Date of Award

2011

Type

Thesis

Major

English Language and Literature - Literature Concentration

Degree Type

Bachelor of Arts in English Literature

Department

English

Abstract

The full irony and wit of Restoration comedies relies not only on what characters communicate to each other, but also on what they communicate to the audience, both verbally and physically. Hand props help foster this important relationship with the audience as props provide moments of dramatic irony where the visual meaning portrayed through the object complicates the verbal text. Specifically, gendered props such as the fan, the sword, and the pistol visually establish conventions for the sexes, yet are also used to subvert these conventions through gesture, appropriation, or misuse. Thus far, the critical conversation concerning the possibility of these hand props has been mostly dramaturgical and fairly limited critically. For instance, J. L. Styan emphasizes the common, yet important, use of fans to convey the actresses' moods, and begins to realize the full connection between body and item, but leaves his argument resting in a practical space, stating only that it "served the actress so well on stage" (107). Styan also dissects the actor's prop list, noting the importance of the sword among his personal items (59). Thus, while critics point out that swords and fans ubiquitously appeared on the Restoration stage, most do not consider the important role such objects play in reinforcing gender. While playwrights of the era do not provide a prop list as such for modern readers, through the dramaturgical work of Styan and others, as well as what diarists such as Samuel Pepys record. It is certain that fashionable women always had their fans; fashionable men always had their swords. These objects become gendered in the sense that they not only help the actor and actress perform masculinity and femininity, but these props also become extensions of their bodies. Through an exploration of gendered props in William Wycherley's The Country Wife (1675), George Etherege's The Man of Mode, or Sir Fopling Flutter (1676), Aphra Behn's The Rover, or the Banished Cavaliers (1677), and William Congreve's The Way of the World {MOO), modern readers envisage how such fans, swords, and pistols destabilize gender roles in comedies in a time of shifting gender politics.

Imagining how performances would have been staged is key in fully interpreting the plays as modem readers do not have access to original performances, and while we can easily picture the use of swords, the use of the fan is more foreign. Andrew Sofer provides an informative and convincing reading of Restoration fans and the power these items have on stage. For the first time, women were allowed to play women's roles, thereby complicating the traditional portrayal of femininity and feminine power on stage. One such way in which actresses asserted their new roles and dominated the playing space was through their fans and fan language. While reporting that some conduct books offered a unified fan language, Sofer debunks the myth of a solid, codified language of the fan, asserting that instead "the fan amplifies those telling gestures that might otherwise be invisible or easily missed," thus accentuating the female body (127). There is no denying, however, the overwhelming incorporation of fans and gestures in Restoration theatre, as the fan "was such a ubiquitous female accessory that it must have graced virtually every play" (122). Yet for such a prop, playwrights avoid writing stage directions which directly refer to fans. Sofer asserts that "[b]etween 1660 and 1737 the fan is mentioned in a relatively small number of stage directions, presumably because the playwright would have expected the actress to incorporate her own fan business into virtually every scene'' (129). Actresses were responsible for providing their own fans and could find agency by deciding how to employ them in scenes. Thus, while there is no way to know for certain how actresses would have used their fans, clearly these hand props have the ability either to embellish a text or to destabilize it through gesture.

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Honors Thesis

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