One of the most imporetant issues in 20th centry was women's struggle for their social rights. By having this right, the western culture was forsed to reconsider the place of women in the society. After this process, many playwrights, such as O'neill and Mamet, trying to attention to the new place of women in the society and reflecting it in their plays more than before.
Samuel Shepard Rogers(B. 1943) who is one of the famous American playwrite, actor and screen-writer has been always as one of the most distiguished artist during past twenty years. He has written fourty plays such as "the tooth of crime (1972), "buried child (1978)", "fool fo love (1979)" and "true west (1980)". He acted in some movies such as "fool for love" and won Pulitzer prize for his play named "buried child". He was one of the playwrights who in his play named "Fools for Love" has paied attention to the issue of gender and the role of women in society. He In this play he portrates the relationship between "May" and "Eddie". According to him, May with traditional characteristics becomes an indipendent woman.
This relationship between May and Eddie and also the way that "Martin"(May's boyfriends) thinks, provides a good opportunity for the readers to discover different views about gender and women's role in the society.
The issue of gender in resent years has been one of the most important subjects for both male and femail playwrites and has had a great impact on other playwrites.
One of the important and determining features in the 20th century was the movements performed by women (and even sometimes by men), in order to change the traditional role of women in the society, and reviving their major rights such as voting right, having access to education, and being able to provide suggestions in married life, issues which used to be monopolyed by men.
These movements provided a new aspect of women, and resulted in the fact that women were no longer the "inferior sex" and women became a basis in the grand decisions of the society, rather than being subordinates to men.
Taking the fact that the art of theatre is a direct reflection of the social facts, and mainly deals with human beings and their relations, this research has concentrated approach toward gender in the drama "Fool for Love". The major question is about the reflection of gender in this work, as a token of the contemporary American drama, and the approaches taken by the playwright to achieve his purpose.
Choosing Samuel Shepard for this study is based on his plays, especially the play called "Fool for Love", that is considered as one of the most important plays, not only in USA, but also in other regions.
There are different theories related to the gender issue such as: Biological theory, Structural-Functional theory, Social Learning theory, Congnitive Development theory, Gender Schema theory and Symbolic Interaction theory. We chose Symbolic Interaction theory as the theoritical basis for this research.
)