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Comparative Perspectives on Gender and Comedy: The Examples of Wilde, Hofmannsthal, and Ebner-Eschenbach
- Modern Drama
- University of Toronto Press
- Volume 37, Number 4, Winter 1994
- pp. 638-650
- 10.1353/mdr.1994.0035
- Article
- Additional Information
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Comparative Perspectives on Gender and Comedy: The Examples of Wilde, Hofmannsthal, and Ebner-Eschenbach GAIL FINNEY As almost everyone is aware, fiction and poetry have received considerable attention in feminist criticism. By contrast, until recently drama has been largely neglected. This disparity has much 10 do wilh Ihe relalive absence of women in the theater world: as playwrights and directors, women were a very minor force unlillhe laSI few decades. This stale of affairs is closely bound up with the public nature of drama, in contrast to the morc private genres of novel or poem; Ihe writer of a play normally wanls 10 see il produced, and Ihe difficult access to theater as a public institution intimidated women for centuries. Moreover, for the greater part of theater history women were virtually invisible even as actors. In ancient Greece, as women became increasingly importanl in family-life and correspondingly insignificant in Ihe public arena, they were excluded from the stage; this practice was maintained throughout the Roman, medieval, and Elizabethan periods. Allhough Ihe Italian commedia dell'al'/e began allowing women access in the sixleemh cemury, the legacy of the theater as a masculine institution has been far-reaching and powerful. In keeping wilh Ihis overall Irend, the hislory of comedy has been Ihe hislory of male comedy. William Congreve's infamous Slalemenllhree hundred years ago that women lack a sense of humor' and the mOfC recent claim of crilic R.H. Blyth Ihal women are "Ihe unlaughing al which men laugh'" have been representative of the general male attitude toward female humor, or the lack Ihereof. As if in support of Ihis sentiment, the majorily of comic dramatists , comedians, and theorists of comedy have indeed been men. Yet given the ancient and long-standing assignment of "lower types" of characters to comedy, given its status as something to be, as Robert Torrance puts it, "not only laughed aI, bullaughed off,'" and - perhaps mosl importamly - given Ihe thematic significance of male-female relations in comic drama, it is not surprising Ihat Ihe role of women in comedy has been grealer than has been lradilionally recognized. Modern Drama, 37 (1994) 638 Perspectives on Gender and Comedy 639 Recent work, most notably by Judith Will, Judy Little, Nancy Walker, Regina Barreca, and Susan Carlson, has begun to reveal the contributions of women to British and American comedy as well as the critical biases which have suppressed these contributions until now. Foremost among these biases has been the role of expectation: women's humor hasnot been recognized and treated by the critical literature on comedy because it has not been expected. Judith Wilt's summary description of British male humor as an ideological construct can serve as a contrastive point of departure from which to talk about female humor. Wilt writes: Women are only just beginning to realise that male humour has various functions, but none of them is intended to please or benefit [hem. It Can be a bonding device, assisting male solidarity (and excluding women). It can be a smoke-screen, set up to dissipate an aura of good humour (distracti ng and deceiving women). Finally, it can be a form of assault, a teasing attack (putting women in that mythical region, their place). In any event it is used to avoid, to impede, or to deride the possibility of free equal rel at i on~ ships between men and women.4 This ideology - the ideology of male comedy - has traditionally been framed within a structure that proceeds from the established order to a disruption or inversion of this order to the restoration of the status quo at play's happy end, where all knots are unraveled and other knots - marital ones - are"often lied. While women characters may be al10wed great freedom and unconventionality in the course of a comedy's disruptive plot, they typically assume or resume traditional female roles by the close of the drama. As Susan Carlson writes, "Women are allowed their brilliance, freedom, and power in comedy only because the genre has buill-in safeguards against such behaviour."5 The u\limate thrust of British male comedy, in other words, is to support the established order. British...