Stage Mothers

Women, Work, and the Theater, 1660–1830

Laura Engel, Elaine M. McGirr

• Publisher: Bucknell University Press
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781611489491
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: Literature

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
• ILLUSTRATIONS
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• Part I. 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”
• Chapter 2. THE INCONVENIENCE OF THE FEMALE CONDITION: Anne Oldfield’s Pregnancies
• Chapter 3. “INIMITABLE SENSIBILITY”: Susannah Cibber’s Performance of Maternity
• Chapter 4. WORKING MOTHERS ON THE ROMANTIC STAGE: Sarah Siddons and Mary Robinson
• Part II. REPRESENTATIONS OF MOTHERS ON THE STAGE AND THE PAGE
• Chapter 5. REBELS FOR LOVE: Maternity, Absolutism, and the Earl of Orrery’s Mustapha
• Chapter 6. ROWE’S THE AMBITIOUS STEPMOTHER: Motherhood and the Politics of the Blended Family
• Chapter 7. STAGED VIRTUE: Anastasia Robinson as Ideal Mother in Two Operas of the 1720s
• Chapter 8. MATERNAL DUTIES AND FILIAL MALAPROPISMS: Frances Sheridan and the Problems of Theatrical Inheritance
• Chapter 9. MY SON, MY LOVER: Gothic Contagion and Maternal Sexuality in The Mysterious Mother
• Part III. ACTRESSES AND THEIR CHILDREN
• Chapter 10. ELIZABETH AND KEPPEL CRAVEN AND THE DOMESTIC DRAMA OF MOTHER-SON RELATIONS
• Chapter 11. MOMMY DIVA: The Divided Loyalties of Sarah Siddons
• Chapter 12. THE GERBINI LETTERS: OR, A TALE OF TWO MOTHERS
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX
• ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS