Thursday, April 12, 2007

The Belle's Stratagem

The Belle's Stratagem clearly speaks about the oppression of women experienced by females during the Patriarchal centuries that followed Cowley's play's premiere because from what I understand, during the eighteenth century, many women playwrights got little exposure, often having to "funnel their writing through theatres dominated by men" (Barker). It is commonly believed that many women drama writers' work has been lost or was given to men, so that the male's may wrongly take credit for the female's work. However, because of the strong female protagonist in Cowley's play, I am assuming that it was not claimed by a man because of its very powerful female protagonist?? This is very refreshing, especially after all of the oppressed women writers and characters that we have studies this term. What an excellent way to finish this course.



Good luck on your exams everyone!

1 comment:

Cass said...

I have to wonder whether the text we have for this class is making a particular point of including a fair number of female writers - we've seen works from at least four (out of 11 plays). Was this representative of the population of female writers, or were these plays really influential, or is this volume of ours just making an effort to grant exposure to women playwrights in an attempt to "fix" things in hindsight? (Not that there's anything wrong with that, necessarily.)