Daphne Brooks, Bodies in Dissent

Derek Wang and Julian Young

Adah Isaacs Menken

● Lived from June 15, 1835 - August 10, 1868● Left her husband and set out for New York City in 1859● Decided to make a name for herself in the world of

theatre● Used the ideas of race and gender in theatre to generate

fame and stardom● Played many roles in theatre, from man-child heroes to

gambling gentlemen ● Best known for her production of Mazeppa, in which she

“disrobes” in the cross-dressed role of a prince

Adah Isaacs Menken (contd.)

● Menken’s personal life is widely speculated○ Many biographers believe Menken to be Jewish, Irish, Spanish,

French, even African American “passing” for white● “Notes of Her Life in Her Own Hand”

○ A self-authored article posthumously published displaying her many alter-egos which include:■ a white American working-class survivor ■ a New Orleans child performer■ a Jewish daughter in exile

● First considered to be Jewish, now more recently believed to be of African descent, perhaps from New Orleans

Sojourner Truth

● African American abolitionist and women’s rights activist

● Born in 1797 and died on November 25, 1883● Was born into slavery but escaped in 1826● Due to Truth’s illiteracy, she had very few self

authored written works● Similar to Menken, Truth’s “image has weathered a

mangling for over a century … she too has served as the fodder for mythical legends of corporeal spectacle in cultural history”(157)

Performance Techniques of Menken

● Writing -“Notes of Her Life in Her Own Hand”○ By creating alter-egos, Menken assumes the role of

many identities with various racial and cultural backgrounds

○ Forces biographers and scholars to find a method to “define race”■ Is race internal or external? ■ Does Menken have a “pure” racial identity?

The body as a performing technique

● Menken uses her body as a performative instrument○ Stages a striptease of her own accord with mythological texts

wrapped around her○ Uses her body as a narrative to make historical fictions○ Author considers her to have mastered the art of “the pass”

■ Used not to deceive, but to “move from the margin to the center of American identity”

■ “apparatus of the pass” (p. 163)the “passer”

Amy Robinson’s “apparatus of the pass”

the “dupe”the passer’s “in-group”

The body (contd.)

● Similarly, Sojourner Truth uses her body through performative mutiny○ Truth reveals her breasts and the “deeds done in [her] body” to

display her gender as well as instill the history of slavery■ By revealing herself to the whole audience, Truth is rejecting

the attempt to subdue her womanhood■ Revealing the body can create different meanings, opacity

○ Both Menken and Truth use their bodies to provide an “authentic” text of identity■ The legacies that Menken and Truth left behind are based

almost solely on their performances○ Can people “write” themselves into history by using their body to act

themselves into history?

Performance to Disturb Stereotypes

● Menken and Truth ultimately did disturb stereotypes of women and people of color○ Menken’s on and off stage characters/personas and

drag performance in Mazeppa blurred the lines between the overdetermined characteristics for men and women

○ Truth acted with agency by using her body to address critics and fought for equal rights through her speeches.

Criticism and Reception of Mazeppa

● Mark Twain did not consider Menken as a good performer, but rather a “shape actress” who “didn’t have any histrionic ability or deserve any more consideration than a good circus rider”

● Others believed that her role in Mazeppa was designed to be more of “an ornament to her sex”

● Menken’s bodysuit in Mazeppa circumvented the modest fashion of the time, and fell close to Victorian pornography○ Some audiences thought they were witnessing a nude of a “white”

female body● Historian Faye Dudden believes that a naked woman on stage “robs [her]

of any authentic sense of self” because “to act is to be seen”

Criticism (contd.)

● Tessa Ardenne writes, “Physically [Menken] is a glorious creature, proud and defiant as a goddess. Her forte is in the almost super-human power she has over her body. It obeys her. It is the servant of her will. It assumes every possible attitude at her bidding while her face, with its luminous eyes, tells the story of joy and sorrow, hope and fear, more plainly than the tongue of another can speak it. But visible to one who studies her face at all, are marks of a hard battle fought single-handed with the world, fought and won-- much of it perhaps for that “daily bread” for which we pay.”

● So… can people “write” themselves into history by using their body to act themselves into history?

Works Cited

● Daphne Brooks, Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850-1910 (Durham: Duke UP, 2006)

● Painter, Nell Irvin. Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol,. W.W. Norton, 1997. 370. Web.