Book

Actresses, gender, and the eighteenth-century stage : playing women

Brooks, Helen, 1981- author

Overview

\"Over the course of the eighteenth century notions of what it meant to be a woman changed radically and through examining the work of actresses including Anne Oldfield, Peg Woffington, Dora Jordan, and Sarah Siddons, Helen Brooks reveals how female performers both responded, and contributed to, these changes. Ranging from the masculine rhetorical skill of Oldfield and the androgynous cross-dressing of Woffington in the first half of the century, to the performances of 'self' cultivated by Jordan and Siddons at the end, this book reveals how actresses reacted to the cultural shift from the one to two-sex body, and from a protean to a Romantic model of self, by developing new ways of 'playing women'. Consistent throughout the century however was the economic motivation behind these gendered performances: as Brooks emphasizes, actresses were ambitious entrepreneurs who, unlike other professional women, succeeded because, rather than in spite of, their gender\"-- Provided by publisher.

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Subject: Women in the theater England History 18th century. / Acting History 18th century. / PERFORMING ARTS / Theater / History & Criticism.
• ISBN: 9780230298330, 0230298338

Item info:

1 item available

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Holdings :

Call Number	Copies	Material	Location
PN2593.B76 2015	1	BOOK	AUTOSTORE