-
This
essay examines the
ways in which two women
whose social careers
frame the Romantic
period
used dress in the assumption
that costuming the
sexual body could purposefully
define social and political
identity.[1] Neither
Mary Robinson nor
Princess Caroline aimed
for sexual liberation
so much as for less
restraint on their
gendered social destiny
and participation
in the public sphere.
In an age not yet
regulated
by the fashion industry,
but characterized
by a rapidity in shifting
trends and fashion
experimentation, it
was possible for women
to costume as a means
of continually renewed
attempts at self-definition.
I argue that the extent
to which these two
particular women succeeded
or failed in achieving
the identities they
toyed with was, if
undermined by the
predetermined gendering
of media interpretation
and presentation of
both women for visual
consumption, nevertheless
productive for both
women of unusual freedom
from self-regulating
social checks for
brief periods—Mary
Robinson during her
heyday as the Prince's
mistress, and Princess
Caroline while living
in "exile" both at
Blackheath and in
Europe. Granted, both
women's attempt to
use femininity rather
than subvert it—to
manipulate flirtatious
play to attract the
male gaze—backfired
dramatically when
they tried to control
the gaze's interpretive
direction. Unlike
male contemporaries
such as Beau Brummell
and Lord Byron,
who
more successfully
played dress off
a defined sexual
identity
by staging views
that guided the
interpretive
process—so
successfully that
each man found
their
fashioned role
inescapable—Robinson
and Princess Caroline
were unable to
completely
manage or confine
their media image.
Rather than redefine
identity as style
as Brummell and
Byron did, Robinson
and Caroline employed
gendered expectations
of indecorous feminine
behavior to straddle
the divide between
woman as décor
and woman as actant
by toying with
the doubling nature
of revealing fabrics,
suggestive accoutrements,
or outlandish
getups. Although
these women's
attempt to use
materiality
to translate visual
expression into
a more powerful
discourse
was more innovative
in its ends than
the dandy's, the
means was too
aligned with femininity
and consumption
to be truly freeing.
Rather than establishing
a new behavioral
style
identified with
dress
as did Brummell,
or a poetic style
equally identified
with dress as
did Byron, Robinson
and Caroline played
into rather than
off of interpretive
norms
that associated
loose
dress with loose
politics, and
both with lax morals
that had no place
in the public
eye. Yet their
exploits periodically
provided Robinson
and Caroline with
freedom from the
unrelenting
self-constraints
endured by other
women playing
queenly roles,
such as Queen Charlotte
and Sarah Siddons,
who submitted
to such rigor in
order not to be
negatively stereotyped
as ambitious or
unlicensed women.
Although Tory
cartoonists used
these same stereotypes
to indict Robinson
and
Caroline, and
even liberal Whigs
perceived both
women through
such models, each
woman was also
able to influence
public
perception of
herself
so as to destabilize
such constraints.
-
A
flirtatious relation
to the dress code,
aided by the availability
of the newer, body-revealing
imported fabrics such
as thin silks, lawns
and muslins[2],
and of rapidly shifting
trends that made immediate
use of imported materials
and motifs for decorative
touches and accessories,
was as I see it a
redressing of ancien
régime
fashion play, considered
by this time a corrupt
use of costume, and
associated with masquerade
and disguise.[3] Yet
by flirting with
sentimental conceptions
of female character,
both Robinson and
Caroline found themselves
falling out of romance
fantasy (Prince's
mistress, Prince's
bride) into the "realism" of
the sentimental
domestic
novel (tightly
drawn
sexual identity).
This was a bourgeois
realism, but also
a social one, and
if George could
practice aristocratic
privilege and escape
intact through fashionable
dalliance and excess,
the women related
to him could not.
His sisters were
kept under tight
rein by their royal
parents, his mother
practiced strict
surveillance
of social codes,
and his mistresses
from Maria Fitzherbert
on heeded the proprieties
as appropriate.
If Robinson and
Caroline gained
periods of fantasy-fueled
freedom from class
and gender constraints,
their more frequent
falls into the penalizing
realities of sentimentalism,
realities determined
increasingly by
bourgeois
conceptions of
female
sexual obedience,
were necessitated
by their refusal
to stop playing
the coquette in
public.
