The Mask as an Unsettling Symbol: Hindering Social Stability

Within the masquerade trope the notions of mask and disguise acquire a special significance. Yet, as critics like Tseëlon point out, a demarcation between these two aspects is necessary, and thus it is important to note that “the mask is partial covering;

disguise is full covering; masquerade is deliberately covering. The mask hints; disguise

78 Russell notes the significance of “the range of activities – balls, assemblies, masquerades, theatricals, dinners, card-parties and general visiting – conducted in the household, by which elite women were able to claim a role for themselves, in mid-eighteenth-century public culture” (2010: 39).

149 erases from view; masquerade overstates. The mask is an accessory; disguise is a portrait; masquerade is a caricature” (2001: int 2). However, despite this marked differentiation, the distinction that can be traced between these two elements is by no means definite, since inevitably “each also shares the attributes of the other” (Tseëlon 2001: int 2).

In a sense, then, the masquerade not only blurs the distinction between appearance and reality but also the whole treatise around the notion of difference.

Masquerades obscure barriers, unsettles the notion of continuity and, instead, further complicates matters by substituting “clarity with ambiguity, certainty with reflexivity, and phantasmic constructions of containment and closure with constructions that are in reality more messy, diverse, impure and imperfect” (Tseëlon 2001: int 3).

The tremendous uncertainty generated by masquerades hinders social stability;

with its enigmatic nature the masquerade produces the sensation that all elements are actually interchangeable, that nothing is permanent and that all categories are subject to constant change and adjustment. This visibly “disrupts the fantasy of a coherent, unitary, stable, mutually exclusive divisions” (Tseëlon 2001: int 3) and introduces the uncanny feeling that nothing is ever what it seems, that the senses are not to be trusted⁷⁹.

This uncanniness is further enhanced by the notion of the mask, real or imaginary, which is linked to one’s sense of identity. As Tseëlon argues, different perspectives are at play when interpreting the meaning of ‘masks’. One point of view assumes the existence of an ‘authentic’ self which is concealed under the mask. The other perspective refutes the existence of ‘authentic’ selves and, instead, proposes that

“every manifestation is authentic, that the mask reveals the multiplicity of our identity”

79 As Tseëlon notes, “the paradox of the masquerade appears to be that it presents truth in the shape of deception” (2001: int 5).

150 (Tseëlon 2001: int 4). Both approaches revolve around the crucial notion of ‘selfhood, trying to determine if one possesses a single identity or a multiplicity of them. Either way, what becomes clear is that ‘masks’, whether physical or figurative, always imply a certain degree of duplicity, a duplicity that aims at disguising part of the self⁸⁰.

Lady Anne highlights the fact that Julia’s sense of identity depends on Henry’s non-verbal manifestations. In their case, there is no mask to conceal and their eyes must speak what they cannot utter:

Did I tell you we were going to a ball to night, six or seven miles off? she has heard it, and intends to be there: tells him, she shall there expect the sentence of life or death from his lovely eyes: the signal is appointed: if his savage heart is melted, and he pities her sufferings, he is to dance with her, and be master of her divine person and eighty thousand pounds to-morrow: if not – but he expires at the idea – she intreats him to soften the cruel stoke, and not give a mortal wound to the tenderest of hearts by dancing with another” (vol i: 119)

As Lady Anne dramatically claims, one look might be enough to condemn or save the lovers. The masquerade becomes an opportunity for them to indirectly declare their passion and, thus, to allow themselves to ‘break’ social codes by openly declaring the true state of their heart and, hence, by openly asserting their authority.

Within these endless possibilities, masquerades became a strong cultural emblem through which clashing concepts were merged. An aspect that was usually at the very center of the masquerade was “the experience of doubleness, the alienation of inner from outer” (Tseëlon 2001: 29). This alienation of inner from outer experience

80 According to Tseëlon, “in European history the masquerade was a space where people could enjoy fleeting liberty from social, sexual and psychological constraints. Here they could discard their private, sexual, social and hierarchical identities and choose whichever identity they desired” (2001: 28).

151 became particularly significant in the case of those women who attended masquerades.

In their daily lives, women experienced an incessant pressure to comply with certain social and cultural requirements but, the moment they entered the world of the masquerade, those pressures were considerably reduced. The conflict between their inner and outer experience is, to a certain extent, ‘resolved’ in the sense that, at least within the parameters of the masquerade, they are allowed to express inner sensations that would otherwise need to remain unseen.

The anonymity that masquerades entailed was taken as a dangerous aspect with the potential to soften “the safeguards of controls and inhibitions and shield one from one’s own morality. For many people their own anonymity or the facelessness washes away their humanity” (Tseëlon 2001: 30)⁸¹. Clothing was an equally vital aspect of masquerades, as Lady Anne proclaims: “you have no notion of what divine dresses we have making for the masquerade. I shall not tell you the particulars, as I would not take off the pleasure of surprise; but they are charming beyond conception” (vol ii: 139).

In this section I have noted the tremendous influence that the masquerade had in eighteenth-century life. Masquerade’s highly ambiguous nature has been examined, in the light of the multiplicity of interpretations that it generated.

81 Not surprisingly, in the light of these concerns that masquerades raised, there were “ideological prohibitions on women participating in masquerades, as well as real prohibitions put by eighteenth-century masquerade organisers in an attempt to maintain pretensions of exclusivity by limiting access of members of the lower orders to their entertainments” (Tseëlon 2001: 29).

152 5. Elizabeth Griffith’s The Delicate Distress

This chapter is about the theme of the ‘family unit’ in Elizabeth Griffith’s The Delicate Distress. I will reflect on various eighteenth-century attitudes regarding marriage and adultery and also regarding the construction of heroines, paying special attention to the disruption that ‘fatal women’ cause in such construction.

My Thesis statement aims at detecting the extent to which women writers of the late eighteenth century resist the strict configuration of the ‘proper’ woman and, especially, the purpose that lies behind that resistance. It also aims to propose that those women writers depict apparently conventional female characters who achieve a significant amount of self-command.

Hence, the importance of this chapter for my research purposes lies in its interrogation of general assumptions about family life – and its implications for women – and also, most importantly, in its careful analysis of the figure of the ‘heroine, women’s cultural and social representations and the disruptive components inherent in femme fatale figures.