Abstract

The following dramatic scenes were taken from a full-length play that was inspired by my reading of The Mamie Papers. This remarkable collection of letters written to Fanny Quincy Howe, a Boston aristocrat and woman of letters, chronicled the life and times of Mamie Pinzer. Mamie was a “working girl” in the fullest sense of the word. Her struggle to live with autonomy and dignity often placed her at odds with standards of decency preferred by a society that looked with suspicion upon those values in women, if they implied independence from male hegemony. The letters are unique in their detail and passion, as well as the proto-feminist consciousness that emerges through daily confrontation with patriarchy.