[ENGL 3203] The Belle's Stratagem
Apr. 11th, 2007 03:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wordwhackerI'd say that I'm sad to see the end of this course, but I'll admit it - I'd be lying. Not that it was't interesting and enjoyable, but is it EVER gonna be nice to have a break. I've had my fill of 18th century plays for this year, thanks.
While I was reading this one it struck me in terms of something I'd read while researching my paper for this class. The visibility of women was a growing concern (for men, though I'm sure it caused its fair share of concern for women who have to *deal* with men... which is just about everybody). Let me see if I can find a quote and the source and all of that jazz.
Okay. so in this quote we're talking about the Restoration era. This is about a hundred years later, so it's important to project this kind of thought forward a bit. Sir George in The Belle's Stratagem seems to have a certain awareness of the ability for women to "self-fashion" and obscure their "pre-existing", "bodily determined" self. His discomfort with it comes across as being ridiculous:
I have more to say, but I'm posting what I have now to make sure I don't lose it or something. (I'm writing as I read - first time I've tried that.) Stay tuned. Or, y'know, go do more interesting things.
[EDIT] Okay! Having lounged about in bed this morning eating fruit dipped in cream cheese topping and reading 18th century drama, I've finished the play. Talk about going out in style. Would somebody please explain to me why I haven't read ALL the plays this way?
Anyway. Sir George expressing anxieties about women's "readability" and image turned out to be a great set-up for the masquerade scene later on. I liked the way both plots turned at this point. Lady Frances gets a glimpse of the kind of usage she's privy to as a "fashionable" lady; Letitia strolls in and thoroughly uses Doricourt. I think it's nice that the only man to really effectively be "disguised", Courtall, is the one who winds up thoroughly punished for his scheme; the women in disguise - Letitia and Kitty - fair pretty well. This could be hearkening to a certain idea that women are more "deceptive" by nature and therefore are better at using disguise, but Courtall helps to counter that thought - I think instead we're seeing something like what happens in The Rover, where disguise = manipulation of image = a reasonable avenue of agency for women in society.
Thinking along these lines, the final scene opens up some interesting insights into where society is in 1780 as compared to the Restoration and the turn of 18th century. First off, Doricourt's deception was short-lived and wound up making him a laughing stock. In comparison, Hardy's feigned death and Letitia's re-entrance in disguise completely throw him for a loop. His decision to play a madman to get out of his marriage is telling: he's impassioned and rash, Letitia - even though she's head over heels for him - is in control of herself, charming, calm and reasonable. The other women in this play are similarly civil and witty, even though they're uncouth widows and such who are all huntin' for a man.
Back to Sir George for a minute. Even though he and Lady Frances eventually reconcile and, for the most part, wind up where they were before, there's the sense that they each appreciate the other's point of view a little more - and there's some emphasis placed on their "mutual affection" and of their union being more important to their social image. Say what? Do I sense some Romantic sensibilities creeping into the text? I wondered that, too, when I was reading about all the places the charming, worldly masquerade-caricature of Letitia was willing to go and the things she'd do for Doricourt: "I'd change my country, my sex; feast with him in an Eskimo's hut or a Persian pavilion; join him in the victorious war dance on the borders of Lake Ontario or sleep to the soft breathings of the flute in the cinnamon groves of the Ceylon" (IV.i.320-25).
The North American references particularly jumped out at me, though I'm not sure what side of the "victorious" war they're talking about (this IS after the Americans gained independence, though just barely. Which side of Lake Ontario are they dancing on, anyway?)
There seems to be some emphasis, too, on women as being wonderful when they're worldly - though Doricourt's ending monologue seems to confuse that sentiment somewhat:
So. If I'm reading this right, British women appear cute and modest but are actually awesome and worldly. It's England's best kept secret. Don't let Frenchmen steal them away!
For the record, I should say that I get a kick out of the extreme superficiality that Masquerade scenes in general engender. Nobody recognizes age-old friends, wives, sisters, brothers... pop on a mask and it's all okay! Of course, I'm under the impression that masks covered a lot more of the face, and when wigs were really in-style someone could change up their hair and come across quite differently. (They might not go that far on stage, though - after all, the audience has got to know who's who.)
While I was reading this one it struck me in terms of something I'd read while researching my paper for this class. The visibility of women was a growing concern (for men, though I'm sure it caused its fair share of concern for women who have to *deal* with men... which is just about everybody). Let me see if I can find a quote and the source and all of that jazz.
We can see in the Restoration era, alongside the indulgence of theatricality for which the period is primarily known, concerted efforts to curtail self-fashioning--particularly women's self-fashioning--and to assert a prior, pre-existing self that is bodily determined. A burgeoning awareness of the theatricality of all individual identity was countered by an insistence upon the legibility and indelibility of bodies. Displacing anxiety, perhaps, about the fixity and validity of their own self-fashioned identities, men wrote with alarm (or mock alarm) about the instability and falsity of women, and sought both to demonstrate and to limit those qualities in women's bodies. (p 32)
Pritchard, Will. "Masks and Faces: Female Legibility in the Restoration Era." Eighteenth-Century Life 24.3 (2000): 31-52. . 03/14/2007.
