Eighteenth-Century Losers: Anxious Performances of Masculinity in Long Eighteenth- Century England by Kellye Corcoran A dissertation submitted to the Graduate faculty of Auburn University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Auburn, Alabama December 12, 2011 Keywords: performance studies, masculinity, drama, eighteenth-century Copyright 2011 by Kellye Corcoran Approved by Paula Backscheider, Chair, Professor of English Donald Wehrs, Professor of English Scott Phillips, Associate Professor of Theatre Jody Graham, Associate Professor of Philosophy Abstract My dissertation investigates how a group of male comedic figures (cuckolds, impotent men, and old bachelors) relate to an ongoing debate in the eighteenth century about the marriage problem. Largely ignored by scholars as too formulaic or farcical for serious critical investigation, I argue that the treatment of these men on the stage and the culture surrounding their real life counterparts (as revealed by a variety of nondramatic cultural texts: non-medical and medical advice literature, accounts of divorce trials, novels, poems, etc.) problematize the assumption that men’s experiences of marriage were eased by the advantages they accrued from their place in the patriarchal, religious, social, legal, and economic hierarchies. I use theories from performance studies as well as popular culture studies to analyze the performances of these roles on the stage and in the extratheatrical culture. What this analysis reveals is that these men, both on the stage and real life, experience significant pressures from a culture attempting to negotiate appropriate behavior for men and ways to make marriage work, pressures that cannot necessarily be revealed by more traditional approaches to the marriage problem that generally privilege the female experience of marriage as the subject of investigation. The frustrations of men within the construction of marriage are inextricably bound up with conflicting constructions of male sexuality and expectations for men within marriage. In the end, my dissertation suggests a reevaluation of what has thus far been largely ignored or dismissed in eighteenth century drama as a means for a more comprehensive understanding of the ideological aims and accomplishments of the stage. ii Acknowledgements I would like to thank several important groups of people for helping me in completing this dissertation. I would like to thank my committee, and in particular my advisor, Dr. Paula Backscheider, for their continued support, encouragement, and feedback throughout this process. I would also not have been able to complete this dissertation without the support of the Auburn University English Department. In addition, I would like to thank my family for the encouragement they have given me from all across the country. I would also like to thank Antonia Taylor, Corey Taylor, Samantha Ondyak, Jeremy Trucker, Eva Shoop-Shafor, and Steve Shafor for offering support and encouragement as part of my graduate school family. iii Table of Contents Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………………ii Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………………iii Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………..1 Chapter 1: All Cuckolds Really Do Go to Heaven: Cuckoldry as Performance in the Late Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries…………………………………………………….30 Chapter 2: Scraping Upon the Poor Domestic Instrument: The Performance of Marital Impotence in Eighteenth-Century Drama……………………………………………………………………91 Chapter 3: “The Warm Touch of Her Lips will be an Antidote to [T]his Cold Poison”: The Performance of Unequal Marriage in the Long Eighteenth Century……………….……………...155 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………...222 References………………………………………………………………………………………226 iv Introduction On March 21st 1710, Richard Steele wrote in The Tatler: It has often been a solid Grief to me, when I have reflected on this glorious Nation, which is the Scene of publick Happiness and Liberty, that there are still Crowds of private Tyrants, against whom there neither is any Law now in Being, nor can there be invented any by the Wit of Man. These cruel Men are ill-natured Husbands. The Commerce in the Conjugal State is so delicate, that it is impossible to prescribe Rules for the Conduct of it, so as to fit Ten Thousand nameless Pleasures and Disquietudes which arise to People in that Condition. 1 Steele’s sense of disappointment with the state of marriage in what he otherwise construes as a country in which happiness and liberty flourished is not unusual. As marriage was the central organizing principle of society (alongside, of course, the economic and social forces of class hierarchy), we might wonder exactly where that happiness and liberty flourished. For anyone familiar with the treatment of the “marriage problem” in England during the long eighteenth- century, this is an understated and loaded commentary on Steele’s part. Feminist treatments of marriage during this time have developed the widely varying iterations of potential private tyranny the social, religious, and economic realities of marriage made possible. In a society where there was little legal oversight over the power men wielded as heads of households (a fact that Steele mourns above), men could use their power to make the lives of their wives, children, and servants miserable. The focus of this dissertation is marriage, and thus a further development 1 Richard Steele, “Ill-Natured Husbands,” The Tatler, no. 149 (21 March, 1710), repr. in Selections from The Tatler and The Spectator, ed. Angus Ross (New York: Penguin, 1982), 148. 