"Spectatress of the Mischief Which She Made": Tragic Woman Perceived and Perceiver

“Spectatress of the M ischiefqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA W hich She M ade”: Tragic W om an Perceived and Perceiver C Y N T H IA S . M A T L A C K Critics have re pe ate d ly associate d fe mininity with the pathe tic in the ir e fforts to d e scrib e and account for e sse ntialalte rationsin the tone and structure of trage d ythat occurre d in the last third of the se ve nte e nth ce ntury .The argume nt is commonplace that as trage d yshifte d away from the he roic or 4‘masculine” during the Restoration it stressed increasingly the pathetic or “feminine,”1 that as tragic grandeur and greatness diminished, pathetic elements merged and gradually supplanted the earlier tradition as artistic form responded to social and aesthetic evolution.2 In historical dramas in which “feminine interests dominate,”3 John Banks and other writers of “she-tragedies” focused on the plights of noble figures like Mary Queen of Scots, Anne Boleyn, Lady Jane Grey, and Queen Elizabeth, moving tragedy further in the direction of the pathetic. The change in dramatic emphasis from “admiration” and tragic catharsis to pathos was accompanied by a new aesthetic tenor. Nicholas Rowe, a later playwright who “turned to the feminine 317 3 1 8 / cbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA C Y N T H IA S. M A T L A C K qponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA vie w for tragic the me s, ”4 wrote that the audience “should be struck with Terrour but always Conclude and go away with Pity, a sort of regret proceeding from good nature.”5 Like Rowe, Joseph Addison anticipated the increasingly intuitive responses of later critics like Hutcheson, Lillo, Home, and Burke when he wrote that “Terrour and Commiseration leave a pleasing Anguish in the Mind . . . much more lasting and delightful than any little transient Starts of Joy and Satisfaction.”6 The relationship of “split-catharsis,”7 or the aesthetic of pleasing pain, to dramatic structures becomes much clearer if we recognize that the principles which governed the action of pathetic tragedy were generated by certain assumptions about social organi­ zation that were held by both playwrights and audiences. A familiar premise was expressed by John Dennis when he wrote that “Passion is the Occasion of infinitely more Disorder in the world than Malice, . . . [and] Providence which governs the World should punish Men for indulging their Passion.”8 In pathetic tragedy, the passion which is to be most feared and exalted is explicitly sexual. Consummated love is always presented in the context of Dennis’ prescript for “Disorder in the world,” for in the plots, malice, ambition, and political intrigue are the disastrous aftermath of licentious dalliance and rape. In pathetic tragedies most frequently performed during the eighteenth century in England, two persistent corollaries severely limited the playwrights’ options for developing plot and char­ acter.9 First, fathers (sometimes husbands) were totemic figures who transmitted absolute codes of public and private demeanor to wives and children. Second, because the social legitimacy of sexual expression was decreed by patresfamilias, female characters were polarized as virtuous and sensuous, or apostate and angelic. Accordingly, women in pathetic tragedy were not so much portraits drawn after a long and complex tradition as they were pencil sketches of two identifiable morphemes in the theatrical language of the period,10 and their public sexual rhetoric reveals characteristics endemic to the age’s ethos. Both dialogue and action reminded the audience of its communal possession of a Tragic W om an Perceived and Perceiver IqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIH 319 fe minine id e aland an inhe rite dcod e of cond uct. Ine vitab ly , se xual e xce ss (or even the threat of it) became the crucial symbolic action determining the development of the plot because it chal­ lenged the propriety of familial and contractual social obligations. Eroticism in Rowe’s “she-tragedies” evinced the growing tendency to use sexual misconduct for didactic purposes in the theater. The recurrent association of unlicensed love relationships with war and civil dissension, in pathetic tragedy, suggests the true psychological impetus for its didacticism. The political danger of women’s erotic appeal can be seen in...