Stage Mothers

Women, Work, and the Theater, 1660-1830

Laura Engel and Elaine McGirr (Eds.)

2016
284 pages
ISBN 9781611486032
Transits

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.

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Reviews

"[The book] addresses the complex relationship between maternity and theatrical culture by attending to a wide range of female players and playwrights across the entire century. Because the consideration of maternity and the theatrical profession is about labor, construed in all of its senses, the essays here have implications not only for history of the sex/gender system, but also for contemporary debates regarding women's experience in the workplace...There are outstanding essays here by Laura Rosenthal on maternity and absolutism in Roger Boyle."
--Daniel O'Quinn, University of Guelph; Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. LV, No. 3 (Summer 2015)

"The figure of the stage mother provides a provocative lens through which to re-evaluate eighteenth-century maternity and, in the case of most actresses, also allows us to consider motherhood outside the confines of the aristocracy. This book will be of great interest to scholars of drama, theatre history, gender history and eighteenth-century celebrity culture."
--Fiona Ritchie, McGill University, Oxford University Press Journals: Review of English Studies, Vol. 67, No. 278 (February 2016)

"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

About the editors:

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

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

Distributed by Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group

Paperback: 9781611486056; eBook: 9781611486049