Stage Mothers

Women, Work, and the Theater, 1660–1830

Edited by Laura Engel and Elaine M. McGirr - Contributions by Helen E.M. Brooks; Gilli Bush-Bailey; Marilyn Francus; Judith Hawley; Jade Higa; Emrys D. Jones; Ellen Malenas Ledoux; Kathryn Lowerre; J.D. Philopsen and Laura J. Rosenthal

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.

University Press Copublishing Division / Bucknell University Press

Pages: 284 • Trim: 6⅜ x 9¼

978-1-61148-603-2 • Hardback • November 2014 • $133.00 • (£102.00)

978-1-61148-605-6 • Paperback • August 2016 • $60.99 • (£47.00)

978-1-61148-604-9 • eBook • November 2014 • $57.50 • (£44.00)

Series: Transits: Literature, Thought & Culture, 1650–1850

Subjects: Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, History / Europe / Great Britain / General, Performing Arts / Theater / History & Criticism, Social Science / Gender Studies

Stage Mothers

Women, Work, and the Theater, 1660–1830

Hardback

Paperback

eBook

Summary

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.

Details

University Press Copublishing Division / Bucknell University Press

Pages: 284 • Trim: 6⅜ x 9¼

978-1-61148-603-2 • Hardback • November 2014 • $133.00 • (£102.00)

978-1-61148-605-6 • Paperback • August 2016 • $60.99 • (£47.00)

978-1-61148-604-9 • eBook • November 2014 • $57.50 • (£44.00)

Series: Transits: Literature, Thought & Culture, 1650–1850

Subjects: Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, History / Europe / Great Britain / General, Performing Arts / Theater / History & Criticism, Social Science / Gender Studies

Author

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

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

Table of Contents

Contents
Introduction
Elaine M. McGirr and Laura Engel
Part One: Actresses, Motherhood, and the Profession of the Stage
Chapter 1. “The Divided Heart of the Actress”: Late Eighteenth-Century Actresses and the “Cult of Maternity”
Helen E.M. Brooks
Chapter 2. The Inconvenience of the Female Condition: Anne Oldfield’s Pregnancies
J.D. Phillipson
Chapter 3. “Inimitable Sensibility”: Susannah Cibber’s Performance of Maternity
Elaine M. McGirr
Chapter 4. Working Mothers on the Romantic Stage: Sarah Siddons and Mary Robinson
Ellen Malenas Ledoux
Part Two. Representations of Mothers on the Stage and the Page
Chapter 5. Rebels for Love: Maternity, Absolutism, and the Earl of Orrery’s Mustapha
Laura R. Rosenthal
Chapter 6. Rowe’s The Ambitious Stepmother: Motherhood and the Politics of the Blended Family
Marilyn Francus
Chapter 7. Staged Virtue: Anastasia Robinson as Ideal Mother in Two Operas of the 1720
Kathryn Lowerre
Chapter 8. Maternal Duties and Filial Malapropisms: Frances Sheridan and the Problems of Theatrical Inheritance
Emrys Jones
Chapter 9. My Son, My Lover: Gothic Contagion and Maternal Sexuality in the Mysterious Mother
Jade Higa
Part Three. Actresses and their Children
Chapter 10. Elizabeth and Keppel Craven and the Domestic Drama of Mother-Son
Relations
Judith Hawley
Chapter 11. Mommy Diva: The Divided Loyalities of Sarah Siddons
Laura Engel
Chapter 12. The Gerbini Letters: or, A Tale of Two Mothers
Gilli Bush-Bailey
Bibliography
About the Contributors

Reviews

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