In this essay I will explain why Elizabeth Howe claims in, Early English Actresses: Women and Drama 1660" 1700, that early English actresses were used as sexual objects. and what she means through her chapter where she explores the different ways in which "the actress's sexuality was exploited by the playwrights who wrote for her." custom on "Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned"?Get the original essayIn the 18th century, women's roles in life were primarily domestic, and in the theater, female characters were "assigned to boys dependent on a being inferior to the adult male.” For women, “their place was in the home, even if it belonged to someone else.” Only 100,000 women out of 900,000 would work on certain farms and factories. t was only in the 1600s, just after the Restoration of King Charles II, that "Charles II issued a royal mandate that only women should play feminine roles", as he believed. that men dressing as women was immoral. Women may have occasionally performed in mystery plays for public entertainment as early as the 15th century, but no women were employed in commercial theater before the Restoration. "The exact date of the actress's debut is not known, but is generally assumed to be December 8, 1660, when a woman is known to have played Desdemona in a King's production of Othello Company by Thomas Killigrew. The Killigrew Company's patent allowed women to appear on stage to show "harmless and instructive representations of human life" and the first English actresses came from different backgrounds as the profession required women to be able to read, memorize lines, sing and dance. At the beginning of her chapter, Howe says that she is not surprised that the first role played by a woman in tragedy was the character of Desdemona. She describes how the character of Desdemona "lends itself well to the seductive emphasis on an actress's femininity: she is gentle, passive and vulnerable, she is suspected of being a whore, and she is ultimately the victim of horrific violence." in the room.” What Howe means when she says this is that at the time, audiences had become excited, curious, and eager to see women perform with the sensuality they brought to the stage. Indeed, the objectification of women as sexual possessions inspired the shift in the era of play writing so that actresses were seen as sexual props on stage instead of being seen as the equal to their male peers. Howe then explains how "actresses often had to do nothing but pose, like pictures or statues, to be looked at and desired by the male characters in the play and, presumably, by male spectators" and then gives an example of "scenes sofa”. » which were seen in plays throughout the period. She explains that "female characters were invited to lie at a distance, asleep on a sofa, bed or grassy embankment where, prettily defenseless and probably seductively undressed, their beauty involuntarily aroused a burning passion in the hero or the bad guy who fell on it.” The reason Howe explains this is that it was a common motif that arose from the introduction of women on stage to use "sofa scenes" in which a pretty actress was placed asleep center stage on a bed or sofa in a state where the actress waspartially undressed. According to Fraser, "a young woman was sometimes obliged to sacrifice her virtue to obtain a coveted place at the theater." This leads to the idea of ​​rape which was usually seen in "couch scenes". Furthermore, “male culture has made women's bodies objects of male desire, transforming them into places of beauty and sexuality for men to contemplate.” Because the sofa scenes involved partially undressed women discovered by the male protagonist, early women on the English professional stage were also exploited through panty roles and rape scenes as well as the sofa scene. Howe states that "the most striking manifestation of sexual exploitation in the tragedy is its depiction of rape." Indeed, rape scenes were an excuse to remove women's clothing, as Howe mentions: "Rape quickly proved to be a very effective means of exposing naked female flesh." At the end of the 17th century, female characters were exploited in order to satisfy the audience. According to Case, “women appear as an exploited class within an exploited class”; rape became more explicit as it became more expected. Anne Bracegirdle was an English actress who “specialized in stage rape.” The frequency of rape transforms women into sexual objects. Prostitution was common, particularly in London, as if you were made redundant without a reference then your options would be limited. There were virtually no rights to work for women. “An employer could dismiss a servant for the slightest cause: rudeness, dishonesty, suspicion of theft or even inconvenience.” According to White, "it is probably safe to assume that prostitution was an important source of income for young women in London." Indeed, when actresses first appeared on stage, they were poorly paid. “A young actress would receive between $10 and $15 a week and would be expected to work for nothing at the start of her career” (Fraser, 2002, p. 518). Some actresses received praise for their talents and the most famous of these actresses was Nell Gwyn. When theaters closed, there was no room for Gwyn's talents, allowing her to pursue prostitution. The idea of ​​prostitution and being a whore is mentioned earlier near the beginning of the chapter where Howe mentions a quote from Harold Weber saying, "In practical terms, the freedom gained by women to play themselves on stage was to a large extent the freedom to play the role of the whore. damn'. The reason Howe used this quote is because of actresses like Nell Gwyn. Between 1660 and 1700, a quarter of the plays staged at this time included women playing breeches roles. "It has been calculated that of some 375 plays produced on the public stage in London, including modifications of pre-Restoration plays, eighty-nine¦ contained one or more roles for actresses in male costume." According to Howe, "the panty roles proved extremely popular with audiences." Howe says this because actresses playing male characters made audiences very erotic by seeing female bodies through tight male costumes. Howe talks about it and explains that it's an easy way to entertain the audience through the state of undress common to tragedy and comedy. A state of dress could be just as erotic... there was no question for the actress of truly passing herself off as a man. Howe then says, "the reveal of a disguised woman's true gender provided a useful opportunity to show more of an actress' physique." This gave an ironic twist to the entry of.