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Stage Mothers expands the discussion of eighteenth-century women's social and dramatic roles by demonstrating the complicated, contradictory, and celebratory faces of maternity on stage and on the page. This collection examines and extends recent debates in women's history, theater history, and eighteenth-century literature and drama.
List of contents
Contents
Introduction
Elaine M. McGirr and Laura Engel
Part One: Actresses, Motherhood, and the Profession of the Stage
Chapter 1. "The Divided Heart of the Actress": Late Eighteenth-Century Actresses and the "Cult of Maternity"
Helen E.M. Brooks
Chapter 2. The Inconvenience of the Female Condition: Anne Oldfield's Pregnancies
J.D. Phillipson
Chapter 3. "Inimitable Sensibility": Susannah Cibber's Performance of Maternity
Elaine M. McGirr
Chapter 4. Working Mothers on the Romantic Stage: Sarah Siddons and Mary Robinson
Ellen Malenas Ledoux
Part Two. Representations of Mothers on the Stage and the Page
Chapter 5. Rebels for Love: Maternity, Absolutism, and the Earl of Orrery's Mustapha
Laura R. Rosenthal
Chapter 6. Rowe's The Ambitious Stepmother: Motherhood and the Politics of the Blended Family
Marilyn Francus
Chapter 7. Staged Virtue: Anastasia Robinson as Ideal Mother in Two Operas of the 1720
Kathryn Lowerre
Chapter 8. Maternal Duties and Filial Malapropisms: Frances Sheridan and the Problems of Theatrical Inheritance
Emrys Jones
Chapter 9. My Son, My Lover: Gothic Contagion and Maternal Sexuality in the Mysterious Mother
Jade Higa
Part Three. Actresses and their Children
Chapter 10. Elizabeth and Keppel Craven and the Domestic Drama of Mother-Son
Relations
Judith Hawley
Chapter 11. Mommy Diva: The Divided Loyalities of Sarah Siddons
Laura Engel
Chapter 12. The Gerbini Letters: or, A Tale of Two Mothers
Gilli Bush-Bailey
Bibliography
About the Contributors
About the author
Edited by Laura Engel and Elaine M. McGirr - Contributions by Helen E.M. Brooks; Gilli Bush-Bailey; Marilyn Francus; Judith Hawley; Jade Higa; Emrys D. Jones; Ellen Malenas Ledoux; Kathryn Lowerre; J.D. Philopsen and Laura J. Rosenthal
Summary
Stage Mothers expands the discussion of eighteenth-century women’s social and dramatic roles by demonstrating the complicated, contradictory, and celebratory faces of maternity on stage and on the page. This collection examines and extends recent debates in women’s history, theater history, and eighteenth-century literature and drama.
