The Fergusonia File

Frances Burney, The Witlings (1778-80)

2006-11-29T16:13:00.000-08:00

Frances Burney's The Witlings (1778-1780) opens in a milliner's shop (see photo), a fact which is notable in itself. The other plays we've looked at generally open in someone's dressing or drawing room, which is a cue to the upper or middle class milieu of the ensuing drama. I thought that opening The Witlings in Mrs. Wheedle's shop would indicate a different perspective for the play, but the action soon shifted away from the actual working class people (though they do resurface periodically).

The play, like others we've seen, centres on a young woman who is independently wealthy (see Cavendish's The Convent of Pleasure for an analogue). Unlike Lady Happy, however, Cecilia loses her fortune, which unsurprisingly impedes her marriage to Beaufort (yes, another Beaufort).

The play is fairly conventional in terms of plot (except for the "poetic justice" that precipitates the resolution), and the scenes sometimes drag. The lengthy repartee between characters with little plot advancement sometimes had me flipping ahead to see just how many pages were left.

That said, the characterization is good--I especially like Mrs. Sapient, whose tautologies often made me laugh out loud--and there is generally some good wit evidenced on Burney's part. Even the best of running jokes, however, can't carry a scene as far as Burney sometimes pushes it.

In terms of themes that we've looked at together, I'd like to dig into Codger's relationship with Jack--we've seen other patriarchs who wish to be listened to, but I think Codger's repeated emphasis on be listened to (in the literal sense) has special significance, given this play's preoccupation with verbal communication. I think an interesting paper could be written on the verbal economy in this comedy, with its fluctuations and upsets.

Joanna Baillie's The Tryal (1798)

2006-11-24T09:49:00.000-08:00

Appearing in the same red-letter year as Coleridge and Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads, Joanna Baillie's decidedly less influential collection of plays, Plays on the Passions, was nonetheless popular in its day. The Tryal is one of three plays in the volume, and it is the only comedy.

I enjoyed The Tryal for its clarity of plot, for its distinct characters, and its humour. There's something to be said for good character "ticks," that is, repetitive behavioural and/or speech patterns. Of course, other playwrights we've read have accomplished this, but I found that the characters in this comedy would be recognizable even if we read their lines in the absence of stage directions.

Miss Eston, Mr. Royston and Sir Loftus are good examples of this. Even if the stage directions in one scene were somehow lost, we would still know who was talking.

Generally, I found the play fun and humorous. Maybe I was just in the mood for silliness, but the tomfoolery of Agnes and Mariane made me laugh out loud at points. Though I was somewhat troubled by the lack of respect Withrington sometimes received, I couldn't help but think that his blustering at his nieces' impudence was only half-hearted. The young women do really love him, and they involve him in their fun, even when he's the butt of their jokes. I'm trying to think of an alternative for "heartwarming" to describe how they share their vitality with the old uncle, but no easy equivalents come to mind. I hope that when I'm old and grey that my young relations will keep me in the loop as Baillie's young heroines do.

Hannah Cowley, The Belle's Stratagem, 1780

2006-11-17T17:12:00.000-08:00

Interestingly, stratagem backwards reads megatarts. A tart is a promiscuous woman, like Kitty Willis. Neato.

O.K., time to get serious. I enjoyed Hannah Cowley's comedy, The Belle's Stratagem. I found it a little long toward the end when all the characters were conspiring to trick Doricourt into marrying Letitia Hardy. It seemed like they kept yakking about the plan scene after scene, instead of actually getting to it. That said, I did enjoy the trickery scene: there's something delightfully perverse in how the characters kept twisting the knife, especially given that Doricourt's offence was relatively minor (relative to other plays we've read, that is). It's generally true that there is a lot of lead up in this play, of talk about what a character(s) is going to do, instead of actual portrayal of the action.

One thing I found unsettling was how our Megatart (Kitty) is baldly portrayed as at the bottom of the social barrel. That is, she can't sink any lower on the social ladder (or slide), so she's useful as a pawn in the intrigues of the other characters. When she is unmasked before the dumbstruck Courtall, the first Mask mocks her, adressing her as "Your Ladyship" (4.2.57). It's as though she's not even a real person; she's a tool unworthy of civil treatment. She does seem to enjoy duping Courtall, but the fact that she's likely trying to recover a sense of self-worth by rubbing it in renders her action somewhat pitiful.