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Furthermore,
these two women's potential
to be undone was strengthened
by their understanding
of themselves, and their
self-expressions in
their autobiographical
writings, as textual
bodies as well as linguistic
agents.[4] They
both used self-expression
to create more flexibility
in the tension between
the roles they were
expected to inhabit
and their practice of
identity, yet their
reliance on genre markers
created sexual pitfalls
as much as their flirtation
with social codes provided
liberation. Both Robinson
and Caroline interpreted
themselves as sentimental
heroines whose romances
were deliberately unraveled,
like the threads of
one's dress, by the
animosity that inhabits
the corridors of sentimental
realist fiction, thus
exposing the female
personage as a vulnerable
body. Such fantasies
at once exploited feelings
of victimization, and
liberated both women
from reality checks,
as they interpolated
textual selves into
public space. This self-narrativizing—staging
the self through dress
as much as through public
or highly publicized
bodily acts—captured
the popular imagination
in ways that extended
both women's public
presence beyond expectation.
Both women materially
armored themselves by
costuming for public
consumption, while defending
their honor to the public
and in their memoirs
through various textual
strategies that revised
their self-liberating
social transgressions.
The various scandals
each woman experienced
through her association
with the Prince of Wales
had lasting social ramifications,
causing emotional distress
exacerbated by associated
financial insecurity,
an increasingly oppositional
politics, and debilitating
bodily symptoms. Indeed,
both Robinson's paralysis
and Caroline's intestinal
disorders are readable
as excessive responses
to gender codes that
could not be refashioned.
I.
The Sentimental Heroine
-
Mary
Robinson begins her
Memoirs as
a gothic novel: "At
the period when the
ancient city of Bristol
was besieged by Fairfax's
army . . . a great
part of the venerable
minster was destroyed
by the cannonading
before Prince Rupert
surrendered to the
enemy; and the beautiful
Gothic structure,
which at this moment
fills the contemplative
mind with melancholy
awe, was reduced to
. . . [half ruin;]
a monastery . . .
which fell before the
attacks of the enemy,
and became a part of
the ruin, which never
was repaired
or re-raised to its
former Gothic splendours." It
was here that the
house, "partly
of simple, and partly
of modern architecture" was
built:
A
spot more calculated
to inspire the soul
with mournful meditation
can scarcely be found
amidst the monuments
of antiquity. In this
venerable mansion there
was one chamber whose
dismal and singular
construction left no
doubt of its having
been a part of the
original monastery.
It was supported by
the mouldering arches
of the cloisters, dark,
Gothic, and opening
on the minster sanctuary,
not only by casement
windows that shed a
dim mid-day gloom,
but by a narrow winding
staircase, at the foot
of which an iron-spiked
door led to the long
gloomy path of cloistered
solitude. . . .In this
awe-inspiring habitation,
which I shall henceforth
denominate the Minster
House, during a tempestuous
night, on the 27th
of November, 1758, I
first opened my eyes
to this world of duplicity
and sorrow. (1-2)
It
is perhaps no accident
Robinson sees herself
destined to be a gothic
heroine. Gothic heroines
wear demur dress stuffs
with well-wrapped bosoms
and necks, but as every
reader knows the villain
or ghost prefers bedchambers
at midnight when the
nightgown and other
forms of undress are
the rule, and when
a heroine fleeing barefoot
through crypts will
be most titillating
for the sense-heightened
voyeur. As Horace Walpole's
Castle
of Otranto revealed,
the underside of the
sentimental realist
novel was its gothic
attributes. Indeed,
Clarissa Harlowe is
imprisoned for her
desirability as a
possessible body (she
uses a vigilant
full dress for her
only real defense),
and as such she represents
the over-determined
value of things in
a bourgeois materialism
that counts unmarried
bodies for their exchange
value. Women's mastery
of fashion and the
material intertext
of dress and body
signaled the extent
and extension of that
value. Plumage could
stand in for coinage,
a social fact Robinson
would exploit to the
hilt. Female bodies
in particular are
metonymically read
through their accessories
as a full package
that can be "taken." Walpole's
prince, Manfred, will
take Isabella, his
son's betrothed, in
order to reproduce
his line and thus
keep his estate. Isabella
will be imprisoned,
raped, married, and
otherwise bodily trapped
to ensure the generation
of a body-estate thing—an
heir. The story of
this possessibility
provides fodder for
both domestic novels
and the sentimental
underpinnings of
gothic narratives;
it is also the stuff
of real life. Mary
Robinson was married
for reasons similar
to Manfred's incestuous
logic—safeguarding
property or getting
it into the family
line. Thomas Robinson,
a non-heir because
illegitimate and
thus outside the
body-estate reproductive
scheme, married
Mary Darby in the
hopes that her beauty,
middle-class status,
and the respectability
that marriage represents,
would persuade his
disowning father
to reposition him
in the family heritage.
