Description

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.

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 Pro

Product details

Published Nov 06 2014
Format Ebook (PDF)
Edition 1st
Extent 1
ISBN 9781611489491
Imprint Bucknell University Press
Illustrations 7 b/w photos;
Series Transits: Literature, Thought & Culture, 1650–1850
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Anthology Editor

Laura Engel

Anthology Editor

Elaine M. McGirr

Contributor

Marilyn Francus

Contributor

Judith Hawley

Contributor

Jade Higa

Contributor

Emrys D. Jones

Contributor

Kathryn Lowerre

Contributor

J.D. Philopsen

ONLINE RESOURCES

Bloomsbury Collections

This book is available on Bloomsbury Collections where your library has access.

Related Titles

Environment: Staging