The Comedy and Legacy of Music-Hall Women 1880-1920 : Brazen Impudence and Boisterous Vulgarity

This book explores the comedy and legacy of women working as performers on the music-hall stage from 1880–1920, and examines the significance of their previously overlooked contributions to British comic traditions. Focusing on the under-researched female ‘serio-comic’, the study includes six micro-histories detailing the acts of Ada Lundberg, Bessie Bellwood, Maidie Scott, Vesta Victoria, Marie Lloyd and Nellie Wallace. Uniquely for women in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, these pioneering performers had public voices. The extent to which their comedy challenged Victorian and Edwardian perceptions of women is revealed through explorations of how they connected with popular audiences while also avoiding censorship. Their use of techniques such as comic irony and stereotyping, self-deprecation, and comic innuendo are considered alongside the work of contemporary stand-up comedians and performance artists including Bridget Christie, Bryony Kimmings, Sara Pascoe, Shazia Mirza and Sarah Silverman. Foreword Acknowledgements Contents List of Figures List of Songs Referenced Chapter 1: Introduction: Reweaving Women’s Comic Performance History Women in the ‘Comedyscape’: Past and Present Music-Hall Comic Form, Style and Context ‘Reweaving’ Comic History Analysing Historical Performances Feminising the Comic Archive ‘Micro-Histories’ of Specific Performers Shared Comic Techniques and Performance Strategies A Bricolage of Critical Perspectives Women’s Humour? Music-Hall Representations of Women The Serio-Comics Reanimating Historical Performances Comic Attitude/Comic Gestus: ‘Every Joke Is a Brechtian Device’ Chapter Outline References Chapter 2: Sentiments Unwomanly and Unnatural: Moral Ambiguity, Censorship and Public Perceptions of the Serio-Comic Performer The Serio-Comic in Her Context Marriage, Work and ‘the Surplus Woman Question’ Sex, Morality and Women on the Halls Regulating Morality: The London County Council Moral ‘Improvements’ and Commercial Interests The Theatres and Music Halls Committee Arbiters of Taste Social Purity Campaigns and Music Hall Women’s Behaviour on and off Stage Class Control and the Culture Gap Serio-Comic Performances Serio-Comic Definition 1: ‘Funny and Disturbing’ Serio-Comic 2: ‘Arch’ and ‘Mock Serious’ The Serio-Comic and Moral Ambiguity The Rise and Fall of the Serio-Comic References Chapter 3: I Must Tell You This: Intimacy, Gagging and Comic Licence in Performer-Audience Relationships Music-Hall Performance Style Comic Intimacy and Distance Going off Script: A Brief History of Theatrical ‘Gagging’ Talking to the Audience: The Gag’s the Thing Keeping the Audience in Hand: Gagging as Crowd Control Comedy as Dialogue Navigating Audience Values and Tastes ‘Don’t Sing in the Chorus’: The Anti-Gagging Campaign Shared Laughter and Collective Identity Comic Licence and Its Limits Audience Collusion in Comedy Negotiating Comic Boundaries References Chapter 4: A Comfort and Blessing to Man: Performed Irony and Comic Disruptions of Gender Stereotypes The Social Uses of Stereotyping Comic Stereotyping Music-Hall Stereotypes of Women Courtship and Marriage in Music-Hall Song Comic Re-presentations of Gender Stereotypes The Problem with Irony: Comic Polysemy Performed Irony: Framing Ironic Ambiguity In Search of Historically Performed Irony Meta-Textual or Extra-Textual Irony Performing ‘Failed Copies’ The Angel in the House? Disrupting Stereotypes The Ironic Ceiling References Chapter 5: I’ve Only Got Myself to Blame: The Victims and Butts of Women’s Comic Self-Deprecation Funny First Impressions Minimising the Comic Threat On-Stage/Off-Stage Personas Self-Deprecation as Self-Disclosure Self-Deprecation as Consolation: The Comic Blues Self-Deprecation as Cautionary Tale: ‘Take Warning Ladies, All!’ When Is a Victim Not the Butt? ‘Humitas’: Embracing Serio-Comedy Playing Dumb: Knowingly Unknowing Self-Deprecation or Self-Marginalisation? Self-Deprecation as Knowing Misdirection ‘Wise Enough to Play the Fool’ References Chapter 6: I Mustn’t Tell You What I Mean: Comic Innuendo as Performed Censorship Victorian Attitudes to Women’s Sexuality Censorship and Self-Censorship Speaking the Unspeakable Productive Censorship Comic Innuendo: Performed Censorship ‘I’m a Big Girl Now’: Knowing/Not Knowing Smart and Savvy, Street-Wise Women Brief Encounters Subversive Obscenity The Comic Body References Chapter 7: Every Little Movement Has a Meaning of Its Own: The Comic Embodiment of Gender, Sexuality and the Grotesque Embodying the Joke Embodied Realities and Experience Erotically Funny? Embodying Jokes About Sex and Sexuality Holding the Male Gaze Gendered Press Reviews Sexualised Objects or Sexual Subjects? The Parody of Sexual Appeal Celebrating Strength and Skills Physical Comedy and the Grotesque Gender Transgressions: Women Impersonating Men References Chapter 8: Serio-Comic Reflections and Projections Feminising Comic History Shared Comic Practice Shared Comic Practice: Shifting Female Identities Shared Comic Practice: Performing Gender and Sexuality Contemporary (Self-)censorship The Serio-Comic Turn Shifting Register: ‘The Lucidity of Consolation’ Comic Evolutions Anything Is Possible References Index