"That benefit racket": Women and the benefit in New York theatre, 1840--1875.
Item
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Title
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"That benefit racket": Women and the benefit in New York theatre, 1840--1875.
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Identifier
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AAI9969696
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identifier
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9969696
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Creator
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Huff, Mary Helen.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Marvin Carlson
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Date
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2000
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Theater | Women's Studies
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Abstract
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This study examines female agency located in theatrical benefit performance in New York City between 1840 and 1875. Contractual and charity benefits offered autonomous performance sites that were free from traditional rules and regulations of the theatre manager. The beneficiary was in charge of mounting the performance, arranging the bill, providing publicity, and, most importantly, casting the performers.;For female performers, this autonomy was crucial. In a profession and society that denied women a subject voice in representation, the benefit offered a protected site where women could construct a female voice and presence. By writing and performing in plays that featured female subjects, and by "cutting and pasting" scenes from the traditional male-authored canon, theatrical women constructed new positions through which they could negotiate power and agency.;The female-identified constructs of voluntarism and reciprocity were crucial to the operation of the benefit. Voluntarism provided the means by which nineteenth-century women were able to move from the confines of the domestic sphere to the larger public sphere. Gender-specific reciprocity served as a form of "social currency" which women used to operate communally and work together. Women used the familiar concepts of voluntarism and reciprocity in the benefit to build agency and power in the theatrical community, and in the larger public sphere.;Charity benefits were also used by women to support causes and generate agency, both in the theatre and in the larger society. Women banded together in benefits to offer support to other women and children as well as to support public charitable causes. This dissertation examines the charity benefits of dancer Fanny Elssler, actress-manager Laura Keene, actress-playwright Anna Cora Mowatt, and actress Charlotte Cushman.;Lastly, the study examines the end of the benefit system in the American theatre, and its corresponding decline in female agency in the professional theatre. Yet, while the benefit and its agency for women disappeared from the theatre, it was transferred to theatrical-style benefits for upper-class elite "society" women and clubwomen. Ultimately, by 1892, when theatrical women finally had their own clubs as forums for female community, the benefit returned to provide agency for theatrical women.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
