Bawdy Bodies: Satires of Unruly Women

Artists, Performers, and Intellectuals

Women who sought recognition for their abilities in arenas that extended beyond the domestic sphere were treated with particular scorn. Whether pursuing an independent intellectual life, devoting themselves to music, or performing on stage, these women who transgressed the gender roles prescribed by their social status were targeted by caricaturists. Thomas Rowlandson’s depiction of members of the Blue Stocking Club expresses particular bile toward women who gathered in intellectual conversation. In Rowlandson’s caricature Breaking up of the Blue Stocking Club, a measured discussion becomes a brawl that overturns the tea table and transforms a genteel drawing room, the heart of the domestic sphere, into a boxing ring. The women are harridans who in their rage rend their fashionable dress, exposing brawny, muscular bodies, demonstrating that in their intellectual investigations they have assumed the mental and physical characteristics of men.

In eighteenth-century England, actresses were among the most highly visible women in society. The fame they garnered on the stage extended beyond the walls of the theater to other cultural productions including graphic satires and the periodical press, where not only were the stage performances evaluated, but also their private lives were discussed.

The story of Emma Hamilton (1765–1815), the performer depicted in Frederick Rehberg’s elegant renderings and in James Gillray’s satiric reimagining, exemplifies the narrative of the social-climbing courtesan that so titillated Georgian audiences. Hamilton’s biography, as a country girl who came to London as a courtesan and entertainer, reinforces the cultural association of actresses with prostitution, an association underscored in such print productions as William Hogarth’s The Harlot’s Progress (1732). At the time Gillray produced his mocking engravings, Hamilton’s fortunes were in decline and his rendering of the sylph-like and captivating woman she was purported to be, now transformed into a slovenly and bloated matron, provides a moralizing tale and makes Hamilton, whose life was marked by tragedy, a comic spectacle.

Thomas Rowlandson (1756–1827)
Breaking up of the Blue Stocking Club
Etching with hand coloring
Published March 1, 1815 [?] by Thos. Tegg
The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University

Thomas Rowlandson’s depiction of members of the Blue Stocking Club expresses particular bile toward women who gathered in intellectual conversation. Initially a term used to describe the men and women who gathered at Lady Elizabeth Montagu’s (1718–1800) salons, by the late eighteenth century the term “bluestocking” was more broadly associated with literary women and female intellectuals. In Rowlandson’s caricature the measured discussion turns into a brawl that overturns the tea table and transforms a genteel drawing room, the heart of the domestic sphere, into a boxing ring. The women are harridans that in their rage rend their fashionable dress, exposing brawny, muscular bodies, demonstrating that in their intellectual investigations they have assumed the mental and physical characteristics of men.

James Gillray (1756–1815)
Patience on a Monument
Etching with hand coloring
Published September 19, 1791 by H. Humphrey
The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University

Nicknamed “St. Cecilia” after the patron saint of music, Lady Cecilia Johnston was an accomplished amateur musician as well as an outspoken member of a group of aristocratic women who were frequently derided in print satire. By placing Lady Cecilia on a mock monument and holding her up to view, Gillray travesties Lady Cecilia’s feminine virtues. In Gillray’s satire, the elegant Lady Cecilia is depicted as a boney crone seated on an ornate chamber pot. The paper in her hand, inscribed “Tranquility,” belies the cacophony of noise produced by her bowels and, judging by the cupid holding his nose, she also produces a tremendous stink. Gillray’s inscription on the monument cautions moderation in public address and suggests that the Lady “confine the sound” of her temper to her husband’s ears.

Anonymous
The Damerian Apollo
Etching with hand coloring
Published July 1, 1789 by William Holland
The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University

Encouraged by Horace Walpole, Anne Damer pursued studies as a sculptor after the death of her husband. In addition to working in wax and terra cotta, Mrs. Damer sculpted in stone, a rigorous medium associated with masculine strength. She is caricatured here holding a mallet and chisel, with the chisel humorously poised on the backside of a figure of Apollo. A nearby book, inscribed “Sketches of Different Parts,” suggests her lack of familiarity with the male figure and evokes the Sapphic rumors that surrounded her relationships with actress Elizabeth Farren and with Mary Berry.

Hester Chapone (1727–1801)
Letters on Improvement of the Mind. Addressed to a lady by Mrs. Chapone. A new edition
London: Scatcherd and Letterman [etc.], 1815
The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University

The Blue Stockings Society, a literary salon and discussion group founded by Elizabeth Montagu, included male and female participants but was best known for the women intellectuals and writers it nurtured: Hester Chapone, Elizabeth Carter, Hester Thrale Piozzi, Hannah More, Frances Burney, and Elizabeth Montagu herself, among others. Ridiculed as dabblers in realms beyond their proper purview, these women produced a remarkable range of published works, including translations from the Greek, social satires, polemics on the abolition of slavery, novels, poems, tales for children, and religious and moral tracts.

The importance of Chapone’s achievements to women’s aspirations appears in the inscription of this volume, apparently awarded to a young woman: “Miss Eliza Winthrop with Mrs. Lum’s [?] love. A small token of approbation for attention to her studies, and general good conduct--”     

James Gillray (1756–1815) (attrib. to)
Parody of Emma Hamilton Performing an Attitude, Plate 4
From A New Edition Considerably Enlarged of Attitudes Faithfully copied from Nature.
London: Hannah Humphrey, 1807
The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University

Lady Emma Hamilton entertained guests at the Neapolitan villa of her husband, Sir William Hamilton, by performing a series of “Attitudes” inspired by the classical figures decorating ancient friezes and vases. Lady Hamilton’s poses were immortalized in print by a series of drawings by Friedrich Rehberg, only to be travestied by James Gillray some ten years later. At the time Gillray produced his mocking engravings, Hamilton’s fortunes were in decline. She had squandered the inheritance left by her aristocratic husband and was struggling to support herself and her illegitimate daughter by Admiral Horatio Nelson (1758–1805).

Gillray’s etchings effectively revise Hamilton’s image from the sylph-like and captivating woman featured in Rehberg’s drawings into that of a slovenly and bloated matron, whose enlarged physical state is jokingly evoked by the title of the volume.    

John Collet (1725?–1780)
An Actress at her Toilet, or Miss Brazen just breecht from the original picture by John Collet, in the possession of Carington Bowles
Mezzotint with hand coloring
Published June 24, 1779 by Carington Bowles
The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University

The actress Margaret Kennedy frequently assumed male roles, often referred to as “breeches roles,” over the course of her theatrical career. Collet’s satire depicts her preparing to mount the stage in the roll of Macheath from the Beggar’s Opera. Kennedy stands in front of her dressing room mirror and tugs the waist of a pair of breeches that threaten to slide off her hips while the top of her shift dips to reveal the tops of her breasts. The jumble of clothing, corset, boots, sword, and petticoat implies her sexual ambiguity, a suggestion made all the more clear by the text on a playbill: “To be seen a most surprising hermaphrodite.”

Shortly before this satire was published, Margaret Kennedy married. The term “breecht” may thus refer to her nuptials as well as to the breeches she assumes and is further suggestive of gender reversal in her marriage.