reading

Archival sources

• Jane Bowles Papers, 1966–1967 (37 items) are housed in the Special Collections Department of the University of Virginia Library.
• Millicent Dillon Papers, 1905–1990 are housed in the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. Contains notebooks and manuscripts written by and about Jane Bowles.

External links

• The Authorized Paul Bowles Web Site, the official Jane Bowles Web site.
• Works by or about Jane Bowles in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Jane Auer Bowles Collection at the University of Texas
• Jane Bowles at the Internet Broadway Database
• Sprague, Claire. "Jane Bowles", Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia