The Thirties

Abstract

According to an entry in his working diary, O’Neill finished the first draft of Mourning Becomes Electra on 21 February, 1930. He began writing that draft in September 1929, one month before the stock market crash of October 1929. For many, that crash began the thirties in America, the time of the Depression, when millions became unemployed and hungry. The wild prosperous dreams of the 20s quickly vanished; the reality of soup-kitchens and pencil-selling took their place. ‘Depression’ is the word for an economic decline, but it also accurately describes the mood of a country that was once, only yesterday, the land of prosperity and opportunity, of Marco surnamed Millions, and was now the bitter land of dissatisfaction, of ‘Brother, can you spare a dime?’. Hard times affect more than a nation’s economics; the economic climate forces artists and intellectuals to seek causes and to express social concern. In the thirties many writers moved to the left, shouting out against a system that could produce the kind of poverty and general chaos that America was experiencing. The theatre of the thirties, its very existence threatened because of the loss of an audience, reflected the bitterness of the time, but it also generated an idealism connected with the desire to change the system.