Gendered Sounds of Revolutionary American Theater

Leopold Lippert

doi:10.47060/jaaas.v1i2.30

Abstract

This article examines the relationship of sound and gender politics in revolutionary America by reading two late eighteenth-century dramatic texts, the 1774 pamphlet A Dialogue, Between a Southern Delegate, and His Spouse (written pseudonymously by Mary V. V.), and Virginia playwright Robert Munford's five-act play The Patriots (written c1777, published only posthumously in 1798). Even though the sounds of early America cannot be accessed directly, as there was no sound recording in the modern, technology-based sense, and even though neither of the two dramatic texts has a known record of performances, the article sets out to explore how sound and speech were heard and negotiated, and how they reflected on prevailing cultural assumptions about gendered personhood, and the relationship between gender and politics. Arguably, attention to sound in these texts offers specific insights into the joint articulation of gender and transatlantic politics in the larger struggle over the American revolution. As this article shows, both texts, albeit for different reasons, strategically use gendered sounds to stage specific political interventions: By "listening" carefully to these sounds (as they are represented in writing), one can understand in more detail how acoustic environments impacted on the articulation, legitimation and deliberation of political argument in revolutionary America.

Highlights

This article examines the relationship of sound and gender politics in revolutionary America by reading two late eighteenth-century dramatic texts, the 1774 pamphlet A Dialogue, Between a Southern Delegate, and His Spouse
Even though the sounds of early America cannot be accessed directly, as there was no sound recording in the modern, technology-based sense, and even though neither of the two dramatic texts has a known record of performances, the article sets out to explore how sound and speech were heard and negotiated, and how they reflected on prevailing cultural assumptions about gendered personhood, and the relationship between gender and politics
Both texts, albeit for different reasons, strategically use gendered sounds to stage specific political interventions: By “listening” carefully to these sounds, one can understand in more detail how acoustic environments impacted on the articulation, legitimation and deliberation of political argument in revolutionary America

Summary

American Theater

In the 1774 pamphlet A Dialogue, Between a Southern Delegate, and His Spouse, Upon His Return From the Grand Continental Congress, the pseudonymous author Mary V. What I find most intriguing, is the way in which the dialogue gestures toward a performative dimension related to gendered voice and sound quality that remains virtual, but still carries cultural meaning and historical significance. 1777, published only posthumously in 1798), and ask how attention to the dramatic representation of sound and speech may offer more specific insight into the joint articulation of gendered personhood and transatlantic politics in the age of the American Revolution. What do these texts tell us about the ways in which sound was strategically deployed in order to negotiate both gendered behavior and revolutionary politics? Following Bloom, to read the politics of gendered speech in the Dialogue and The Patriots means to take seriously the instabilities and volatilities that characterize sound (even if such sound remains virtual), and to make meaningful the ambivalences introduced by sound to the overlapping trajectories of gender and transatlantic politics in Revolutionary America

Listening to the Sounds of the Past

Interpreting the Gendered Sounds of Domestic Strife

Conclusion