Gender Misfits: Our Sources
We have listed below the primary and secondary documents that we found most useful for this archive. We hope that you find them useful while reading our collaborative and individual papers, as well as in your own scholarly work. For your convenience, we have also listed our individual works cited pages for further reading.
Primary Documents:
The Country Wife by William Wycherley:
Prologue
Act I
Act II
Act III
Act IV
Act V
Epilogue
The Whole Duty of a Woman
This contemporary conduct manual written for women articulates the importance of gender differences. The manual’s chapter on female modesty includes a passage outlining the need for female avoidance of masculine behavior to maintain virtue and decency. The passage, which is linked to above, also condemns men who adopt feminine traits.Spectator No. 69
Joseph Addison's essay on the Royal Exchange celebrates England as the center of global commerce and trade. This text is especially helpful when examining Wycherly's commodization of women in the famous breeches scene set in the Exchange.
Secondary Documents:
A Few Kind Words for the Fop
The fop represented a non-normative form of sexuality in Restoration Drama that emphasized flamboyant style and humor. As Susan Staves reveals in her article, social attitudes towards this effeminate male image that permeated the Restoration Stage shifted in the latter portion of the Eighteenth Century.Some Fops and Some Versions of Foppery
Robert Heilman illustrates the nature of the fop onstage and the ways in which Restoration actors portrayed them in Restoration Drama. More importantly, he emphasizes their interactions with the other characters onstage and the way in which fops fit into dramatic comedy.Men in Love
Haggerty examines the way in which the effeminacy of the foppish male character contests Eighteenth century social and moral codes of conduct. Furthermore, the fop’s aberrant sexuality reveals the society’s attitudes towards traditional male and female roles.Between Men
Sedgwick's article is about the homosocial interactions between men, with particular attention paid to Wycherley's The Country Wife. This was particularly helpful with regards to a discussion about the fop and the rake, personified in Sparkish and Horner in the play. Sedgwick discusses a lot about how women were used as a means of relation between men, because without women in the picture, male-male interactions were generally looked upon as homosexual. She talks about how this exchange was mitigated by the men in The Country Wife.The 'Plyant' Discourse
Knapp's article is largely about how different kinds of discourses in The Country Wife were used to mean different things. For example, in a discussion between Harcourt, Horner and Dorilant, Horner talks about his 'conversations' with women, where the term 'conversation' is meant to be understood as 'sexual encounters.' Knapp's discussion of this topic helped to further the exploration of Horner's interactions with other men within the play as he endeavors to cuckold them.
Our Works Cited Pages:
Alli Foley: "Fops, Rakes and Everything In Between: The Men of William Wycherley's The Country Wife"
Mina Azodi: "Who Wears the Pants: An Exploration of Female Crossdressing in Restoration Theater"
Jean Rose Clawater: "The Paradoxical Nature of the Fop"
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