Okay. so in this quote we're talking about the Restoration era. This is about a hundred years later, so it's important to project this kind of thought forward a bit. Sir George in The Belle's Stratagem seems to have a certain awareness of the ability for women to "self-fashion" and obscure their "pre-existing", "bodily determined" self. His discomfort with it comes across as being ridiculous:
SIR GEORGE.
Heaven and earth! with whom can a man trust his wife in the present state of society? Formerly there were distinctions of character amongst ye: every class of females had its particular description. Grandmothers were pious, aunts discreet, old maids censorious. But now aunts, grandmothers and girls, and maiden gentlewomen are all the same creature; a wrinkle more or less is the sole difference between ye.
MRS. RACKET.
That maiden gentlewomen have lost their censoriousness is surely not in your catalogue of grievances.
SIR GEORGE.
Indeed it is, and ranked amongst the most serious grievances. Things were well, madam, when the tongues of three or four old virgins kept all the wives and daughters of a parish in awe... empowered to oblige every woman to conform her conduct to her real situation. You, for instance, are a widow: your air should be sedate, your dress grave, your deportment matronly, and in all things an example to the young women growing up about you; instead of which, you are dressed for conquest, think of nothing but ensnaring hearts, are a coquette, a wit, and a fine lady. (II.i.233-263)
I have more to say, but I'm posting what I have now to make sure I don't lose it or something. (I'm writing as I read - first time I've tried that.) Stay tuned. Or, y'know, go do more interesting things.
[EDIT] Okay! Having lounged about in bed this morning eating fruit dipped in cream cheese topping and reading 18th century drama, I've finished the play. Talk about going out in style. Would somebody please explain to me why I haven't read ALL the plays this way?
Anyway. Sir George expressing anxieties about women's "readability" and image turned out to be a great set-up for the masquerade scene later on. I liked the way both plots turned at this point. Lady Frances gets a glimpse of the kind of usage she's privy to as a "fashionable" lady; Letitia strolls in and thoroughly uses Doricourt. I think it's nice that the only man to really effectively be "disguised", Courtall, is the one who winds up thoroughly punished for his scheme; the women in disguise - Letitia and Kitty - fair pretty well. This could be hearkening to a certain idea that women are more "deceptive" by nature and therefore are better at using disguise, but Courtall helps to counter that thought - I think instead we're seeing something like what happens in The Rover, where disguise = manipulation of image = a reasonable avenue of agency for women in society.
Thinking along these lines, the final scene opens up some interesting insights into where society is in 1780 as compared to the Restoration and the turn of 18th century. First off, Doricourt's deception was short-lived and wound up making him a laughing stock. In comparison, Hardy's feigned death and Letitia's re-entrance in disguise completely throw him for a loop. His decision to play a madman to get out of his marriage is telling: he's impassioned and rash, Letitia - even though she's head over heels for him - is in control of herself, charming, calm and reasonable. The other women in this play are similarly civil and witty, even though they're uncouth widows and such who are all huntin' for a man.
Back to Sir George for a minute. Even though he and Lady Frances eventually reconcile and, for the most part, wind up where they were before, there's the sense that they each appreciate the other's point of view a little more - and there's some emphasis placed on their "mutual affection" and of their union being more important to their social image. Say what? Do I sense some Romantic sensibilities creeping into the text? I wondered that, too, when I was reading about all the places the charming, worldly masquerade-caricature of Letitia was willing to go and the things she'd do for Doricourt: "I'd change my country, my sex; feast with him in an Eskimo's hut or a Persian pavilion; join him in the victorious war dance on the borders of Lake Ontario or sleep to the soft breathings of the flute in the cinnamon groves of the Ceylon" (IV.i.320-25).
The North American references particularly jumped out at me, though I'm not sure what side of the "victorious" war they're talking about (this IS after the Americans gained independence, though just barely. Which side of Lake Ontario are they dancing on, anyway?)
There seems to be some emphasis, too, on women as being wonderful when they're worldly - though Doricourt's ending monologue seems to confuse that sentiment somewhat:
DORICOURT:
My charming bride! It was a strange perversion of taste that led me to consider the delicate timidity of your deportment as the mark of an uniformed mind or inelegant manners. I feel now it is to that innate modesty English husbands owe a felicity the married men of other nations are strangers to. It is a sacred veil to your own charms; it is the surest bulwark to your husband's honor. And cursed be the hour, should it ever arrive, in which British ladies shall sacrifice to foreign graces the grace of modesty! (V.v.314-24)
So. If I'm reading this right, British women appear cute and modest but are actually awesome and worldly. It's England's best kept secret. Don't let Frenchmen steal them away!
For the record, I should say that I get a kick out of the extreme superficiality that Masquerade scenes in general engender. Nobody recognizes age-old friends, wives, sisters, brothers... pop on a mask and it's all okay! Of course, I'm under the impression that masks covered a lot more of the face, and when wigs were really in-style someone could change up their hair and come across quite differently. (They might not go that far on stage, though - after all, the audience has got to know who's who.)
