ABSTRACT
The sense of Herbert Tremaine as a modern writer is apparent too in The Tribal God, a family saga in which the heroine Bridget is romantically torn between claims of two men, Kit and Paul, but also those of a woman, Susan. In the beginning the young Maude Deuchar wrote with socialist fervour. One of her early works – published under her own name in 1916 – was a pamphlet, The Sheehy Skeffington Case. Maude Deuchar's play is about memory and remembering dead soldiers, but it is also particularly brutal in pointing the finger at the Home Front audience who, like the young women war workers in the play, are seen to share some responsibility for the deaths of thousands of young men. As well as packing a powerful emotional punch Deuchar is also asking the audience to acknowledge another form of wartime experience beyond that of the serving soldier, sailor or airman.
