I the POLITICS of DESIRE: ENGLISH WOMEN PLAYWRIGHTS
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THE POLITICS OF DESIRE: ENGLISH WOMEN PLAYWRIGHTS, PARTISANSHIP, AND THE STAGING OF FEMALE SEXUALITY, 1660-1737 by Loring Pfeiffer B. A., Swarthmore College, 2002 M. A., University of Pittsburgh, 2010 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2015 i UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Loring Pfeiffer It was defended on May 1, 2015 and approved by Kristina Straub, Professor, English, Carnegie Mellon University John Twyning, Professor, English, and Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies, Courtney Weikle-Mills, Associate Professor, English Dissertation Advisor: Jennifer Waldron, Associate Professor, English ii Copyright © by Loring Pfeiffer 2015 iii THE POLITICS OF DESIRE: ENGLISH WOMEN PLAYWRIGHTS, PARTISANSHIP, AND THE STAGING OF FEMALE SEXUALITY, 1660-1737 Loring Pfeiffer, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2015 The Politics of Desire argues that late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century women playwrights make key interventions into period politics through comedic representations of sexualized female characters. During the Restoration and the early eighteenth century in England, partisan goings-on were repeatedly refracted through the prism of female sexuality. Charles II asserted his right to the throne by hanging portraits of his courtesans at Whitehall, while Whigs avoided blame for the volatility of the early eighteenth-century stock market by foisting fault for financial instability onto female gamblers. The discourses of sexuality and politics were imbricated in the texts of this period; however, scholars have not fully appreciated how female dramatists’ treatment of desiring female characters reflects their partisan investments. In fact, critical estimations of plays written by women have been more apt to focus on how well these playwrights’ works accord with modern feminist understandings of female desire than on how women dramatists’ texts complicate and corroborate the political discourse of the day. This dissertation treats late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century sexual and partisan discourse as inextricably intertwined. Reconstructing the tumultuous political context in which Restoration and early eighteenth-century women wrote, The Politics of Desire shows that these playwrights’ comedies make important—and heretofore unrecognized—interventions into the political landscape of the day. In chapters that focus on courtesans and bawds, cheating wives, female gamblers, and pandered wives, this dissertation examines the ways that Aphra iv Behn, Mary Pix, Susanna Centlivre, and Eliza Haywood reframe partisan discourse about particular types of sexualized women. Ultimately, The Politics of Desire enriches the critical conversation about women playwrights’ comedies, giving these plays the kind of precise, carefully contextualized attention they deserve. v TABLE OF CONTENTS 1.0 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................... 1 1.1 SEXUAL AND PARTISAN RHETORIC, 1660-1737 .............................................. 8 1.2 HISTORICIZING DESIRE ..................................................................................... 19 1.3 SEX COMEDY: GENRE, DESIRE, POLITICS .................................................... 29 1.4 CHAPTER SUMMARIES ........................................................................................ 36 2.0 COURTESANS, BAWDS, AND ROYALISM IN THE ROVER, PART II .................. 40 2.1 COURTESAN AVARICE AND PARTISAN DISCOURSE ................................. 43 2.2 BAWDRY, GROTESQUE SEXUALITY, AND STUART ECONOMIC PROPAGANDA .................................................................................................................. 55 3.0 CHEATING WIVES, VISUAL AUTHORITY, AND WHIG POWER IN THE SPANISH WIVES ........................................................................................................................ 69 3.1 THE POLITICS OF CUCKOLDRY COMEDIES, 1671-1707 ............................. 73 3.2 SPECTATORSHIP AND PARTISANSHIP IN RESTORATION ANTITHEATRE ................................................................................................................. 83 3.3 “WHAT NEED THERE IS OF WATCHING ONE’S WIFE”: VISION, CUCKOLDRY, AND POLITICS IN THE SPANISH WIVES ....................................... 91 4.0 “DARE YOU … ARRAIGN MY PLEASURES?”: WOMEN GAMBLERS AND WHIG ECONOMICS IN THE BASSET TABLE .................................................................. 