Zona Gale received both her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the University of Wisconsin, and after a short stint working for newspapers in Milwaukee and New York, she returned to her hometown of Portage, Wisconsin to become a full-time writer. She worked as a freelance writer for magazines as well as publishing novels, and plays, and compilations of her short stories. Though she was out of New York City, she kept in contact with Edith Wharton and Willa Cather—two other important women writers in the “local color” branch of the realist movement taking place in the arts at the early part of the 20th century.

Miss Lulu Bett was written in 1920 as a novel, and it deals with the frequently unhappy dependence of single women on their families, as well as depicting another instance in which the patriarchal construction of society allows a male criminal to go unpunished and his female victim to go unrecognized. Gale turned the novel into a play shortly after the novel was published, and the play received the Pulitzer Prize (the first ever awarded to a woman) in 1921. Miss Lulu Bett was also made into a silent film by Paramount in 1921.

In a controversial move that upset critics and feminists (but seemed to please audiences), Gale chose to rewrite the third act of Miss Lulu Bett shortly after its opening, allowing Ninian and Lulu to be reunited. Gale defended her change by suggesting that life does not always end unhappily, that what is dramatically effective does not always reflect reality. Bookings increased after the change, and the awarding of the Pulitzer Prize resurrected the controversy over the ending. Subsequent literary critics have suggested that the new ending follows 19th century melodramatic conventions, wherein the heroine “is saved by the right actions of the man in her life,” whereas the original ending reflects “20th century women’s struggle for independence and self-reliance.”

Changed ending notwithstanding, Zona Gale was a political activist and ardent feminist. She campaigned for many liberal causes throughout her life, was active in the ACLU, the Women’s Trade Union League, the Sacco-Vanzetti Movement, the Wisconsin Democratic Society, and in 1921 helped draft Wisconsin’s Equal Rights law which prohibited discrimination against women. She was also active in civic life in her community, and sat on the Board of Regents of her alma mater, the University of Wisconsin.

Zona Gale was born in 1874 and died in 1938. She received her Pulitzer Prize for Miss Lulu Bett at the age of 47.

To find out more about Zona Gale, try the following sources: Portage, Wisconsin, and Other Essays (1928), by Zona Gale (autobiographical); Not in Sisterhood: Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, Zona Gale, and the Politics of Female Authorship, by Deborah Williams; Still Small Voice: The Biography of Zona Gale, by August Derleth. This essay was compiled from the following sources: Feminist Playwrights: A Critical History by Sally Burke. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1996; www.library.wisc.edu; and www.library.arizona.edu.

[September 2003]

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