Mary and her mother
agreed to the marriage
because Mary had
learned, through
shifting cultural
expectations as
well as her boarding
school education,
to view marriage
sentimentally as
a companionate arrangement
between two affectionate
partners rather
than a business arrangement
(as the Darbys'
marriage perhaps
was, her father
deserting
the family to conduct
business and love
elsewhere).[5] In
Mary's most formative
school experience
with the extraordinary
but disappointed
and alcoholic Mrs.
Lorrington, Mary
read studiously,
and "it
was my lot to
be her particular
favourite.
She always, out
of school, called
me her little
friend, and made
no scruple of
conversing with
me (sometimes
half
the night, for
I slept in her
chamber), on domestic
and confidential
affairs." The
somewhat lesbian [6] overtones
of this situation
are associated
with strong
female role-modeling,
reaching beyond
educative norms,
and composing
verses: Mrs.
Lorrington "frequently
read to me
after
school hours,
and I to her;
I sometimes
indulged my
fancy in writing
verses. . .love
was the theme
of my poetical
phantasies" (Memoirs 22-24).
It
is an associative
complex that
returns in
Robinson's
late autobiographical
sonnet-cycle,
Sappho
and
Phaon (1796),
in which
the
expression
of female
sentiment
fuels the
fantasy
of desiring
textual
bodies
beyond the
margins
of
propriety.
Sappho,
of
course,
wears
the body-draping
Grecian
shifts
and tunics
self-consciously
present
in
the poem's
sonnets
as markers
of her sexuality,
availability,
and desire.
The scene
of women
writing
poetry was
associated
with nighttime
journal
confessions
and night
dress/undress;
Sappho's
robes
correspond
to the young
Mary's fanciful
verses and
female companionship "after
school
hours," as
a kind
of
imaginative
dishabille,
a relaxing
of proper
norms.
And the
contemporary
reader
would
have recalled
Robinson's
public
appearances
in muslins
and silks
as a sex
goddess,
a woman
of
infinite
desire
and
desirability,
in the
staging
of Sappho's
love. Yet,
as much
as
Robinson's
preface
to
Sappho
and
Phaon attempts
to redefine
Grecian
female
sexuality
to overwrite
"lesbian"
into acceptable
female
friendship,
the scandalous
punning
on "finger
twirlers" associated
with
Marie
Antionette
and
ancien
régime
decadence
could
not
be
forestalled,
nor
might
Robinson
entirely
want
to
lose
that
titillating
aspect
of
her
textual
marketability.[7]
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When
Thomas Robinson's familial
scheme failed, he readjusted
the male audience for
what
was
publicly
thought
of
as
pimping
Mary,
or at least a lucrative
idea of her as his
wife,
from his father to
another kind of potential "purchaser," his
rakish London friends.
(While attempting to "sell" Mary
first to Lord Lyttelton,
and then the more
interesting George
"Fighting" Fitzgerald,
he simultaneously
entertained his own
paramour.) Mary is
thus available when
George, Prince of
Wales, falls in love
with her in an act
of imaginative seeing,
while watching her
perform the demur
ingénue
role of Perdita in
a 1779 command performance
of The
Winter's Tale.
He "becomes" Florizel
and takes the slightly
older Robinson
as
his mistress for
a single year,
a year
that would determine
her career for
the
rest of her life.
Robinson is in
a single vision
cast
as both a scripted
body, whose fancy
dress and role
become
her persona
for the prince,
and
a textualist who
learns to write
her
own life and public
character, and
reproduce
this body-text
enactment
on various public
stages whether
social
or textual. Through
the prince's desirous
sighting, Mary's
body-estate value
has been transformed
into a body-text
one, and she will
ever after have
a slippery relation
to financial security,
for his desire
has
taken her out of
the circulatory
schema
of female propriety
and property
transferal. She
will
also have a slippery
relation to self-constructing
identities that
attempt
to redirect desire.
