Stage Mothers explores the connections between motherhood and the theater both on and off stage throughout the long eighteenth century. Although the realities of eighteenth-century motherhood and representations of maternity have recently been investigated in relation to the novel, social history, and political economy, the idea of motherhood and its connection to the theatre as a professional, material, literary, and cultural site has received little critical attention. The essays in this volume, spanning the period from the Restoration to Regency, address these forgotten maternal narratives, focusing on: the representation of motherhood as the defining female role; the interplay between an actress's celebrity persona and her chosen roles; the performative balance between the cults of maternity and that of the "passionate" actress; and tensions between sex and maternity and/or maternity and public authority. In examining the overlaps and disconnections between representations and realities of maternity in the long eighteenth century, and by looking at written, received, visual, and performed records of motherhood, Stage Mothers makes an important contribution to debates central to eighteenth-century cultural history.
Contents Introduction Elaine M. McGirr and Laura Engel Part One: Actresses, Motherhood, and the Profession of the Stage Chapter 1. "The Divided Heart of the Actress": Late Eighteenth-Century Actresses and the "Cult of Maternity" Helen E.M. Brooks Chapter 2. The Inconvenience of the Female Condition: Anne Oldfield's Pregnancies J.D. Phillipson Chapter 3. "Inimitable Sensibility": Susannah Cibber's Performance of Maternity Elaine M. McGirr Chapter 4. Working Mothers on the Romantic Stage: Sarah Siddons and Mary Robinson Ellen Malenas Ledoux Part Two. Representations of Mothers on the Stage and the Page Chapter 5. Rebels for Love: Maternity, Absolutism, and the Earl of Orrery's Mustapha Laura R. Rosenthal Chapter 6. Rowe's The Ambitious Stepmother: Motherhood and the Politics of the Blended Family Marilyn Francus Chapter 7. Staged Virtue: Anastasia Robinson as Ideal Mother in Two Operas of the 1720 Kathryn Lowerre Chapter 8. Maternal Duties and Filial Malapropisms: Frances Sheridan and the Problems of Theatrical Inheritance Emrys Jones Chapter 9. My Son, My Lover: Gothic Contagion and Maternal Sexuality in the Mysterious Mother Jade Higa Part Three. Actresses and their Children Chapter 10. Elizabeth and Keppel Craven and the Domestic Drama of Mother-Son Relations Judith Hawley Chapter 11. Mommy Diva: The Divided Loyalities of Sarah Siddons Laura Engel Chapter 12. The Gerbini Letters: or, A Tale of Two Mothers Gilli Bush-Bailey Bibliography About the Contributors
