Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
2019
Published In
The Routledge Anthology Of British Women Playwrights, 1777-1843
Abstract
Perhaps one of the most intriguing documents of women’s place in the theatre in the 1790s, Hannah Cowley’s A Day in Turkey uses Eastern despotism to explore women’s relation to the French Revolution and to the public sphere. A complex blend of proto-feminist critique, orientalist voyeurism, and Francophobic homophobia, Cowley manipulates the stock material of the late eighteenth-century theatre to generate a fantasy of feminine directorial power. In the play’s most remarkable scene, Cowley’s alter ego manipulates the political and sexual plots of the comedy from the isolation of the seraglio, thereby providing a model not only for women’s political intervention in the private sphere, but also for Cowley’s nascent critique of the theatre’s patriarchal managerial power.
Published By
Routledge
Editor(s)
T. C. Crochunis and M. E. Sinatra
Recommended Citation
Betsy Bolton.
(2019).
"Hannah Cowley, "A Day In Turkey; Or, The Russian Slaves" (1791)".
The Routledge Anthology Of British Women Playwrights, 1777-1843.
138-191.
DOI: 10.4324/9781351025140-5
https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-english-lit/389
Comments
This material was originally published in The Routledge Anthology Of British Women Playwrights, 1777-1843 edited by Thomas C. Crochunis and Michael E. Sinatra, and has been reproduced by permission of Routledge. For permission to reuse this material, please visit the publisher's website.
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