1 of the tyranny of husbands (as opposed to fathers and masters) is perhaps sufficient. Husbands could confine their wives (to a house or even a room in that house), commit marital rape, part women from their children, abuse their wives physically and emotionally (legally, up to the point of mortal danger), and deny their wives the basic amenities of life (food, clothing, etc.). In light of this catalog of potential misery, Steele’s choice of the term “ill-natured” is one that hides a multitude of sins. Certainly the case that Steele goes on to develop is mild in comparison: My Friend was neither in Fortune, Birth, or Education, below the Gentleman whom she married. Her person, her Age, and her Character, are also such as he can make no Exception to. But so it is, that from the Moment the Marriage-Ceremony was over, the Obsequiousness of a Lover was turned into the Haughtiness of a Master. All the kind Endeavors which she uses to please him, are at best but so many Instances of her Duty. This Insolence takes away that secret Satisfaction, which does not only excite to Virtue, but also rewards it. It abates the Fire of a free and generous Love, and imbitters all the Pleasures of a Social Life. (149) Compared to the horrors that I have suggested could be a realization of Steele’s private tyranny, this young lady’s situation seems mild. Steele, however, seems to be stressing here that even with the best foundations—spouses who are equals in all important matters (fortune, breeding, education) and a desirable wife (in terms of person, age, and character—a powerful combination at this time, when often fortune was the only measure of desirability) whose inclinations seem to run to being a pleasing and considerate wife—marriage was difficult to carry off successfully. Steele ultimately goes on to suggest that the shift from obsequious lover to master is founded on the “false notion of the Weakness of …Female Understanding” (149). The nature of female understanding is a theme that is pervasive in eighteenth-century debates about women 2 one, for example, that Mary Wollstonecraft revisits at the end of the century in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), and I certainly do not want to diminish its importance to the troubled landscape of marriage in the eighteenth century. Steele, however, says something intriguing about the relationship of men to marriage that he never really develops; he seems to understand it as an assumption that goes without saying: “There is nothing so common as for Men to enter into Marriage, without so much as expecting to be happy in it” (149). Given what we know about women’s place in society and marriage, there would be nothing surprising about Steele making this statement about them instead of men. But why, we might (and I will) ask, given the legal, religious, and social advantages men had as they entered into marriage, would they not have the least expectation of being made happy by it? The only development Steele provides to his tantalizing statement above is that “[Men] seem to propose to themselves a few Holidays in the Beginning of [Marriage]; after which, they are to return at best to the usual Course of their Life; and for ought they know, to constant Misery and Uneasiness” (149). Steele’s additional comments only make the status of the men about whom he writes all the more curious. What causes Steele to suggest that the “usual course” of these men’s lives were more likely than not characterized by “misery and uneasiness”? As readers in the twenty-first century, we are frustratingly missing the context in which these statements are being made, and frankly it seems to challenge the mostly now unspoken belief that men were automatically granted a blessing by the genetic lottery that provided them a y- chromosome. No matter what tangible benefits we can retrospectively associate with being born male in the eighteenth century, there seems to be a prevalent dissatisfaction (which is, perhaps an understatement given Steele’s “misery and uneasiness”) among the sex at that time and within marriage in particular. 3 Steele’s discussion of men suggests that there are anxieties and pressures at work in their culture—especially in the conjugal arena—that he considers widespread enough to leave implicit. I would like to make them explicit. In this dissertation I suggest that there are conflicting pressures that shape male sexual identity and the expectations surrounding men’s relationship to marriage.