I would say that Cowley leaves most English women in a pretty good spot by the end of the play--Doricourt realizes that he shouldn't constrain Letitia's personality, and Lady Frances reaches a favourable understanding with her husband--but women who lie beyond the pale of chaste, marriagable women fare less favourably. I'm looking forward to a discussion of the intersection of nationalism and gender in this play.

'Bout Time for Elizabeth Griffith's The Times, 1779

2006-11-12T09:29:00.000-08:00

Elizabeth Griffith’s The Times (1779) doesn’t employ many of the stock-comedy conventions that we’ve come to expect. There are no cross-dressing scenes, no misplaced letters (unless you count Forward’s reading of the business document in 1.1), and the plot complications don’t largely result from the bumbling of a clown/fool figure.

In our class discussion (last time?) we got into an interesting debate about the possibilities inherent in restrictive literary forms. We all seemed to be in agreement that the conventions of 18th century comedy manage to please despite their predictability.

In spite of this hard-to-explain appeal, I’m surprised at my own reaction to the different plot devices in The Times. The play was quick and easy to follow, with few complications and twists; even the misunderstandings between the characters didn’t bear on the plot much (like Sir William’s confusion about who Louisa would wed). I liked the fact that a simpler plot with fewer characters allowed us to really “know” the characters in a way that most other playwrights we’ve read don’t seem to value.

Yet, in spite of this clarity and character development, I was slightly bored by the play. The pitiable situation of the prodigal Mr. Woodley is perhaps too realistic (my empathy might be tied to my own student-loan woes); the greater measure of realism and the exploration of his psychology demand more of the reader than most plays we’ve read. This play is maybe more like reality TV than the sit-com-like plays we’ve studied in the course. The same events may happen in both, but the tone differs.

All this is to say, I was paradoxically bored by the absence of stock devices that should bore by their ubiquity. Strange. Stranger still is that I liked the play; I just liked it for different reasons.

Wikipedia Article Now Live: Get It While It's Hot!

2006-11-05T15:23:00.000-08:00

My Wikipedia entry for Catharine Trotter is now live: see it here.

Trotter Term Paper Proposal

2006-11-05T11:29:00.000-08:00

Salutations, Comrades!
Here is my proposal for the term paper. I was a little unclear as to the level of research we were to include, so I stuck mostly to hammering out an interesting argument. I made a cursory perusal of LION to see if anyone had written extensively on this topic, and I concluded that my paper would be at least somewhat fresh. It took me a long time to arrive at a new angle; thinking this week has been like pulling teeth.

Catharine Trotter’s Love at a Loss; or, Most Votes Carry It (1700) is a play very much concerned with ideas of justice and correction, yet comparatively little critical attention has been paid to these concepts. While it is true that the majority of literary works employ some type of transgressive behaviour to propel the plot, Trotter’s famed engagement with issues of morality and agency in her philosophical writings justifies a closer look at the mechanics of justice in her sole comedy. Anne Kelley contends that the keynote of Trotter’s moral argumentation is the privileging of principled rationality in the government of human affairs. Kelley notes with specific reference to Love at a Loss, that in cases of contention between personal volition and public good, Trotter invariably privileges the latter. Kelley reads Love at a Loss as a qualified “endorsement of the existing social order,” and especially the individual’s “social obligation to honour contractual agreement” (92).

The concepts of revenge, retribution and justice in general are thus linked to social codes of behaviour in the text, but not in a way that neatly conforms to Trotter’s stated philosophical views. Of the two general modes of justice portrayed in the play—the personal and the communal—the personal is superior, if we take the definition of effective justice to be the matching of crime to punishment with correction as the desired end. By drawing on Trotter’s own philosophical writings (especially her Defence of the Essay of Human Understanding) and Hobbes’s Leviathan, with which Trotter contended, I will challenge the reading of Love at a Loss that claims its complete endorsement of communal justice. In terms of the correction and prevention of crime (or sin), the personal model, largely embodied in Lucilia, emerges as more effective than the communal. This fact undermines the model of communal morality proffered by Trotter, and aligns the play more with Hobbesian philosophy, in which the individual first considers his or her own judgment. The final vote scene forces the reader to re-examine the basis of communal justice, to see that communal justice is only as just as the members of the collective tribunal.

