In Search of an Audience: Madame Ancelot's Theatre for Women

Abstract

From 1835 to 1844, twenty-one plays written by Virginie Ancelotwereperformed in Paris theatres. A feat for any playwright of the time, this achievement is all the more remarkable when considering the limitations placed upon women writers in nineteenth century France. Theatre, of all literary genres, was arguably the least acceptable area of endeavour for women writers. Despite the success of Madame Ancelot's plays, current literary criticism has forgotten her unique works. Like many of her contemporaries, Ancelot's works have been set aside in order to focus on her reputation as a salonniere who lent her support to the most prominent male authors of the time.! Ancelot's contribution to literature extends beyond her assistance to well-known male writers. Her plays merit rediscovery as examples of what it meant to be a middle or upper class woman in nineteenth century France. By examining the portrayals of women's private lives and the influence of patriarchy on their happiness contained within four of Ancelot's most successful plays, the modem reader gains insight into the private sphere of her time. Before examining the details ofthese plays, it is important to consider why these works are ignored by contemporary scholarship. Like other women playwrights of nineteenth century France, Ancelot faced significant obstacles in staging her works. Alison Finch argues convincingly that the situation of women dramatists, already bleak in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, actually worsened during the first half of the nineteenth century.2 While the late eighteenth century witnessed a handful of successful women theatre managers such as Mlles Montanier and Raucourt, in 1824 women were banned from holding such posts. Although a very few women did indeed sit on the Comedie Franqaise reading committee which selected plays for production in the early part of the century, in 1853 they were forbidden to continue to do so. Furthermore, as Finch explains, the vagueness of what French drama was meant to be, 'verse or prose? Neoclassical, Shakespearean or modem,' (Finch, 62) represented a further obstacle for women writers who sought recognition in the genre. The majority of plays written by women at the time were done so in collaboration with men. When women writers produced plays on their own, they generally authored one-act plays and rarely produced full five-act plays deemed worthy of acknowledgement by the literary establishment. Short, and more importantly, light-hearted plays were considered more suitable for women dramatists than tragedies.