Clyde Fitch's Dramatisations of Gender and Society on the Fin De
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Clyde Fitch’s Dramatisations of Gender and Society on the Fin de Siècle Stage by Holly Rain A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment for the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Central Lancashire June 2018 STUDENT DECLARATION FORM Type of Award _PhD__________________________________________________ School _Humanities and Social Sciences__________________________ 1. Concurrent reGistration for two or more academic awards I declare that while registered as a candidate for the research degree, I have not been a registered candidate or enrolled student for another award of the University or other academic or professional institution 2. Material submitted for another award I declare that no material contained in the thesis has been used in any other submission for an academic award and is solely my own work 3. Collaboration Where a candidate’s research programme is part of a collaborative project, the thesis must indicate in addition clearly the candidate’s individual contribution and the extent of the collaboration. Please state below: _________________________________________________________________________ 4. Use of a Proof-reader No proof-reading service was used in the compilation of this thesis. SiGnature of Candidate ______________________________________________________ Print name: _Holly Rain______________________________________________________ 2 Abstract Clyde Fitch was the most successful Broadway dramatist of his time. Following his considerable popularity and success with American audiences, Fitch saw his plays staged across the globe, and particularly in London. His female-led dramas of contemporary life, though popular with audiences in his own time, received scant praise and often censure from the playwright’s critics, both in America and the UK. Writing and producing plays from 1890 until his death in 1909, Fitch’s plays, and the critical discourse surrounding his productions, intervened in fin de siècle debates concerning gender, sexuality, and fears of moral degeneration. Influenced in construction, technique, and stage-craft by French naturalism, Fitch’s plays utilised theories of heredity and social Darwinism to explain the psychological motivations of his characters. Central to the narrative of each play, however, was the conflicting message that individual will and strength of character is of greater importance than genetic or social circumstance. Rather than following theatrical convention in punishing the liars, flirts, suffragettes, and fallen women of his plays, Fitch encouraged the sympathies of his audiences with these morally ambiguous characters and insisted, wherever possible, upon happy endings that drew the ire of the conservative male press. Fundamentally, these productions contradicted American and British ideologies rooted in the notion that national prosperity could only be secured through the marriage and propagation of white men and women of ‘good breeding’. The gendered biases of Fitch’s critics, I argue, often led to dislocated interpretations of his heroines, and to the wilful dismissal of a body of work which successfully marketed marginalised configurations, encouraging inclusivity and acceptance over fear and social division. 3 Table of Contents 1. INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………………………………….6 2. ‘I INSIST SHE SHALL LIVE AND BE DIVORCED’: ADVENTURESSES, ACTRESSES, AND AUTONOMY……………………………………………………………………………………………….…….27 i. A Modern Match (1892)……………………………………………………………………….36 ii. Gossip (1895)…………………………………………………………………………………....…51 iii. The Climbers (1901)…………………………………………………………………..…………69 3. ‘A MESSAGE TO DAUGHTERS AS WELL’: PROSTITUTES, MOTHERS, AND FALLEN WOMEN……………………………………………………………………………………………………………87 i. The Moth and the Flame (1898)……………………………………………………………96 ii. Sapho (1900)………………………………………………………………………………………108 4. ‘A REAL ISSUE OF SYMPATHY’: EUGENICS AND THE AMERICAN GIRL………..……127 i. The Girl with the Green Eyes (1902)……………………………………………………137 ii. The Truth (1907)…………………………………………………………………………………151 5. ‘THERE ARE CERTAINLY SOME MEN WHO OUGHT TO BE HATED’: SUFFRAGETTES, STUDIO GIRLS, AND MAN-HATERS…………………………..……….....168 i. The House of Mirth (1906)……………………………………………………….…………172 ii. Girls (1908)…………………………………………………………………………………………183 6. ‘HIS MANHOOD WINS’: DIVISIONS AND DOUBLES OF AMERICAN MASCULINITY………………………………………………………………………………………..……….200 i. The City (1909)………………………………………………………………………….………..204 7. ‘THE PUBLIC IS THE TRUE CENSOR AND THE FINAL CRITIC’: CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………………….