105 vi 4.1 FINANCIAL UNCERTAINTY, PARTY POLITICS, AND FEMALE DESIRE ....................................................................................................................................108 4.2 STAGING ECONOMIC ANXIETY: GAMBLING, PARTISANSHIP, AND THE GAMESTER ...................................................................................................................... 112 4.3 GENDER AND FINANCIAL PLEASURE IN THE BASSET TABLE .............. 121 5.0 PANDERED WIVES AND PASSIVE OBEDIENCE IN A WIFE TO BE LETT ...... 139 5.1 PANDERED WIVES AND FEMALE SEXUALITY .......................................... 141 5.2 THE POLITICS OF WIFE PANDERING ........................................................... 148 5.3 THE TRIUMPH OF PASSIVE OBEDIENCE: MRS. GRASPALL AS TORY HEROINE ......................................................................................................................... 158 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................... 171 vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thanks, first, to my committee. My advisor, Jen Waldron, reads graduate student work with astonishing care; again and again, her comments have revealed dimensions of my work that I never could have seen on my own. Kristina Straub has provided essential guidance about the material conditions of the eighteenth-century stage as well as the secondary literature in our field. Johnny Twyning has an uncanny ability to make a clever quip at exactly the right moment. Courtney Weikle-Mills has asked me hard questions in a way that makes me want to answer, rather than run away from, them. Thanks to all of you for being so patient: my process has been a long and winding one, and I can’t possibly say how grateful I am that you have seen this project through to its conclusion. (Thanks, too, to two erstwhile committee members who played key roles in this project’s inception—Kathryn Flannery, who provided helpful feedback on Chapters 1 and 3, and Kimberly Latta, who introduced me to the literature of this period.) Thanks to the Department of English at the University of Pittsburgh for awarding me a Barbara Nietzsche Tobias dissertation fellowship and a Research & Development grant. And to the Department of English at Santa Clara University for being the kind of community that I want to work in for a long, long time. Thanks, too, to the librarians and staff at the libraries where the research for this project has taken place: Doe Library at the University of California, Berkeley; the Henry E. Huntington Library; the Santa Clara University Library; and the University of Pittsburgh Library. Particular thanks go to the San Francisco Public Library, whose branch librarians are not paid to help people write their dissertations, but who do so anyway. Boundless gratitude to the people I’ve written alongside, commiserated with, and cried to during the process of finishing this project, especially my Feast family, Samantha Gottlieb, Kara Levy, Christine McCulloch, Jodi Perelman, Alexandra Valint, Rebecca Wigginton, and the Worldbuilders of Academic Muse. I would not have completed this dissertation without Kathleen Murray, who has read nearly all of it. When I moved to San Francisco, I could never have known how lucky I was that she was just across the Bay. Thanks to the people who have done the domestic labor that has made this dissertation possible: Libby and Roger Jones, Katrina Morin, Kyla Sullivan, Isabel Vargas, and the inspiring parents at Puddle Jumpers Workshop. Last, and most of all, thanks to my family. Steve Lundeen has showed me how to lead an academic life. Ann Lundeen’s proud political investments inspired my own and made me viii curious about others’; furthermore, her emotional support is the reason I am who I am. (I love you, Mom!) Gil Jones is that rare breed: a software engineer who believes that the Humanities are important. The financial and intellectual support that he provided this project cannot be overstated; also, he makes me laugh every day. Cleo Jones was patient when “Mama do some work at the library” and provided the silliest, most absorbing breaks from writing I could have imagined. ix 1.0 INTRODUCTION In much of her oeuvre, Delarivier Manley treats sexualized female characters sympathetically. In her tragedy The Royal Mischief (1696), Manley justifies the romantic affairs of the protagonist, Homais, by framing them as a natural outgrowth of the confines that Homais’s elderly husband has placed on her (early in the play, Homais proclaims, “I’m a Woman, made/Passionate by want of Liberty”).1 In her autobiographical novel, The Adventures of Rivella (1714), Manley celebrates the romantic liaisons of her avatar, Rivella, describing her as “the only person of her sex that knows how to live.”2 Manley’s sole comedy, however, frames its ‘fallen’ woman character