Before Katrina: Archiving Performative Downpours and Fallen Women Named Sadie in Rain and The Deluge (1922)

Abstract

In 1922, two popular plays – Rain and The Deluge – literally took the stage by storm. In what may strike post-Katrina audiences as a somewhat uncanny coincidence, these plays were based on the aftermaths of natural disasters: specifically, torrential downpours and the breaching of a levee. Both plays also featured a down-on-her-luck “fallen” woman called Sadie. Indeed, after this season, Sadie became an iconic character-type, appearing in various Broadway hits, musicals, and films for years. In focusing on just two of the performative iterations of Sadie, this essay shows that, at the same time that Sadie rivals heteronormative sexuality (as well as codified notions of racialization), so too she finds herself in narratives that often reinscribe such ideologies. And yet, while, narratively, efforts are made to contain Sadie, such efforts often fail. Performatively, then, Sadie is a figure that often resists these oppressions and performs sexual subversions, if only momentary ones.