……………222 Works Cited……………………………………………………………………………………………………235 4 Acknowledgements First and foremost, enormous thanks are due to Theresa Saxon, who has been my supervisor throughout the three years of my PhD and a mentor since I started my undergraduate degree at UCLan. I am grateful for her guidance, her insight, and for sharing her wealth of knowledge (as well as her research materials). I’d also like to thank her for introducing me to Fitch. I am grateful also to rest of my supervisory team, Will Kauffman and Alan Rice for their kind and expert supervision. Lastly, but not the least, I am grateful beyond measure to my family; to Mum and Dad, for your relentless and unbelievable encouragement, wisdom, support, and for highly appreciated deliveries of gin; to my children, Harvey and Evie, who have been so grown up and wonderful; and to Chris, who has been superbly understanding, supportive, and who has been with me all the way. 5 Chapter One INTRODUCTION With a reported income of $250,000 a year at the height of his popularity, Clyde Fitch was the most commercially successful Broadway dramatist of his time (Phelps 147). Between 1890 and 1909, the prolific dramatist authored at least 62 plays, ranging from historical romances to contemporary social satires. He adapted American novels, French plays, and saw his own original works staged not only in his home country, but also in England, Scotland, Ireland, Italy, Germany, France, Russia, Hungary, and Sweden. Days before his death, Fitch received word that his plays were to be staged as far afield as South Africa and Australia (Bell 62). Despite Fitch’s enormous popularity with audiences at the turn of the twentieth century, critics often dismissed the playwright and derided his work. His plays, even today, are seldom the subject of scholarly analysis. Only most recently have Fitch’s life and works become the subject of a full biography (Dearinger 2016). As Dearinger summarises: ‘When not a problem, he is dismissed or forgotten’ (529). Fitch’s publicly ambiguous sexuality and perceived superficiality, his preference for staging female-led dramas, and his appeal to a predominantly female market all contributed to both the dismissal of his work by the (predominantly male) critical establishment. A number of key works, published within the last couple of decades, however, reposition Fitch as a key figure in queer theatre history (Marra 2002), and draw attention to the gendered critical biases that contributed to his relative obscurity (Sehat 2008, Saxon 2011). In this thesis I examine those critical biases in more detail, contrasting the critical responses to Fitch’s plays in his home country to those in the UK. While Fitch’s work is 6 often discussed in terms of melodrama versus realism, he was influenced also in construction, technique, and stage-craft by European drama and the naturalist movement. Fitch’s plays utilised theories of heredity and social Darwinism to explain the psychological motivations of his characters, and the essential conflict between individualism and biological determinism is a largely overlooked but critically significant aspect of Fitch’s work. I will also, therefore, examine how theories of heredity influenced the construction, staging, and interpretation of his leading women (and men). As Fitch’s plays were popular with audiences composed primarily of women, and as he was often derided as playwright who wrote exclusively for those women, I consider how his plays catered to his audiences and why there was such a marked disparity between public and press responses. Significantly, contextualising my analysis, I consider how the plays examined in this thesis engaged with the wider gendered social issues of the fin de siècle. As a dramatist, Fitch worked tirelessly throughout his career. He described himself as living ‘entirely in and for [his] work, but not as a pastime, nor as a business’, explaining: ‘I have no other principal interest, no business, no wife or children. I give all to my work and the few friends I can count on my hands’ (Moses and Gerson 281). In 1901 alone, at the height of his career, seven new Fitch plays premiered on stages in New York and London, while earlier productions continued to run (Moses and Gerson 391). As his career progressed, Fitch increasingly produced his own works. He involved himself at every stage of production, from construction, to set and costume design, to casting and rehearsals. He imagined and insisted on the finest details of scenery, creating for his audiences an illusion of reality that often went along with a sense of grandeur: the deck of a cruise ship, the lavishly decorated interior of a New York sitting room. Above all, Fitch aimed to please his public, declaring the audience to be ‘the true censor, and the final critic’ (“The Play and the Public” xx). Fitch felt there was a ‘great field 7 in America’ for such plays that could function as historical ‘social documents’ (“A Talk with Clyde Fitch”). It was a practice that he observed