A Wife to Be Lett

2006-11-02T06:55:00.000-08:00

Eliza Haywood’s 1724 comedy, A Wife to be Lett [sic], follows three interrelated romance plots: both Marilla and Celemena are young women betrothed to undesirable men, and Susanna Graspall, though married to an old miser (Mr. Graspall), is wooed by Sir Harry Beaumont, a charming gentleman. The unusual twist in the plot (indeed, the author mentions just how original in her epilogue) is that Mr. Graspall pimps his wife for a large sum of money, letting Beaumont have free run of his home (and wife, presumably). This recalls the film Indecent Proposal, yet in Haywood’s play the husband is all too willing to barter his wife’s honour and the wife never becomes physically tainted.

One scene particularly interested me: in I.i., Beaumont’s past lover, Amadea, (who is disguised as a man) accosts Mrs. Graspall about her visits with and general encouragement of Beaumont’s wooing. Amadea, we learn later, has good reason to be prying into the Beaumont-Graspall affair—she wants her man back—so she harangues Mrs. Graspall heatedly. Amadea draws the line, however, at squealing to the larger community. She is not so malicious as to defame her rival for Beaumont, a fact that contributes to the overall mood of female sisterhood in the play.

What is interesting, from a gender-politics point of view, is that Amadea claims that she is the mouthpiece of Susanna’s conscience: “think, ‘tis your good Genius warns through my lips.” The fact that Susanna accepts this reprimand from what she thinks are male lips is significant. As we’ve discussed in class, one of the ways that patriarchy has/does keep control is by defining the terms of morality. Such texts as conduct books are a good example of how men have imposed the “patriarchal conscience” upon female subjects (Freud, I think had a theory about this—“the father’s NO”?).

The fact that Amadea is in drag makes the situation more complicated. Would Susanna have heeded the warnings if the censurer appeared in her “true” gender? Does the fact that no male is actually present suggest that there is room for exclusive female community even within patriarchy?

This is a hard crux to crack, and it’s only one of many interesting questions raised by this play. I’m also anxious to discuss the way that the play questions the limits of patriarchal authority in marriage. Are the limits of a husband’s power (i.e. commanding a wife to immoral/illegal behaviour) completely at his discretion? The tyranny of husbands is clearly devalued in the play, but where are we left at the end?

Susanna Centlivre's The Busybody, 1709

2006-10-29T11:44:00.000-08:00

I can see why Centlivre's The Busybody was such a huge success: it's a fast-paced comedy with a good measure of wit. We've read a number of social comedies this term, but few, if any, made me laugh out loud like this one. In particular, the way that Marplot complicated things was well-handled. It's not that his dialogue was especially humorous, but his bumbling somehow managed to make me laugh (this might have something to do with my being somewhat ill and therefore tired). There's a certain type of situational humour that has you laughing before the key action even takes place; predictability in these cases has a counter-intuitive effect. In this play, I would project ahead to just how Marplot would satisfy his name.

On a more serious note, I was surprised at the number of casual threats of violence, some very explicit (ie. "I had more mind to cut his throat than hear his excuses" III.v.15), in the play. It struck me that casual threats of violence occurred at almost regular intervals throughout; almost none of the longer scenes pass by without someone being threatened or actually beaten (Marplot often falls under each category).

When a writer displays such a "literary tick" I often wonder what underlies it. Finberg foregrounds Marplot's effeminate cowardice, and so we may read the brash violence of the other male characters as establishing a clear divide between the "men and the boys." Women, however, are also threatened with violence (Isabinda does get manhandled in act 5), and twenty-first century readers would normally associate violence toward women as unmanly, or at least ungentlemanly.

If Centlivre were only pandering to her audience's desire for violence, then we might expect there to be more actual duals and fights, but threats outnumber actual skirmishes. I think that it's at least safe to say that the comedy (as many do) privileges the making of one's own fate, the taking of matters into one's own hands. In this light, men who are willing to risk everything in a duel emerge as more useful and therefore more desirable. Yet, the macho big-talk is positioned as even more useful than actual violence.