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Caroline
of Brunswick can likewise
be seen to fall victim
to sentimental realism
while fantasizing her
heroine identity. Unlike
Mary Robinson, she
did not marry young
and resisted parental
pressure to wed a number
of eligible European
candidates, giving
so little reason for
her refusals that her
parents put them down
to a waywardness
of character and stubbornness
of mind.[8] Both
qualities are ones
Mary Robinson either
veiled (at least early
on) or used to particular
effect, as when she
heroically (by her
account) resisted
her husband's friends'
propositions and stubbornly
clung to her wifely
chastity. Caroline
finally agreed, enthusiastically,
to wed her cousin
George,
the right man, the
man destined for her
through lineage and
property: her prince
had come. Her expectations,
expressively revealed
in her lack of preparations
for her move to England,
show a young woman
who had already fallen
in love through her
fiancé's
portrait and who
expected
to be loved by this
ideal man for the
ideal heroine she
was. George, hoping
to re-install
himself in his father's
and Parliament's
favor,
both of which were
to lead to a substantially
increased annual
allowance
that he desperately
needed to pay his
increasing debts
for purchased goods,
agreed to the marriage
in the self-blinding
belief that the Caroline
portrayed in her
miniature would be
beautiful
enough
to make him forget
his beloved, Maria
Fitzherbert, or his
current mistress,
Lady Jersey. Caroline
should have been
forewarned,
however; her own
sister
Augusta was victim
to a gothically brutal
marriage, from which
she gained sanctuary
with Catherine of
Russia but lost her
children in doing
so. The gothic shoe
(or in Walpole's
version,
the giant helmet
which becomes a useful
prison) descends
on Caroline at her
first meeting with
George, who on embracing
her said, "Harris,
I am not well; pray
get me a glass of
brandy," and
drowned his disgust
so well he was
drunk
throughout their
wedding ceremony.
According
to
Caroline, he"passed
the greatest part
of his bridal
night
under the grate,
where he fell" (qtd.
in Fraser 54,
62).
He cohabited
with
Caroline
long enough to
get
her pregnant
while
insisting that
his
mistress, the
ambitious
Lady Frances
Jersey,
be Caroline's
head
lady in waiting,
which allowed
her to participate
in the "Carlton
House system" (along
with, as Caroline
later told
Lord
Minto, George's "blackguard
companions.
. . [who]
were constantly
drunk
and filthy,
sleeping
and snoring
in boots
on the sofa" [qtd.
in Fraser
166]).
Then in true
gothic
style he
essentially
kicked Caroline
of his house.
Like Mary
Robinson,
George's
desirous
sighting—this
time, however,
based
on her property-estate
value as
an heir-producer—also
creates for
Caroline,
like Robinson,
a financially
insecure
future
that rescripts
her from
sentimental
beloved to
gothically
disowned
wife.
She acquires
the need
to revalue
her body
in public
for the enlargement
of her social
bonds. This
is nevertheless
textually
valuable,
a role to
flirt with.
Like Hippolita,
the wife
Manfred
hopes to
divorce
in order
to ensure
that Otranto
remains his,
Caroline
is in George's
eye expensive
and expendable.
Pursued by
his
agents for
the
rest of her
life
to determine
her as unfit
mother and
wife,
he wished
to establish
her as an
unnecessary
expense on
the
privy purse
(in
her last
years her
annual
allowance
was to have
been £50,000,
raised from £35,000),
to be cloistered
outside
the royal
habitus
and rendered
invisible
(the
destiny
of
Hippolita
and all
unwanted
women).
She used
his
manipulations
to gain
her own
residence,
determine
her own
ladies
in waiting,
and compose
her own
social
circles.
Playing
on
her victimhood,
she believed
that the
nightly
dinners
and parties
she hosted
created
the liberating
space in
which to
shift
from
the naïve
to the
sexual
and back
to the
chaste
wife,
and despite
disgusting
her guests
and cycling
through
acquaintances
as a result,
she successfully
conducted
numerous
affairs
without
being
caught.
When George
and Maria
Fitzherbert
sought
custody
of a young
ward,
Caroline
pretended
to be
pregnant
in order
to gain
her own "child," in
fact
the
legally
adopted
Willy
Austin
(it
was
his legitimacy
that
was
at stake
in George's
"Delicate
Investigation"
into
Caroline's
misdemeanors).
