How to Represent Female Identity on the Restoration Stage: Actresses (Self) Fashioning

• Authors: Raquel Serrano González , Laura Martínez-García
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Despite the shifting ideologies of gender of the seventeenth century, the arrival of the first actresses caused deep social anxiety: theatre gave women a voice to air grievances and to contest, through their own bodies, traditional gender roles. This paper studies two of the best-known actresses, Nell Gwyn and Anne Bracegirdle, and the different public personae they created to negotiate their presence in this all-male world. In spite of their differing strategies, both women gained fame and profit in the male-dominated theatrical marketplace, confirming them as the ultimate “gender benders,” who appropriated the male role of family’s supporter and bread-winner

Keywords

EN

Actresses; Restoration; Bracegirdle; Gwyn; gender notions; deployment of alliance; deployment of sexuality

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Łódzki. Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
• Journal: International Studies. Interdisciplinary Political and Cultural Journal
• Year: 2014
• Volume: 16
• Pages: 97-110

Dates

published

2014-09-01

online

2014-09-25

Contributors

author

Raquel Serrano González

• University of Oviedo, Dpto. Filología Anglogermánica y Francesa Teniente Alfonso Martínez s/n 33011 – Oviedo (Asturias)

author

Laura Martínez-García

• University of Oviedo, Dpto. Filología Anglogermánica y Francesa Teniente Alfonso Martínez s/n 33011 – Oviedo (Asturias).

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Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/ipcj-2014-0007