Jane Bowles (; 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 New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

on February 22, 1917, to Sydney Auer (father) and Claire Stajer (mother), Jane Bowles spent her childhood in

Woodmere, New York Woodmere is a hamlet and census-designated place (CDP) in the Town of Hempstead in Nassau County, New York, United States. The population was 18,669 at the 2020 census. Woodmere is one of the Long Island communities known as the Five Towns, wh ...

, on Long Island. She had had a bad knee from birth, which was later broken from falling off a horse when she was a teenager. After knee surgery, she developed tuberculous arthritis, and her mother took her to Switzerland for treatment, where she attended boarding school. She also attended Julia Richmond High School in New York and the Stoneleigh School for Girls in Greenfield, Massachusetts. At this point in her life, she developed a passion for literature coupled with insecurities. She developed phobias related to

dogs The dog (''Canis familiaris'' or ''Canis lupus familiaris'') is a domesticated descendant of the gray wolf. Also called the domestic dog, it was selectively bred from a population of wolves during the Late Pleistocene by hunter-gatherers ...

, sharks, mountains, jungles, and elevators as well as fears of being burned alive. During the mid-1930s she returned to New York, where she gravitated to the intellectual bohemia of

Greenwich Village Greenwich Village, or simply the Village, is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street (Manhattan), 14th Street to the north, Broadway (Manhattan), Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the s ...

. She married the composer and writer

Paul Bowles Paul Frederic Bowles (; December 30, 1910November 18, 1999) was an American expatriate composer, author, and translator. He became associated with the Moroccan city of Tangier, where he settled in 1947 and lived for 52 years to the end of his ...

in 1938. The location of the honeymoon inspired the setting for her novel '' Two Serious Ladies''.

Personal life

Bowles had a rich love life. In 1937, she and Paul Bowles were introduced to each other by

Erika Mann Erika Julia Hedwig Mann (9 November 1905 – 27 August 1969) was a German actress and writer, daughter of the novelist Thomas Mann. Erika lived a bohemian lifestyle in Berlin and became a critic of National Socialism. After Hitler came to power ...

, and in the following year (1938), they were married and went on 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. Thereafter, Jane and Paul were platonic companions. They both were bisexual, and mainly preferred to have sex outside of their marriage. After this, Jane and Paul went to Mexico, where Jane later met Helvetia Perkins (1895–1965), 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 Tangier ( ; , , ) is a city in northwestern Morocco, on the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. The city is the capital city, capital of the Tanger-Tetouan-Al Hoceima region, as well as the Tangier-Assilah Prefecture of Moroc ...

Morocco Morocco, officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It has coastlines on the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria to Algeria–Morocc ...

; Jane followed him in 1948. While in Morocco, Jane had an intense, complicated relationship with a Moroccan woman named Cherifa. She also had a close relationship with the torch singer

Libby Holman Elizabeth Lloyd Holman (née Holzman; May 23, 1904 – June 18, 1971) was an American socialite, actress, singer, and activist. Early life Elizabeth Lloyd Holman was born on May 23, 1904, in Cincinnati, Ohio, the daughter of a lawyer and stockbr ...

. Holman was attracted to both Jane and Paul, but Paul did not reciprocate. Jane Bowles wrote the play ''In the Summer House'', performed on Broadway in 1953 to mixed reviews.

Tennessee Williams Thomas Lanier Williams III (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983), known by his pen name Tennessee Williams, was an American playwright and screenwriter. Along with contemporaries Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller, he is considered among the three ...

Truman Capote Truman Garcia Capote ( ; born Truman Streckfus Persons; September 30, 1924 – August 25, 1984) was an American novelist, screenwriter, playwright, and actor. Several of his short stories, novels, and plays have been praised as literary classics ...

, and

John Ashbery John Lawrence Ashbery (July 28, 1927 – September 3, 2017) was an American poet and art critic. Ashbery is considered the most influential American poet of his time. Oxford University literary critic John Bayley wrote that Ashbery "sounded, in ...

all highly praised her work.

''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. The play opened on Broadway at the Playhouse Theatre on December 29, 1953, with music by Paul Bowles, where it ran for two months to mixed reviews and low attendance. Around 1963, the play was revived. The play was revived again in 1993 at the

Vivian Beaumont Theater The Vivian Beaumont Theater is a Broadway theatre, Broadway theater in the Lincoln Center complex at 150 West 65th Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, New York, U.S. Operated by the nonprofit Lincoln Center Theater (LCT ...

with

incidental music Incidental music is music in a play, television program, radio program, video game, or some other presentation form that is not primarily musical. The term is less frequently applied to film music, with such music being referred to instead as th ...

Philip Glass Philip Glass (born January 31, 1937) is an American composer and pianist. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century. Glass's work has been associated with minimal music, minimalism, being built up fr ...

. This revival received nominations for the 1994

Drama Desk Award The Drama Desk Awards are among the most esteemed honors in New York theater, recognizing outstanding achievements across Broadway, Off-Broadway, and Off-Off-Broadway productions within the same categories. The awards are considered a signific ...

s for outstanding director of a play, set design, and supporting actress (

JoAnne Akalaitis JoAnne Akalaitis (born June 29, 1937, in Cicero, Illinois) is an avant-garde American theatre director and writer. She has won five Obie Awards for direction (and sustained achievement) and was a co-founder of the New York theater company Mabou ...

George Tsypin George Tsypin is an American stage designer, sculptor and architect. He was an artistic director, production designer and coauthor of the script for the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games in Sochi in 2014. Early life and education Tsypin w ...

, and

Frances Conroy Frances Hardman Conroy (born March 15, 1953) is an American actress. She is best known for playing Ruth Fisher on the television series '' Six Feet Under'' (2001–2005), for which she won a Golden Globe and three Screen Actors Guild Awards, a ...

, respectively). The overarching plot is the comparison of an overbearing mother and gentle daughter and a gentle mother and an overbearing daughter. The plot is driven by character interaction and not action. It begins with a monologue by Ms. Gertude Eastman Cuevas, an isolated widow from Southern California who marries a rich Mexican (with a singing and dancing comrade), who is oppressive towards her daughter. The other widow is Ms. Constable and her challenging daughter. The daughters are both unstable. Miss Cuevas has a suitor which makes the mother feel like she needs to be more overbearing. 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. Bowles's complex relationship with her mother could have been an inspiration for the plot.

Death

Bowles, who was an alcoholic, suffered a stroke in 1957 at age 40. The stroke affected her sight and mental capacity, but she pushed through her health problems 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 Málaga (; ) is a Municipalities in Spain, municipality of Spain, capital of the Province of Málaga, in the Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Andalusia. With a population of 591,637 in 2024, it is the second-most populo ...

, Spain, where she died in 1973, at age 56.

Legacy

In Paul Bowles' semi-autobiographical novel ''

The Sheltering Sky ''The Sheltering Sky'' is a 1949 novel of alienation and existential despair by American writer and composer Paul Bowles. Plot The story centers on Port Moresby and his wife Kit, a married couple originally from New York who travel to the Nor ...

'', the characters Port and Kit Moresby were based on him and his wife.

Debra Winger Debra Lynn Winger (born May 16, 1955) is an American actress. She starred in the films '' An Officer and a Gentleman'' (1982), '' Terms of Endearment'' (1983), and '' Shadowlands'' (1993), each of which earned her a nomination for the Academy Awa ...

played Kit in the film adaptation of the novel. Although Bowles' literary output was not substantial in terms of volume, she was highly respected, with

calling her "one of the really original pure stylists" and

calling her "the most important writer of prose fiction in modern American letters."

Footnotes

References

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