Editing Trotter's Biographical Entry

2006-10-22T07:02:00.000-07:00

The extant Wikipedia article for Catharine Trotter Cockburn, aside from the fact that it is what is called a “stub,” appears to be accurate and objective. If anything, the tone seems too objective, especially in the area of Trotter’s legacy. My task as editor, therefore, is fairly straightforward. I will expand the biography (the details of which seem consistent across the various accounts), and I will add a list of books that Trotter published in her lifetime (or shortly thereafter, her collected works). I will also add a list of books currently in print, available for purchase (a list I compiled by surfing various e-stores like Chapters.ca and Amazon.ca). A good deal of the work I have done consists of synthesizing into the article material that was contained in the external links.

In terms of sensitive/opinionated material that might contravene the NPOV strictures in place in the Wikipedia community, I don’t feel that I had to leave out much. One advantage to writing on a relatively obscure author is that I do not have to juggle as many competing interpretations of her life and work. I suppose that I could be more blunt in writing about her legacy as it relates to feminism if the guidelines were not in place, but the relatively neutral terms in which I couched the information do not impede my project. Finally, I largely avoided commenting on specific plays because a) I’ve only read one (Love at a Loss) and b) I questioned the usefulness of going into depth about each work in what is otherwise a very general biographical article. Personally, when I read the other articles from which I drew my factual information, the brief sketches of individual plays did not stick with me. Details of common themes were welcome, but plot summary was (in my opinion) so much wasted ink.

My work on the entry, then, was hardly impeded by the NPOV policy. I wouldn’t have written any differently otherwise.

Mary Pix, The Innocent Mistress (1697)

2006-10-15T10:14:00.000-07:00

Mary Pix's 1697 play, The Innocent Mistress, is unremarkable in terms of plot construction and characterization. As with many contemporary comedies, it employs stock devices: disguise, misplaced billet-doux, the conversion of rakes, etc.

The play is a cut above, however, for its measure of wit and humor. I enjoyed the repartee between various characters, such as Cheatall, Spendall and Wildlove. The play is fast-paced and is at times hard to follow, but it generally pleases. So much of what passes for wit in plays of this period seems perfunctory. Pix, for the most part, seems to have had her heart in it.

What stood out as particularly interesting in terms of themes/images was the recurrence of threats/accusations of dismemberment. The friends of Arabella repeatedly accuse Cheatall of imprisoning, killing and dismembering her. This gory scenario is mentioned more than once, which made me wonder why such horrors we introduced into this genteel setting. Other characters, notably Lady Beauclair, also threaten to dismember their enemies, which reinforces my question.

I think that one reason Pix might have introduced it, aside from the fact that late 17th-century theatre-goers seemed to expect some violence on stage, is to deepen the cut-throat characterization of the marriage market. That is, if the threat of dismemberment is given physicality, then other, more figurative types of dismemberment take on a more frightening aspect. Thus, a woman is dissected into beauty, wit and virtue; a man is dismembered into looks and fortune. The threat is that a prospective spouse will dismember you, taking only what is of value to him or her, leaving you less than a whole. The bloody reference to bodily dismemberment reinforces the ugliness of this system of commodification.

The Rover's Return

2006-10-03T12:39:00.000-07:00

Having missed Monday's meeting (my apologies to the class), I've been trying to piece together some of the discourse surrounding Aphra Behn's The Rover: or The Banished Cavaliers and The Second Part of The Rover, by reading blog entries and comments.

In so doing, I noticed a trend of discomfort with Behn's treatment of sexual politics, particularly in The Rover (1677), and especially regarding the attempted rapes. In formulating an opinion of my own, I have decided to pick up a comment left by Miriam on someone's blog (can't remember whose right now).

With reference to Behn's seeming refusal to adequately censure the rapacity of her male characters, indeed, her fascination with rape generally, Dr. Jones cautioned not to "shoot the messenger." That is, we must discern between the representation of societal evil in order to expose (and hopefully correct) those ills, and the promotion of those evils by portraying the ease with which the culprits escape justice.

I would like to extend this point to mention the practical question of staging. In my estimation, an audience's reaction to a scene like Willmore's stumbling into the garden and attempted rape of Florinda depends quite a lot on the appearance of Willmore (i.e. his degree of handsomeness), his intonation and body language. It is impossible to make an attempted rape scene appear innocuous, but there is a range of possibility in terms of how horrible it can be.

