Age of Arousal

Linda Griffiths

• Publisher: Coach House Books
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781770560079
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Teatro canadese

It's a time of passion and confusion. Virtue is barely holding down its petticoats. People are bursting their corsets with unbridled desire. It's 1885, and the typewriter and the suffrage movement are sending things topsy-turvy. In the midst of it all, five ambitious New Women and one Newish Man struggle to find their way. Miss Mary Barfoot runs a school for secretaries with her young lover, Miss Rhoda Nunn. But when the Misses Madden – spinsters Virginia and Alice and beautiful young Monica – arrive, along with the attractive Dr. Everard Barfoot, things can never be the same.

Age of Arousal is a lavish, sexy, frenetic ensemble piece about the forbidden and gloriously liberated self – genre-busting, rule-bending, and ambitiously original.

AGE OF AROUSAL

SETTING: London, 1885. A time of enormous political, emotional and sexual change. People are bursting their corsets with unbridled desire. There are half a million more women than men living in England. The women’s suffrage movement is fuelled by sheer numbers. Women demand rights. Those who protest are ‘unsexed.’ But the tide is too strong. Passions erupt and confusion reigns ...

CHARACTERS

Mary Barfoot: Sixty years old – definitely not an old lady. Charismatic, egocentric, sexy. Enjoys young women’s attention and admiration. An ex-militant suffragette who now runs a school for secretaries. Is in love with Rhoda.

Rhoda Nunn: Thirty-five years old. An orphan who has become a New Woman with a tendency to zeal. Loyal, idealistic, physically passionate – about to burst into flower. Mary’s lover and a teacher at her school.

Virginia Madden: Forty years old. Anxious, agitated and hyperbolic. Impoverished ex-governess and alcoholic. Confused about her sexuality – secretly desires to dress as a man.

Alice Madden: Forty-six years old. Ex-governess and sister to Virginia. The take-charge older sister – deeply conservative, but full of inner passion. Chastity is more than comfortable for her.

Monica Madden: Twenty-one years old. Delectable younger sister to Alice and Virginia. Provocative and playful. Struggles with an intense natural sexuality which becomes a revolutionary perspective.

Everard Barfoot: Thirty-five years old. Sensual, confident, enticed by the New. Cousin to Mary Barfoot. Ex-doctor just beginning a life of leisure. Falls in love with Rhoda and the Woman Question.

ACT 1

SCENE 1: THE DREAM

Mary Barfoot’s sitting room.
It’s a large, lush room, modern yet Victorian.
Piles of paper litter a desk.
Cushions are scattered on the floor.

Mary is in her nightgown, hair down her back. Rhoda is dressed.
Mary sits on cushions, leaning against Rhoda’s knees while
Rhoda brushes her hair.

MARY: Ohhh, that’s fabulous.

RHODA: It’s still so lovely and thick.

MARY: Still?

RHODA: Not ‘still’ but –

MARY: Yes, ‘still.’ I’m not balding. Some women do get very ... ohhh exquisite, there must be sensory attachments in the scalp area –

RHODA: You haven’t dreamt of the hunger strikes in a long time.

MARY: Then the dream returns and ‘unmans me.’

RHODA: Tell me.

MARY: You know everything –

RHODA: Not everything –

MARY: True ... you lie on your hard cot and hear them coming, keys rattle, the prison cell is open, two doctors and four wardresses, with the equipment –

RHODA: You appeal to the wardresses but they’ve been hardened beyond recognition –

MARY: That’s when you start writhing, even before their filthy hands hold you down, then a / steel instrument –

RHODA: A steel instrument prises / pardon, I –

MARY: A steel clamp prises the jaws open as far as they can go, it breaks the teeth, gouges the lips, blood running / from –

RHODA: Buckets of blood –

MARY: Not buckets –

RHODA: Then the / feeding tube –

MARY: The feeding tube, smelling of the previous woman’s vomit, rammed down your clamped-open mouth –

RHODA: Agony, the tube is too large, it rips the throat, tears the organs, the pain is excruciating –

MARY: They pour the food down, there is a moment’s relief, then the stomach revolts, vomits up the food through the tube, truly suffocating now, choking, gagging, hands clawing the air for breath, writhing like an animal. What a stupid woman I am, you think. How appallingly foolish. You don’t care about women’s rights, you care only for your own suffering.

RHODA: I’ve always wondered why the food is vomited up. Is it the consistency of the tube that makes it so difficult?

MARY: The stomach has shrunk, they pour down a rancid porridge – no, I’ll say no more. You love the gory bits too much. A very female attraction to suffering, I suspect.

RHODA: Nonsense.

MARY: The dream always reminds me of what a coward I was.

RHODA: I hate it when you say that. You were a political prisoner, you marched, planned actions, were beaten with clubs.

MARY: I was always terrified and finally I fled.

RHODA: Remember, I’ve seen every one of your scars. You were a warrior.

MARY: A ‘suffragette.’ Hateful term. It made us seem like dancing girls kicking our legs out of pique. We were suffragists demanding nothing less than a total transformation of the lives of women from cradle to grave.

RHODA: You deserve to rest after what you accomplished and continue to accomplish.

MARY: Lying on satin cushions with roast goose in my teeth while my sisters –

RHODA: You are not a coward.

MARY: The last time they shoved me out the prison door I could barely walk. There was no reception to meet me, no carriage, no cheers at the gates. I couldn’t help thinking of the rich women who always had a carriage waiting, pillows for their arses, new dresses to complement their slim figures.

RHODA: You felt the gap between rich and poor within the struggle.

MARY: I had barfed and bled for the last time. I found I wanted money. I wanted it, I wanted women to have it. You don’t know me.

RHODA: I do.

MARY: A weak warrior.

RHODA: An Amazon.

MARY: Laying down my sword to open a school for female secretaries.

RHODA: I only wish I had the same opportunity to prove myself.

MARY: Do you? I never realized.

RHODA: I worry about it at times –

MARY: You want to know how you’d react under fire?

RHODA: I worry that I would run away as soon as I was truly challenged.

MARY: Shall I torture you to find out? Use the dreaded clamp?

RHODA: You’d have to arrest me first.

MARY: I arrest you and demand bail for your release. I demand ... a kiss.

They kiss.

Shall we leave this place of business and retire to my rare and sinister boudoir?

RHODA: Your boudoir is ever a garden of delights, but you are upset, I am restless, and the accounts have been piling up. Let’s stay awake and do some sinister business.

MARY: Such a practical woman. Yes, a great pile of outstanding loans. Bella Royston still hasn’t paid her fee – she can pay, she found a good placement.

RHODA: She still comes to the Wednesday meetings. Remember when she arrived wearing your old suffragette banner and tripped over it –

MARY: She gets up gr...