Lula Vollmer's nine-scene drama opened on 16 October 1923 for 278 performances at the Greenwich Village Theatre. Vollmer, a North Carolina native, specialized in folk dramas of backwoods life. In The Shame Woman, she focuses on Lize Burns, a woman chastised by her neighbors because she had been violated by the boastful Craig Anson 20 years before. Known as the "shame woman," Lize lives in her isolated cabin with only an adopted daughter, Lily. When Lize learns that Lily has been meeting a man, she feels compelled to reveal her own past as a warning. Lily runs away and kills herself, a fact Lize sadly accepts until she learns that Anson was Lily's seducer. She kills him with a potato knife to prevent his bragging of his conquest of Lily. Critics praised the raw power of the play and its rich depiction of a rarely dramatized world.
The Historical Dictionary of the American Theater. James Fisher.