Passion, Inspiration, Interpretation, Conform

Today I watched a film called Stage Beauty in order to get a feel for the late 17^th century time period and theatre in general.  Theatre is about performance, but before the performance, there must be a play made up of written words to perform.  One quote from the film said, “words live long after their passions have died” but what makes great theatre (or any works of literature) from any time period relevant is that the passions that have inspired the words of great playwrights and authors have not yet died.  The reason that Chaucer and Shakespeare, among many others, continue to be taught and given president in educational institutions is because their core themes and the character types used in the works (like the rake, or the always humorous bed-switch plot) speak to human nature and human error rather than to one particular, outdated and very deceased group of people.  The play that is continuously referenced in Stage Beauty, the tragedy Othello, centers on issues of race, gender and class. 

n  Race is central because Othello is a black man who has married a white girl without the permission of her father.  Also, a reference that modern readers may be unaware of is that the villain, Iago, is a Spaniard and not Caucasian, which increases racial tensions in the play.

n  Gender and the social expectations of people based on their gender is thrown into question when Desdemona demonstrates that she is neither obedient, silent and through these unwomanly characteristics is assumed to be unchaste. 

n  The hierarchical class system is upturned when Othello, a higher class military man who is praised for his prowess and morality murders his wife on assumption and paranoid fear.  The higher class was thought to possess a greater morality than those of the lower classes.

What is gender?

Aphra Behn’s “The Rover” comments on the state of women under the misappropriated rule of men and even though it was written in the mid 1600’s, women are still toyed with and objectified, albeit sometimes at their own behest, by men; ergo, the passions that inspired “The Rover” have not yet died.  In “Stage Beauty” there is a sex scene between Maria and Ned where he tells her what gender role she is playing based on her position and in a subsequent scene he attempts to teach Maria how to act like a woman.  Ned assures Maria that he is not trying to teach her to act like a woman, but that he is trying to teach her how to act like Desdemona.  The fact that he is trying to teach her a female role is significant because it betrays the fact that gender is to a very large extent performative.  During the 1600’s, when “Stage Beauty” was set and “The Rover” was written, women had just begun to find some shred of identity because they were finally allowed to play their own gender on the theatrical stage.  Then and to a large degree now, women were told by the patriarchal hegemony how women were supposed to act—they were told that the male interpretation of femininity was the natural behavioral, and even structural (corset?) form of womanhood.  The female identity was determined by a male interpretation of a subaltern and entirely ‘other’ group which they did not and could not understand. 

At one point in “Stage Beauty” the question was asked, “a woman playing a woman—what’s the trick in that?”, and the beauty of it is that once women were allowed to perform, the female gender was no longer a mildly amusing trick.

A Discovery of Interest

Welcome to the first day of Bloggdom—things only get crazier from here.

The other afternoon I traipsed down to my campus library, or ‘Commons’/Café/ computer lab/ Dorian-inspired building with crazy moving stacks, in order to figure out what I would write my first essay on.  I know two things—I am deeply interested in criminality/degeneration and the general female experience and I know that Restoration drama has a reputation for unabashed sexuality, instances of criminal activity and the emergence of women on the stage and behind the script.  I decided that I would look closely at Aphra Behn’s “The Rover” (1677) and John Gay’s “The Beggar’s Opera” (1728) because all of my major interests are addressed within the two pieces and because the pieces are separated by about 50 years and reflect not only the differences in gender perception, but the developments and shifts in social attitude concerning gender and crime issues over the course of time. 

Aphra Behn introduced a new perspective on 18^th century society, particularly the roles of women within the patriarchal system, because she is considered to be the first professional female playwright.  She uses innuendo and comedy to comment on the vulnerability of women and on the limitations of their gender (angel or whore?).  Gay’s “The Beggar’s Opera” similarly  depicts different types of  women but particularly addresses crime, the differences between male and female crimes and the social implications and expectations for each.  Both plays engage with similar material—love, virtue and vice, sex, money—but are the themes engaged differently and does the gender of the playwright influence the message of the play?

In order to answer my vast queries I looked for articles and books that would tell me about the Restoration and 18^th Century’s history, in terms of politics, and society, including gender, race, religion, etc, in order to better grasp the context of the theatre of the time.  I found four books hidden in the moving stacks of the common’s basement (I feel like I have stepped into a sci-fi Harry Potter every time I go down there) that will give me a good place to start with period context. I also looked specifically for texts that addressed female sexuality and the different manifestations of it—prostitution, abstinence, etc. and found three articles that deal with female sexuality, rape, and quite honestly, a random one that I am not too sure about.   Since I am interested in the effect of the writer’s gender on the works I looked to literary theory, though am unsure whether theory is entirely appropriate for this paper.

1.      Barthes/ Fish—Authorial intention or reader response?

2.      Spivak—Can women as subaltern have a voice?

3.      Gilbert and Gubar—Anxiety of Authorship. Can 18^th century women ‘author’ their own lives—is the ability to choose virtue or vice, celibacy or prostitution the product of freedom, or the acknowledgement of one’s own subalternity. 

In any case, I am not finished with my questions, nor am I finished with my research, but more than ever I am excited to dig in. 

Live long and prosper J