TYCA—SW Annual Conference�Confronting Toxic Masculinity in British Literature I�October 25, 2019�
Christopher Krejci, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of English
Department of English & Foreign Languages
Temple College
christopher.krejci@templejc.edu
Confronting the Male Gaze in The Way of the World
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Toxic Trope
“The male hero lives for pleasure and for the money and women that he can conquer. The object of his game of sexual-intrigue is a beautiful, witty, pleasure-loving, and emancipated lady, every bit his equal in the strategies of love.”
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Where are we going?
How was satire employed onstage in England during and following the Restoration in ways that rebel against—but also reify—toxic ideas about gender and sexuality?
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Defining Comedy of Manners
As you watch clips from Frasier and Clueless, notice the following:
Clueless (1995)
Frasier (Season 3, Episode 17)
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Simon Schama�A History of Britain (2010)
“If Puritan England had been governed by the ear, wide open to review the word of god, the restoration restored the sovereignty of the eye. It’s ruling passion was scopophilia—the addiction of the gaze—whether eyeballing an outrageous wig, a plunging neckline, a louse caught in the lens of a microscope, or the constellations.”
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The Bow and Curtsy
John Harrop and Sabin R. Epstein
Acting with Style (1990)
The Bow and Curtsy In Class
Students Practicing the Bow and Curtsy in Class
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The Way of the World
Photograph: Johan Persson
The Guarding (April 15, 2018)
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���The Way of The World (1700) by William Congreve
FOIBLE: Your ladyship has frowned a little too rashly, indeed, madam. There are some cracks discernible in the white varnish.
LADY WISHFORT: Let me see the glass. Cracks, say’st thou? Why, I am arrantly flayed: I look like an old peeled wall. Thou must repair me, Foible, before Sir Rowland comes, or I shall never keep up to my picture.
FOIBLE: I warrant you, madam: a little art once made your picture like you, and now a little of the same art must make you like your picture.
Act III, Scene II
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��The Way of The World (1700) by William Congreve
MILLAMANT: . . . Ah, I’ll never marry, unless I am first made sure of my will and pleasure.
MIRABELL: Would you have ’em both before marriage? Or will you be contented with the first now, and stay for the other till after grace?
MILLAMANT: Ah, don’t be impertinent. My dear liberty, shall I leave thee? My faithful solitude, my darling contemplation . . . my morning thoughts . . . I can’t do it. I’ll lie a-bed in a morning as long as I please.
MIRABELL: Then I’ll get up in a morning as early as I please.
Act IV, Scene V
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Act IV, Scene V
MILLAMANT: . . liberty to pay and receive visits to and from whom I please; to write and receive letters, without interrogatories or wry faces on your part; to wear what I please, and choose conversation with regard only to my own taste; to have no obligation upon me to converse with wits that I don’t like, because they are your acquaintance, or to be intimate with fools, because they may be your relations . . . These articles subscribed, if I continue to endure you a little longer, I may by degrees dwindle into a wife.
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Scene Study: Translating The Way of the World for our World
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��The Way of The World (1700) by William Congreve��Act IV, Scene V�
MIRABELL: Have I liberty to offer conditions that when you are dwindled into a wife, I may not be beyond measure enlarged into a husband?
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