Performative Acts of Gendered Emotions and Bodies in Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard

Perfonnative Acts of Gendered Emotions and Bodies in Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard PETA TAIT Anton Chekhov's major plays are acclaimed for their depiction of complex emotion. I Yet even when the representation of emotions in his major plays is perceived to faciHtate social networks between characters,2 Chekhovian emotions are divested of cultural meaning. The depiction of the emotions of male and female characters aligns with gender identity, but the significance of differently gendered emotion passes unquestioned. The perception of dramatic emotions becomes detached from social identity because they are presumed to be gender neutral, universal experiences. Recent feminist scholarship outside the field of drama, however, points out that particular emotions are culturally specific rather than universal and "natural"3 - their qualities and expression vary greatly between cultures - and they are gendered.4 In Western culture, women have traditionally been considered more emotional than men. Contrary to social belief that emotions are passive states (passivity aligning them with femininity within a meta-cultural binary), emotions can be experienced as active states, although they would seem to be experienced differently by men and women.5 Emotional expression is an integral part of social identity and ex.ists through "socially regulated gestures,>6 that establish a category of emotions. Moreover, emotion theory holds that the social meanings of emotions are established in their repetition7 as patterns and syndromes evident in behaviour and language. Therefore, we can ask whether the expressions of emotions by the characters in Chekhov's The Cheny Orchard reflect repetitions of social patterns and whether these expressions are culturally meaningful because they align with gender identity. I am concerned with the way that emotions pervade dramatic texts (and theatre discourses) and yet remain under-theorised in recent interpretative approaches; in this instance, I consider how emotion is represented in a written play. I contend that theories of the social expression of emotions,S conjoined with feminist theory about a socially performative self and its Modern Drama, 43: I (Spring 2000) 87 88 PETA TAfT embodiment, can enlarge our understanding of the representation of gender identity in The Cherry Orchard. This approach, in tum, suggests how the cultural meanings of emotion as they are represented in drama might have a broader significance in interpretations of social performativity. Judith Butler's ideas about the repetition of performative acts as constituting a socially intelligible self offer an approach for the interpretation of social exchanges in Chekhov 's play. The prevalence of social perfonnances by characters for other characters in Chekhov's dram~, its inherent.theatricality, has been described in relation to The Seagull,9 Three Sisters, >0 and Uncle Vanya." Such descriptions, however, are presumed to reveal Chekhov's (the author's) intention to condemn such expressiveness as insincere and superficial. By implication. it is assumed that a dramatic character's emotional expression should reflect the social belief that deeply felt emotions arise from the natural, embodied self. Emotions as expressive respenses and reactions, in The Cherry Orchard, are specified in the speech acts of the dialogue and in instructions for nonverbal enactments and physical movements in the stage directions, implying thei{ embodiment by the characters. I contend that the imperative to prove Chekhov's disapproval of theatricality in social behaviour overlooks the ways in which his plays reveal how the social expressions of emotion arise in relation to the cultural representation of emotions. The capacity of characters to interpret their emotional experience in relation to emotions depicted in theatre and art seems most apparent in The Seagull. Therefore it can be argued that an implicit theatricality of emotions in Chekhov's drama suggests that emotions are expressed in correspondence with cultural representation and its languages; emotions are made socially meaningful because of an identification with their expression in theatre. (The implications of this argument for Stanislavski's historic theatrical productions of Chekhov's plays and for his theories of acting and their legacies are separate discussions beyond the scope of this article .) I contend that a depiction of patterns of social interaction in The Cherry Orchard as performances by and between characters is meaningful beca~se it invokes theatricality even in the written text. 12 A character's self...