Emblems of Authority in The Admirable Crichton

J.M. Barrie's The Admirable Crichton dramatizes the conflict between text and performance as they constitute authority. My argument focuses on the costumes, gestures, and stage props specified in Barrie's revised "narrative" stage directions to show how the play destabilizes normative metropolitan markers of gender and class as it explores the naturalness of artificial social roles and relationships. Although it is most obviously preoccupied with social class, the play exhibits a significant interest in the differential dynamics of authority and gender: text serves as the primary means by which power is authorized and exercised, while costume functions as the site at which gender norms are negotiated. I take up each of these concept/property pairings in turn as I investigate the role of the island in the expression of metropolitan anxieties over the nature and necessity of social difference. I also take note of how these issues have been handled in selected stage and film productions, as actors and directors make use of — or in some cases misunderstand — the symbolic system of Barrie's problem play.