And when
Caroline
insisted
on being
seen
both
at her
own residence
and in
public
independent
of him,
George
was outraged.
His undesiring
sighting
of her
body
achieved
the same
effect
for her
as his
desirous
vision
of Robinson:
Caroline
is disarticulated
from
the
body/property
scheme
so necessary
to the
realism
of sentimental
narratives
(to which
the prince
was himself
addicted,
believing
Maria
Fitzherbert
to be
his
soulmate
from
whose
bosom
he had
been
torn
by parental
pressure
to marry
against
his
nature).
Thenceforth,
Caroline
is free,
like
Robinson,
to rescript
herself,
and
so
she
does
through
a constant
redressing
of her
public
body.
When
she
wanted
to be
freed
from
George's
vision
entirely,
she
decamped
to the
Continent,
where
she
lived
out
various
fantasies
from
holy
pilgrim
and
liberal
chatelaine
to marital
bliss
with
her
Italian
lover
Bartolomeo
Pergami,
dressing
accordingly.
Although
her
wily
political
supporters
like
Henry
Brougham
and
Spencer
Perceval
attempted
to use
her
for
their
purposes,
writing
letters
for
her
and
publishing
her
documents,
she
continually
frustrated
them
by
her unruliness—if
she
was
not
to
rule
by her
husband's
side,
neither
would
she
be ruled
by these
men.
Rather,
she
toyed
with
them,
letting
their
schemes
play
into
her
fleeting,
only
half-serious
scripts.
Less
politically
informed
than
the
young
liberal,
then
radical
Robinson,
Caroline's
politics
were
self-serving
and
related
to her
fantasy
identity
as a
sentimental
heroine.
She
wanted
the
money
and
the
freedom
to play
at royalty,
especially
when
this
allowed
her
to
show
her
largesse
to the
poor
in another
bit
part
(she
supported
poor
children
at Blackheath
and
whole
villages
in Italy).
Politicians
and
pressmen
were
like
lovers,
to be
wooed
and
used
to portray
temporary
identities
of chastity,
liberality,
and
maternalism
to gain
particular
ends:
Whig
loyalty,
the
king's
support,
the
mob's
love.
II.
Mary Robinson's Self-performance
-
Robinson
played her brief tenure
as the Prince of Wales's
mistress to the hilt
by riding in a carriage
with a faked version
of George's coronet.
If she did this earlier,
when as London's foremost
actress she rode in
a carriage with a coronet-like
emblem, while she was
George's mistress she
rode in as many different
carriages as she could;
it was a fashion begun
by Marie Antoinette
that, through the fantasy
associations of movement
with identity, swept
the imagination. And
it persisted as a fashion
statement: Caroline
later also used carriages
while traveling the
continent to role play,
indulging in fantasy
and masquerade, and
finally also riding
in a carriage with
a faked royal coronet
in a semiotic attempt
to claim her crown
after George III's death.
For Robinson, riding
in carriages, dressing
in the most recent
fashions or costuming à la
Marie Antoinette's
playful milkmaid[9],
allowed her to use
various vehicles for
self-portrayal, especially
the semiotic code of
fabrics, to portray
herself as a variety
of sexual characters
that all had queenly
associations. Her society
portraits and her own
descriptions of dresses
used for stage performances
and significant events
evince a careful attendance
to bodily messages:
from sheer lawns to
heavy silks and velvets,
she played the role
of fashion leader while
using the purity of
white cottons and the
pinks of luxury fabrics
to enhance her own
coloring, all the time
playing the edges of
a chaste vulnerability.[10] These
semiotic messages were
not always under her
full control, however,
and her attempts to
queen it over the fashionable
set, if not to pretend
to herself and George
that she was a version
of the fashionable
French queen, was to
prove her downfall.
The press, in particular,
disliked such audacious
pretensions from the
middling ranks and contemptuously
read her playful dressing
as indelicate availability,
whereas all of Caroline's
attempts to act the
queen-to-be and finally
to claim her right
to be recognized as
the queen she was at
George's succession
received widespread
support from the press.
-
Marie
Antoinette was for
Robinson, if not for
the
German Caroline (who
would identify with
the deposed Napoleon
instead), the performative
model par excellence.
