Defining the Masquerade: A Multi-Faceted Genre

The masquerade was a highly significant and contested⁷³ public assembly that held a tremendous significance throughout the long eighteenth century. Terry Castle’s Influential study, Masquerade and Civilisation: The Carnivalesque in Eighteenth-Century English Culture and Fiction (1986) provides a thorough examination of the Masquerade in eighteenth-century life. In her assessment, Castle captures the main paradoxes that lie at the center of the masquerade assembly, and portrays its irrepressible force as “at once a highly visible public institution and a highly charged image – a social phenomenon of expansive proportions and a cultural sign of considerably potency” (1986: 2).

73 Castle points out that the masquerade “was universally condemned by contemporary moralists and satirists as a foolish, irrational and corrupt activity perpetrated by irresponsible people of fashion” (1986:

1).

142 As Castle argues, masked assemblies were an essential, yet ambiguous, part of eighteenth-century culture. When considering the impact generated around Masquerades, one may contemplate its ornamental features, reminiscent of “an imaginary ancient regime” (Castle 1986: 1) or rather focus on the immorality which was usually associated to this kind of event. Lady Anne chooses to focus on the ornamentation part rather than its associations with immortality, as she eagerly proclaims her excitement about the embellishment that is always found in masquerades:

“You have no notion what divine dresses we have making for the masquerade. I shall not tell you particulars, as I would not take off the pleasure of surprise; but they are charming beyond conception” (vol ii: 139).

Whichever perspective one takes, what is undeniable is that the Masquerade

“was an established and ubiquitous feature of urban public life in England from the 1720s onward” (Castle 1986: 1) which was nonetheless under constant inspection, as it was often regarded as an event which induced depravity and (social) licentiousness and, as such, it needed to be under incisive surveillance. This surveillance was particularly called upon in the case of females who attended masquerades. As Castle notes, “much of the fear of the masquerade generated throughout the century is related to the belief that it encouraged female sexual freedom, and beyond that, female emancipation generally” (1986: 33). Masquerades ‘threat’ to the female community was based on the presumption that it allowed women to behave with too much license and hence loosen the regulation that was expected from their conduct. Social concern revolved around the possibility that masked assemblies, with their breaking of barriers, would provoke in women the urge to break away from social norms and hence these women, it was feared, would no longer ‘willingly’ permit their containment within clear, controlled social parameters.

143 Within the world of the masquerade, the partition between self and other becomes even more marked. This public gathering provides the perfect opportunity for a profound inspection of the boundaries that separate individuals from societal rules and regulations, as these assemblies became events in which “the true self remained elusive and inaccessible – illegible – within its fantastical encasements” (1986: 4). The danger was believed to lie precisely in this ‘freedom’⁷⁴ people were granted in masquerades, as in these they could conceal their true identity and portray a completely different persona, one that would allow them to explore alternative social, cultural and even gender positions and hence to ‘break’ the status quo.

As Castle rightly points out, such reversal of roles⁷⁵ which became possible through masquerades “served as a kind of exemplary disorder. Its hallucinatory reversals were both a voluptuous release from ordinary cultural prescriptions and a stylised comment upon them” (1986: 6). Masquerades, then, not only allowed people to temporarily disentangle themselves from social prescriptions it also crucially allowed writers to provide a statement about social order, even if just in a subliminal manner.

The ‘license’ associated to masquerades was thus extended to the writers who made use of this trope in their work in order to provide their judgment on certain social and cultural assumptions.

Fiction became a powerful means through which to depict the destabilizing force of the masquerade. This public event was never a simple gathering act; its effects were much more intense than people getting together for a celebratory event. This intensity could be discerned through fictional accounts of masquerades which “could be said to

74 As Castle argues, the freedom that the masquerade entailed was so apparent precisely because “the public masquerades of the eighteenth century were an institutional setting in which different ranks (as well as the sexes) met with a level of freedom seldom achieved elsewhere in eighteenth-century English society” (1986: 33).

