A Spectacle of Suffering: Clara Morris on the American Stage (review)

{ 247 } Book Reviews \ \ A Spectacle of Suffering: Clara Morris on the Ameri­ can Stage. By Barbara Wallace Grossman. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2009. 368 pp. $19.95 paper. Barbara Wallace Grossman’s engaging biography of nineteenth-­and twentieth-­ century Ameri­ can actress-­ cum-­ author Clara Morris lives up to Rosemarie K. Banks’s endorsement in praise of the author’s“impeccable”research (back cover). In fact, Grossman so subtly intertwines historical detail with Morris’s compelling story that her fluid narrative belies an exhaustive and painstaking scholarly study. Her contextualization of Morris vis-­ à-­ vis Gilded Age and fin de ­ siècle society illustrates the new historicist’s best practices. Establishing the motif of Morris’s morphine addiction, Grossman notes increased use of the hypodermic needle for administering morphine as treatment for myriad ailments in the 1870s (165). The author includes an account of a bizarre treatment of Morris’s chronic spinal pain involving a hot poker (157) and suggests that the actress’s diagnosis-­ defying illnesses might be attributed to “the great imitator,” syphilis (187). In contrast to the medical drama Morris faced backstage—and onstage when medication was administered during performances—Grossman describes theatrical conventions of the day. Her vivid descriptions of extravagant baskets and bouquets presented at curtain calls, numbers and sorts of curtain calls, actors acknowledging audience response mid-­ performance, discomfort and inconsistent management at out-­ of-­ town theatres, and grueling conditions of train travel across the United States offer insight into life in the theatre. The book takes the tone and structure of historical narrative. While it opens with Morris’s early triumph under Augustin Daly’s management, the action quickly flashes back and proceeds chronologically from birth to death.Peppered with feminist theory and discussion of gender roles, A Spectacle of Suf­ fering emphasizes the actress’s determination to earn a healthy livelihood in the theatre while doggedly adhering to her moral and ethical standards. Rather than adopting a particular feminist critical lens, Grossman incorporates tenets of feminism into her discussions of Victorian America’s definition of femininity (90), “hysteria” as a medical term applied to women (91), the “Emotional” school of acting (91), use of “metaphors of the histrionic” in medical discussions (93), and sexist theatre history practices. Grossman offers Morris’s ethics, status as a working woman, and moral rectitude as prototypically feminist. The biographical narrative is superbly executed, its style appropriate to the { 248 } Book Reviews subject.Wherever lacunae in evidence preclude the historian’s ability to surmise her subject’s motivation or attitude, Grossman faces the paucity squarely, commenting in her own voice. This stylistic choice, the addition of the historian’s perspective, adds dimension—a meta-­ biographical layer—to the work. Grossman writes clearly and with precision, making the piece a pleasure to read for its execution as much as for its content. The author successfully negotiates difficulties inherent in working with autobiographies (Morris wrote three memoirs and an autobiographical stage novel), diaries, stories and articles written by her subject, and theatrical reviews. She remains respectful of Morris, championing her, and seeking to reestablish the actress’s place as once “the most famous actress in America” (1). At the same time, if not outright questioning her veracity, Grossman acknowledges Morris’s tendencies to romanticize, deemphasize, or omit events from her past. A Spectacle of Suffering takes its title not only from a review of Morris in performance but undoubtedly from the astounding number of references to suffering in Morris’s own hand and as an epithet used by others to describe her. Spectacle and suffering take on multiple connotations, ranging from the laudatory to the pejorative. Coincidentally, even works cited include Susan A. Glenn’s Female Spectacle: The Theatrical Roots of Modern Feminism and Drew Gilpin Faust’s This Republic of Suffering. Grossman states of Morris that “Sufferi­ ng shaped her life and art” (2). Writing of recent triumphs, the actress delighted in possessing “no knowledge of sin and suffering . . . only sunshine” (15), but acute suffering—physical and psychological—followed. Although earlier reviews praise the actress’s emotive style as “not a formulated mimicry of suffering ” (130), later critics call for her retirement, and what Grossman calls “the spectacle...