In "Embodying
Marie Antoinette:
The Theatricalized
Female Subject," Judith
Pascoe dwells on Sarah
Siddons's loss of
a four-yard length
of Marie Antoinette's
lace in the 1809 Covent
Garden fire, an article
of dress that "covered
me all over from
head
to foot," which
she reserved for
Hermione's trial
in The
Winter's Tale (95). Pascoe traces
the connections
between
maternity, treason,
and trial through
this shared female
article: "In
invoking Marie
Antoinette
through the use
of her veil as
a prop, Siddons
appropriated
the performative
power of an actual
queen
to play a fictitious
one" (96).
Making much of
the cultural power
of the mis-tried
French Queen's
story to update
that of the
equally unjustly
tried Hermione,
both accused on
the basis of improper
maternal behavior,
Pascoe plays with
the edge
between factual
and fictional
heroines and the
actress's exploitation
of this edge in
order to dis-play
and displace
queenship onto
herself
as an embodying
agent. While this
appropriative
act corresponds
in fascinating
ways with Mary
Robinson's
blurring of the
fictional/factual
interplay in her
various stage
and "real
life" roles
and the blurring,
semi-transparent
quality of lace,
Marie Antoinette's
theatricality
is crucial for
connecting
her sartorial
reign
to the "sexualized
body" of
the pamphleteers' "paper
queen" that
Pascoe unveils.
Yet the anecdotal
material
signifies:
Siddons's
lost lace
was important
to her not
only because
it brought
Marie Antoinette
to life,
at least on
stage, but
also because
it was lace—a
textile
that veils
in the same
way as the
fictional/factual
binary.
Lace, especially
of such
enormous
quantity
("more
than a yard
wide" Siddons
remembers
[qtd in
Pascoe
95]) that
it functions
as a dress,
has a quality
that hovers
between
opacity
and the
translucence
of a fine
lawn. It
teases
with its
openings
and closures,
its peepholes
and distracting
surface
figurings:
it both
reveals
and hides
what may
or
may not
be there.
In period
plays such
as Hannah
Cowley's
1783 A
Bold Stroke
for a
Husband,
female
characters
wear veils
in order
to assume
false identities
to confuse
and manipulate
their suitors
and stage-manage
the plots
of their
own
stories;
Siddons's
Hermione,
however,
is veiled
in
order to
produce
identity: "By
wrapping
herself
in the
vestige
of one
persecuted
queen
in order
to play
another," the
actress
could
better "project
that
imagined
self
for
an audience" (Pascoe
97).
-
Robinson
describes herself in
her Memoirs in
the third person as
appearing before Marie
Antoinette in 1783
dressed in "A
pale green lustring
train and body, with
a tiffany petticoat,
festooned with bunches
of the most delicate
lilac. . .while a
plume of white feathers
adorned her head;
the native roses
of her cheeks, glowing
with health and youth,
were stained, in
conformity
to the fashion of
the French Court,
with the deepest
rouge" (Memoirs 2:93,
qtd. in Pascoe 120).
This attention to
dress—the
fine glossy silk
of
lustring fabric
creating
a delicate verdure
that, in combination
with dainty lilacs
and a petticoat
of
lustrous tiffany
all creating a "natural"
lady,
herself a pink
bloom heightened
through coloring—is
signal because
the
ability of women's
costuming to similarly
aid in projecting
identity
and manage their
own
social plots was
one
Robinson, like
Siddons
and other public
women,
was intimately
familiar
with, and one
that
such women ignored
to their cost.
Princess
Caroline of Brunswick
alternately ignored
and exploited
the
potential of female
dress to manipulate
perception, usually
to her disadvantage.
Yet once she became
Queen of England,
estranged from
her
husband but bent
on sharing his
throne,
Caroline quickly
refashioned herself
for the occasion,
appearing in appropriate
costumes for public
appearances. Like
Marie Antoinette,
Caroline was the
subject of malicious
judgments
by her public
and
private detractors
on her dress and
her
sexual activity,
the two combining
to project an
unruly
and thus unqueenly
stature for both
women. Mary Robinson,
too, was the subject
of public attacks
on her choice
of
costume
and her adulterous
relationships,
most
particularly because
of what gossips
and
caricaturists
considered
a misappropriation
of power for public
display. As Adriana
Craciun notes,
Charlotte
Corday and Marie
Antoinette were
interpreted in
contradictory
fashions
in the 1790s,
representing
female empowerment
for radicals or
fatal
sexual excess
for
conservatives.
