Stage Mothers: Women, Work, and the Theater, 1660–1830 (Transits: Literature, Thought & Culture, 1650–1850) - Hardcover

9781611486032: Stage Mothers: Women, Work, and the Theater, 1660–1830 (Transits: Literature, Thought & Culture, 1650–1850)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1611486033 ISBN 13: 9781611486032

Publisher: Bucknell University Press, 2014

Stage Mothers explores the connections between motherhood and the theater both on and off stage throughout the long eighteenth century. Although the realities of eighteenth-century motherhood and representations of maternity have recently been investigated in relation to the novel, social history, and political economy, the idea of motherhood and its connection to the theatre as a professional, material, literary, and cultural site has received little critical attention. The essays in this volume, spanning the period from the Restoration to Regency, address these forgotten maternal narratives, focusing on: the representation of motherhood as the defining female role; the interplay between an actress’s celebrity persona and her chosen roles; the performative balance between the cults of maternity and that of the “passionate” actress; and tensions between sex and maternity and/or maternity and public authority. In examining the overlaps and disconnections between representations and realities of maternity in the long eighteenth century, and by looking at written, received, visual, and performed records of motherhood, Stage Mothers makes an important contribution to debates central to eighteenth-century cultural history.

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About the Author:

Laura Engel is associate professor in the English department at Duquesne University.

Elaine M. McGirr is senior lecturer in English and drama at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Review:

This collection offers readers a fascinating study of English actresses during the long eighteenth century and the motherly roles they played on and off stage. . . . While some readers may be familiar with the actresses or the plays featured in this collection, they will surely learn a great deal about these eighteenth-century celebrities and the subject of motherhood as it was understood between 1660 and 1830. This book should be useful to readers interested in eighteenth-century studies, theater studies, performance history, women’s studies, drama as literature, and even art history, for portraiture and drawings are included and analyzed in a number of essays. In addition, this volume is important for its subtle-but-present reminder that a study of theatrical performers is also a study of class due to the vital connection between theater and social standing. All in all, Stage Mothers has a wonderful way of giving actress-mothers credit for their attempts to balance domestic and theatrical life, the (re)negotiation of their place in private and public spheres, and their painstaking fashioning of their selves and careers. (Early Modern Women)

The essays here have implications not only for the history of the sex/gender system, but also for contemporary debates regarding women's experience in the workplace. . . .There are outstanding essays here. (SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500-1900)

Stage Mothers presents fascinating new research on the dramatic representation of maternity and (more unusually) the private and public experiences and cultural significance of mothers who acted through the long eighteenth century. (Bridget E. Orr, Vanderbilt University)

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