It has been mentioned by a few of our bloggers that the text itself passes but scanty censure on these acts, but Behn was likely (as Miriam suggests) exposing the vileness of the rape subculture. To this end, staging and casting would matter a lot in terms of whether the audience would be inclined to condemn the men in question or take the "boys will be boys" stance.

Margaret Cavendish (1624?-1674)

2006-09-22T15:39:00.000-07:00

Cavendish was a pioneering female dramatist and the author of Bell in Campo (published 1662) and The Sociable Companions (published 1668). A dynamic, prolific and eccentric writer, Cavendish achieved great popular success for her work, but often met with severe censures from other intellectuals and writers. Neither of the plays mentioned were staged in her lifetime--indeed, she claims to have had no desire to have them performed--and there are some good reasons why a staging might present problems for the company that should attempt them (the unison talking of the heroickesses in Bell in Campo, for instance).

Bell in Campo dramatizes the fanciful tale of a group of war wives who cast off their traditional submissive marital roles to form a formidable army that ends up rescuing the husbands from the Kingdom of Faction's forces.

I enjoyed the energy and fast pace of this play, and I was surprised at the progressiveness of its gender politics. I didn't expect Lady Victoria and her Heroickesses to so bluntly appraise and cast off their traditional roles as wives and mistresses. Like the mythic Amazons, they succeed at beating male soldiers at war, and yet they often pull back from interfering with the masculine army's dealings (though they do steal 6,000 pieces of weaponry, which would not help the male army, to say the least).

What was doubly unexpected and appreciated by me was that the status quo was not re-established toward the play's close. The women end up with the domestic power after the war is won; they realize the Wife of Bath's wish for sovereignty in the home.

One key question raised by Bell in Campo is whether Cavendish was really vindicating female nature as it was and is typically presented, or whether she was modifying it and celebrating the refined product? On several occasions, Lady Victoria steels her troops to leave aside their effeminacy (Act III.ii), as though she were asking them to cast off the baggage that female education leaves them. If this is the case, then in what does "real" or "essential" femininity reside? If the women become men, then is the feminist project of this text bettered or hindered?

The Female Wits

2006-09-17T09:45:00.000-07:00

The Female Wits: Or, the Triumvirate of Poets at Rehearsal (1704) is a satirical play that lampooned three notable women playwrights: Mary Pix, Catherine Trotter, and (most scathingly) Delariviere Manley.

The fact that I read this play in a roughly-edited pdf. version, devoid of footnotes, likely didn't improve my experience of it. The Prologue especially could use some scholarly explication, as it's replete with now-obscure references (at least they seemed so to me). The play itself is challenging not because of archaic diction or obscure allusions to mythology or other literary works, but because the convoluted plot of Marsilia's play is exactly the point. The presumably male author(s) of this play succeeds in confusing his audience by means of Marsilia's ridiculous plot and hyperbolic language, which, he hopes, will be construed as quintessentially female.

Where the play falls short of its satirical mark is in failing to sufficiently link Marsilia's ineptitude to her gender. Clearly, some of her faults are what might have then be termed feminine (her vanity, for instance), but great pride and self-justification are (as far as I know) genderless.

Moreover, the jokes employed in the play become grating as they are used again and again. Marsilia's rudeness to Patience and her other acquaintances becomes less and less funny as the play drags on. Likewise, Mr. Praiseall's incessant interruptions are more often silly than witty. We expect him to say clever things without knowing it, but he rarely does so. All in all, I'm inclined to agree with Robert Adams Day when he writes that The Female Wits is worth reading for its stance toward late seventeenth-century women writers, rather than for its literary merit.

Welcome to The Fergusonia File

2006-09-16T11:40:00.000-07:00

Greetings, fellow literati,

and welcome to The Fergusonia File, the only digital ephemeron you need to satisfy your insatiable thirst for half-digested literary observations. Over the coming term, I, J. Ferguson, English grad. student, will be posting my thoughts on whatever I happen to be reading, notably 18th-century women's drama, early modern English lit., and Canadian campus fiction. I may also post my thoughts on any literary happenings in the Fredericton area that I have time to attend.

Stay tuned . . .