Women daring the
public sphere
should
instead
exhibit a "masculine
command of their
passions," according
to The
Anti-Jacobin (qtd.
in Craciun,
79); Robinson
placed
Marie Antoinette
even higher,
as an exemplar
of "transcendent
genius," a
natural
gift
that
enabled
transport
across strictly
gendered
boundaries
so that
women
could enter
the public
sphere "on
distinctly
feminine
(and fleshly)
terms" (Craciun
17). But
Siddons
represented
herself
as non-ambitious,
as not-quite
publicly
available,
through
a properly
maternal
versioning
of
Marie
Antoinette.
The actress
evoked
maternity
not just
in
roles
like Hermione
that reflected
the French
Queen's
maternal
defense
at
her
trial,
but
in
defensively "trotting
her three
children
out on
stage
to
explain
her
professional
decision
to move
to London" (Pascoe
97).
If
Robinson
trots
out
her
daughter
in her
Memoirs as
both
a prop
for
her
maternal
role
and
veil
for
her
adulterous
ones,
it is
as
much
an apologia
for
her
radical
past
as
it is
a restitution
of Marie
Antoinette's
fleshly
motherhood,
her
right
to be
publicly
productive,
and
her
representation
as the
cosmopolitan
woman.
-
However,
both professional portraitists
and print cartoonists
delved beneath Robinson's
careful costuming.
When word first leaked
out that she was the
Prince of Wales's paramour,
the press was scandalized.
The
Morning Post reported "A
certain young actress
who leads the ton
appeared in the side-box
at the Haymarket Theatre
a few evenings since,
with all the grace
and splendour of a
Duchess, to the no
small mortification
of the female world,
and the astonishment
of every spectator!" and
George's biographer
would later recount
that "Mrs.
Robinson now appeared
in indecent splendour,
rendered still more
scandalous by the
vile participation
of her husband" (both
quoted in Bass
135).
Robinson's self-stagings
were interpreted
as her audacity,
not George's (though
it was he who publicly
gave her two rosebuds
to wear before
the secret liaison
was
outed in the press).
Her careful costuming
was interpreted
as social-climbing
statements, a duchess
and then a queen
want-to-be, but
always as politically
naive. James Gillray's
depiction of her
as a tavern whirligig
to signal the prince's
flipflop politics
reads Robinson
as a political sex
object offering
herself to the
prevailing
winds, even as
her signage is meant
to indicate the
prince's opportunism
(his political
shifts
occurring to win
Parliamentary leverage
over his father
or Parliamentary
support
of an increased
annual allowance,
depending on what
would provide most
gain for his increasing
debts). [11] Gillray's
depiction of Robinson
as a political
pawn—a
reading later
refuted
by her strongly
Whig and radical
publications—translate
her costumed
self-portrayals
as a chaste
naïf
or fashionable
lady into slutty
ignorance, a
body to be turned
to account in
a fascinating
replay of Thomas
Robinson's usage
of Mary's marital
body. Interestingly,
in Thomas and
Mary's very
first meeting
(she was 15)
she had worn
a dress of pale
blue lustring
with matching
ribbons for
her chip hat
(Memoirs 39),
foreshadowing
her fabulous
appearance
later at the
French
court. But here
too she was
not the innocent
girl that 15
suggests:
she was already
engaged to debut
as Cordelia
at Drury Lane,
and understood
the codes of
texture
and color, lustring
proving to be
a favorite dress
fabric. Prevented
by illness she
married instead,
and when Thomas
insisted on
a secretive wedding
ceremony at
St. Martin-in-the-Fields,
she dressed
as a Quaker (of
dull brown,
but of lustring
nonetheless).
She would pose
in this
dress, coyly
positioned
as if self-absorbed
and innocently
looking out
at the viewer
to see who he
or she is,
while discreetly
sheathed and
bonneted and
her hands hidden
by a small muff
in a 1781 portrait
by George Romney.[12]
-
If
not so aggressive in
his semiotic strategy
as Gillray, Thomas
Gainsborough also used
the opportunity in
painting Robinson's
portrait
Mrs.
Mary Robinson ("Perdita"),
(also1781)
to wrest semiotic control
from her, depicting
her as a demi-rep,
sexually
available and artfully
self-posing.[1 |
