Feminist and LGBTQ+ Studies

Abstract

In the upper-middle class ‘salons” of Alexandre Bisson’s spicy comedies and vaudevilles, performed between 1874-1911, life revolves around marital life, the pursuit of sexual pleasure, keeping up appearances, and wining money. In several cases highly paid cocottes (courtesans) invade this world either in absentia or appearing themselves on the stage. Their role in Bissonian dramaturgy is to serve or subvert middle-class expectations: to gratify male clandestine thirst for pleasure, to disturb appearances, and, always, to gain money. Most of all, however, their purpose is to offer a titillating spectacle to middle-class audiences. Bisson, reflecting social prejudices against ‘les filles de noce’ is rarely sympathetic towards cocottes, though he sometimes gives them voice to defend their profession. Yet, prostitution seems to occupy his mind seriously, as much as it did that of George Bernard Shaw (Mrs. Warren's Profession, 1893) and the playwrights of the Théâtre Libre (Paris, 1888-1894). Towards the end of his career Bisson wrote the melodrama La Femme X… (1908), where he condemns male maltreatment of women because it drove well-respected wives to prostitution and drags. Nevertheless, this patronizing defense did not concern cocottes but poor whores.
The paper will attempt to analyze the dramatic person of cocotte in terms of the social background of French belle epoque, the status of prostitution in the same period, and the literary and theatrical tradition, that is, Émile Zola’s Nana (1880), Alexandre Dumas’ La Dame aux Camélias (1848), Émile Augier’s Le Mariage d’Olympe (1855), and late-19th-century French boulevard comedy, especially George Feydeau’s well-made plays.

Biography

Ioanna Papageorgiou is Associate Professor, and currently head of the Department of Theatre Studies, University of Patras, Hellas. She has completed a Ph.D. in Drama on The Origins of the Star Phenomenon: Stars and the Starring System in the Eighteenth-Century British Theatre (Goldsmiths College, University of London). Her research interests lay on 18th- and 19th-Century British Theatre, History of Theatre (Renaissance-19th Century), relationship between Modern Greek and European Theatre, Theatre Star System, Greek Shadow Theatre, Boulevard Comedy, Women’s Studies, Dramatic Characters. She is the principal investigator in the project: The Repertory of Greek Shadow Theatre in Patras during the Interwar Period (1922-1940) funded by The Research Committee, Program C. Carathéodory, University of Patras.