75 As Castle observes, this includes “an intoxicating reversal of ordinary, sexual, social, and metaphysical hierarchies” (1986: 6).

144 unleash those transgressive forces present just under the ordinarily decorous surface of eighteenth-century narrative” (Castle 1986: 117). Therefore, under a guise of conventionality, eighteenth-century writers fostered the disruption that masquerades entailed and released certain urges that society would deem ‘improper’. Despite the continuous presence of overt moral condemnations of masked assemblies through fiction, which reinforce the moralistic purpose of those works, eventually there seems to be an alluring charm linked to masquerades and, in spite of the warning against its

‘dangers’, characters cannot resist the temptation to attend such public assemblies. The inherent ambiguity of masquerades allowed writers to maintain this ‘double’ façade: on the one hand, they openly ‘disapprove’ of such improper assembly but, on the other hand, they appear to endorse the very same ideology they ‘oppose’⁷⁶.

Part of the ambiguity of masquerades is based on the mingling of opposing characters and situations, as in these events “the high and the low, the virtuous and the vicious, the attached and the unattached” (Castle 1986: 121) are brought together in a way that threatens to undermine social distinctions. The clear borders that separate these opposed characters are disintegrated to the extent that there is no discernible division between them. Thus, what was antagonised becomes ‘reconciled’ and this menaces to

‘destroy’ social order.

Lady Anne draws attention to this social aspect of masquerades, assemblies in which people are brought together and in which acts of female coquetry occur:

the girl endeavoured, at the beginning of the evening, to attract his notice, but in vain: I had the pleasure to see him neglect all her little arts, and treat her with an air of unaffected indifference, which I knew must cut her to the soul. She then endeavoured to

76 As Castle argues, this implies that “the masquerade may be a way of indulging in the scene of transgression while seeming to maintain an aspect of moral probity” (1986: 126).

145 pique him by the most flaring advances to Fondville, which, knowing your capricious sex as I do, rather alarmed me; I therefore determined to destroy the effect of her arts, by playing off, in opposition, a more refined species of coquetry, which turned all of Fondville’s attention to myself and saved Harry from the snare she was laying for him, a snare of all others the hardest to escape (vol i: 125-6)

The masquerade provides a scenario in which two females find themselves competing to attract male attention, instead of keeping their ‘proper’ place and waiting for male advances to take place first. In this fierce female struggle to attain some sort of

‘power’ Lady Anne gloriously declares that her authority by making use of ‘a more refined species of coquetry’ makes her the victor in this rivalry ‘fight’. Such female empowerment which masquerades ‘triggered’ was regarded as a potential threat to the social order, as the impression was that woman were taking certain liberties that took them away from their ‘proper’ – submissive – place.

Another threat to the social order that the masquerade introduced was the presence of foreign influences, and its disruptive potential. Throughout the eighteenth century, there was a strong association between masquerades and external ‘domination’

to the extent that masked assemblies “were persistently associated with diabolical foreign influence, imported corruption, the dangerous break of national boundaries, contamination from without” (1986: 7). In The History of Lady Julia Mandeville, this foreign ‘corruption’ is depicted through the character of Lady Anne Wilmot, who represents the dangers of French traditions. Not surprisingly, in the novel it is Lady Anne, the French ‘libertine’, the ‘dangerous’ woman, who is depicted as enjoying public assemblies extremely:

146 I sat a full hour, receiving the homage from both my adorers, my head reclined, and my whole person in an attitude the most graceful negligence and inattention; when, observing the cittadina ready to faint with envy and indignation, turning my eye carefully on her, ‘Oh, Heavens! Fondville,” said I, ‘you are an inhuman creature, you have absolutely forgot your partner.’ Then, staring up with Sir Charles, rejoined the dance with an air of easy impertinence, which she could not stand, but burst into tears and withdrew (vol i: 127)