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Acting Southern ACTING FEMININE ON THE SOUTH’S ANTEBELLUM AND CIVIL WAR STAGES by ROBIN OGIER WARREN (Under the Direction of Christy Desmet and Frances Teague) ABSTRACT This dissertation analyzes the theatrical repertory and performative daily roles of women who acted on the antebellum and Civil War southern stage. Actresses helped shape gendered identity for the South by entrenching and subverting accepted norms of femininity. Because their stage and everyday performances took many appearances according to class, time, place, and race, they showed that constructions of gendered identity vary according to circumstance. Family connections brought women to the southern stage; these relationships operated as one of the multiple cultural, social, and political forces that Judith Butler says constructs identity. Actresses learned to enact scripted feminine behavior in their personal lives and on stage as young girls. Trained to improvise, however, actresses did not always adhere to their play or social scripts. Instead, abiding by and transgressing against the region’s traditional gender norms, they occupied what Victor Turner calls a liminal status. Actresses constituted part of a small, diverse group of urban women who worked for pay and contributed to the region’s developing economy and cultural life. Since actresses maintained private lives, they moved between what Jürgen Habermas terms the private and public spheres and showed that these supposedly distinct worlds actually overlapped. As members of what Michel Foucault calls “a society of blood” in which sex maintained the family relations of the power structure, actresses had to temper the sexuality of performances to maintain pure reputations. Because some players overturned traditional sexual values while others upheld them, these shifting representations of sexuality confirmed the artificiality of gendered identity and showed masculine and feminine roles are bodily styles outwardly enacted through repeated performative gestures. Actresses’ various portrayals of sexuality revealed that a range of sexual identities exists and refutes a binaric understanding of sexuality. Because white actresses dominated women’s roles, they also enacted a variety of racial identities, including African Americans, Native Americans, and indigenous people from faraway places and times. They raised connotations of exoticism and confirmed for white theatergoers the Otherness of people whose skin was darker than their own. Plays by William Shakespeare dominated repertory, but eighteenth-century Restoration dramas and nineteenth-century melodramas were also popular. INDEX WORDS: Acting; Actress; Actresses; Drama; Stage; Theater; South; Southern; Antebellum; Civil War; Family; Kinship; Script; Scripts; Role; Roles; Performative; Performance; Performativity; Repertory; Gender; Identity; Feminine; Femininity; Subversion; Transgression; Liminal; Liminality; Private; Public; Sphere; Spheres; Work; Class; Status; Sex; Sexuality; Race; Alterity; Otherness; Exoticism; William Shakespeare; Restoration; Melodrama; Judith Butler; Victor Turner; Jürgen Habermas; Michel Foucault; Culture; Economy; Urban. ACTING FEMININE ON THE SOUTH’S ANTEBELLUM AND CIVIL WAR STAGES by ROBIN OGIER WARREN B.A., Agnes Scott College, 1984 M.Ed., The University of Georgia, 1988 Ed.S., The University of Georgia, 1992 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ATHENS, GEORGIA 2005 © 2005 Robin Ogier Warren All Rights Reserved ACTING FEMININE ON THE SOUTH’S ANTEBELLUM AND CIVIL WAR STAGES by ROBIN OGIER WARREN Major Professors: Christy Desmet Frances Teague Committee: John C. Inscoe Timothy B. Powell Hugh Ruppersburg Electronic Version Approved: Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia May 2005 For Wally “Thou art all the comfort / The Gods will diet me with.” Imogen, Cymbeline, 3.4.179-80, William Shakespeare iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS “When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.” Henri J. M. Nouwen, Out of Solitude. “We are advertis’d by our loving friends.” King Edward, Henry VI, Part III, 5.3.18, William Shakespeare. I have learned in writing my dissertation that scholarship is a collaborative enterprise, and I have many friends of the mind, heart, and spirit to thank for their contributions to this undertaking. Over the past seven years, many faculty members helped me navigate the twists and turns that have culminated in this project. Christy Desmet and Frances Teague stand out, however, as faithful mentors who have given selflessly of their time and energy to guide and direct my academic endeavors. They have maintained high standards and expected me to engage rigorously in research and writing, but they have also helped me set and attain