Masquerade Theory!!

I had to follow the heading for this entry with double exclamation marks because I am excited about the sources my research has uncovered regarding this theory...

Russo, Mary. “Female Grotesques: Carnival and Theory.” Feminist Studies / Critical Studies. Ed. Theresa de Lauretis. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986. 213-229. Print.   Russo explores in her essay how both silence and bold performance from women “have suggested cultural politics for women” (213).  Her essay illuminates how the carnival theory and the masquerade theory can be either oppressive or transgressive agents for women depending on their uses.  Building off of the Russian scholar Mikhail Bakhtin’s observation of “bodily exposure and containment, disguise and gender masquerade, abjection and marginality, parody and excess” (214), Russo first explains that the carnivalesque may be used to reveal women’s (and other marginalized groups’) compliance to patriarchal standards, but it can also be used as a tool of transgression, such as when women participate in intentional masquerade, a performance of femininity.  In other words, Russo defines femininity as a mask—an idea earlier set forth in an essay by Joan Riviere— that can be removed and replaced at her will.  She can put on femininity (as men define it) to either manipulate or please men, but she can take it off when it is not convenient (223-224).  The mask, when women understand how to use it, can give women more control, but it can make women more compliant if they do not know how to remove it.  This essay contributes to the ongoing feminist conversation of women’s agency in a patriarchal society, and it explains how women can use the stereotypes placed on them by the rules of patriarchal society to their advantage.  Russo’s argument, especially the portion dedicated to describing masquerade, will help me analyze Rebecca Reed's actions and to evaluate if she demonstrates agency by “using” her femininity to her advantage.

Riviere, Joan. “Womanliness as a Masquerade.” Formations of Fantasy. Ed. Victor Burgin, James Donald, and Cora Kaplan. New York: Methuen & Co., 1986. 35-44. Print.   Riviere explains the manner in which a woman she knew would flirt and use her femininity to capture the approval of men, ultimately in an effort to ward off the stress from her job.  Riviere then applies psychoanalysis to this woman’s dreams.  The woman had dreams of people putting on masks in order to avert disasters and dreams in which she disguised herself from men, which Riviere explains is an attempt to “‘disguise herself’ as merely a castrated woman.  In that guise the man found no stolen property on her which he need attack her to recover and, further, found her attractive as an object of love” (38).  Then Riviere gives a definition of masquerade: “Womanliness therefore could be assumed and worn as a mask, both to hide the possession of masculinity and to avert the reprisals expected if she was found to possess it—much as a thief will turn out his pockets and ask to be searched to prove that he has not the stolen goods” (38).  Riviere goes on to assert that womanliness and masquerade are the same thing.  A woman performs her femininity.  Riviere provides a clear and direct definition and analysis of masquerade, and I definitely intend to utilize her definition of masquerade in my project as the foundation to explore masquerade in Six Months in a Convent (whether it is gender, religion, or motives being performed).

Tierney, Helen. Women's Studies Encyclopedia: Revised and Expanded Edition. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999. Print.  Tierney, a Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin, specialized in women’s history and ancient history.  She edited this highly acclaimed encyclopedia (mentioned in Booth’s Craft of Research), and it is a multidisciplinary reference tool that covers multiple aspects of the female condition.  Hundreds of contributors, including Tierney, submitted entries examining women’s “contributions to literature, art, science, learning, philosophy, religion, and their place in history” (vii).  Obviously, women will continue to play a part in all of these areas, and so this encyclopedia will either need to be updated again periodically, or it will serve to feature women prior to the twenty-first century.  I am specifically interested in volume 2’s entry on British Eighteenth-Century Novelists and their performance of masquerade.  I did not know where this idea originated, and I assumed it was first articulated by Joan Riviere; however, this encyclopedia attributes its origin to Count Heidegger in the early eighteenth-century (1007), and refers to the author adopting a disguise, allowing her to participate in someone else’s “self.”  In this case, the female protagonist of the novels could speak her mind behind an aggressive mask of a gypsy, for example.  Unlike Riviere, Schofield (the author of the entry) claims that the aggressive mask is the true self of the female (acting like an illusion), whereas Riviere points at patriarchal femininity as a mask that hides ones masculinity.  Either way, it is a performance, and this is the aspect I want to focus on in my essay—the performance aspect.