Fiche du document
2020
- doi: 10.7202/1069412ar
Ce document est lié à :
Lumen : Selected Proceedings from the Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies ; vol. 39 (2020)
All Rights Reserved © Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies / Société canadienne d'étude du dix-huitième siècle, 2020
Sujets proches
Older people--Retirement Superannuation Termination of employment Papers, Collected (Anthologies) Collected papers (Anthologies) Ageing Senescence Age--Physiological effectCiter ce document
Nevena Martinović, « Banished Bodies and Spectral Identities: The Aging Actress in William Hazlitt’s Retirement Essays », Lumen: Selected Proceedings from the Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies / Lumen: Travaux choisis de la Société canadienne d'étude du dix-huitième siècle, ID : 10.7202/1069412ar
Métriques
Partage / Export
Résumé
This article argues that eighteenth-century theatrical reviews and biographical descriptions equate the physical decline of the aging actress with the loss of her identity. It analyses disappearing selfhood through an investigation of the intersection of gender and age in William Hazlitt’s essays on retiring players: namely, “Miss O’Neill’s Retirement,” “Mr. Kemble’s Retirement,” and “Mrs. Siddons’ Lady Macbeth.” In these essays, Hazlitt suggests that the actress only maintains her public identity through an early departure from the stage. This is enforced by societal understandings of normative and desirable femininity as youthful. To emphasize the feminine loss that accompanied aging, Hazlitt and his contemporaries would often juxtapose a player’s physical body with those of younger players, as well as with the memory—or ghost—of its own younger form.