realistic goals. Both Christy Desmet and Frances Teague have exposed me to new theoretical approaches that v have invigorated my thinking, yet neither has ever foisted her own beliefs on me. Instead, they have encouraged me to engage in self-discovery and self-inquiry, and for those difficult tasks, I am grateful. A paper in Christy Desmet’s Shakespeare and Appropriation class generated the seeds for this project, and I am thankful for her support of that initial undertaking. I am also obliged to Frances Teague for watering those seeds when she offered cogent advice for narrowing my first broad topic idea from Shakespeare in the nineteenth-century South to the narrower scope of this project, which studies antebellum and Civil War actresses on the southern stage. In addition, I am grateful for the inspiration that Frances Teague’s book title, Acting Funny: Comic Theory and Practice in Shakespeare’s Plays, has given for my own title and sub-headings. Theater historian Faye Dudden, who entitled the introduction to her book, Women in the American Theater, “Acting Female,” also helped inspire my titles. Dudden explains that “traditionalists” prescribe gender roles for women and expect them to “act female,” but “acting females” [actresses] illustrate that they can escape those essentials by becoming someone else in performance and escaping the fixity of identity (2). The actresses I investigated revealed the fluid nature of identity both on stage and in their everyday lives. Thus, I am grateful to Faye Dudden—and to the many other scholars and theorists—whose work has informed my own. John Inscoe’s research on the history of Appalachia and the nineteenth-century South has certainly had a large impact on my thinking. His book Mountain Masters, Slavery, and the Sectional Crisis in Western North Carolina gave me a more nuanced view of the nineteenth- century South as a complex place that eludes simplistic, easy definition. I cherish John’s friendship, his good humor, and his willingness to read and respond to these chapters as well as many of my articles in their changing forms over the years. I am also thankful for his eagle vi editor’s eye that spots so many errors and for his insightful reading suggestions that have brought depth to my historical analysis, which would otherwise be lacking. I appreciate Hugh Ruppersburg’s support throughout my tenure as a graduate student. He helped spark my interest in the literature and culture of the American South in the first graduate English class I ever took in the fall of 1987. When I returned to graduate studies in 1998, he readily agreed to serve as my first major professor, even though he was busy with administrative duties as an assistant dean. Hugh Ruppersburg has always taken an interest in my progress and has always been willing to assist me when I needed his aid. I am grateful for his direction, inspiration, and assistance. Although I never had the pleasure of taking a class with Tim Powell, he graciously agreed to serve on my dissertation committee, and I have been thankful for his guidance. He recommended the work of Lora Romero as well as Cathy Davidson and Jessamyn Hatcher, which proved instrumental in the theoretical background that I used in Chapter 3. In addition, Tim Powell’s discussion of aporia in his own book, Ruthless Democracy, was very helpful to me in Chapter 5, and I appreciate these contributions. Other faculty members in the University of Georgia’s Department of English have also played important roles in my graduate training and in the production of this dissertation. I extend my thanks to Nelson Hilton for encouraging me when I was applying for admission to the graduate program, and I thank Michael Moran for his support as I have applied for various grants and scholarships over the years. I appreciate James Nagel’s efforts in helping me publish my first two articles and for instilling in me the importance of contributing to the field of scholarship. vii Dan Kirby and Sally Hudson-Ross, professors of English Education at the University of Georgia who oversaw my M.Ed. and Ed.S. work, contributed significantly to my development as a writer, teacher, and scholar. I am grateful for the grounding they gave me in pedagogical methodology and composition theory. I know I am a better writer, instructor, and researcher because of their tutelage. I would be remiss if I failed to acknowledge the profound influence that Margaret Pepperdene had on shaping me as an undergraduate at Agnes Scott College. I believe my love for performance was born in her classroom, for she kept her students spellbound by enacting the literature she taught. She brought words to life with her enthusiasm and verve, and she infused me with a love for language that has yet to wane.
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