McIsaac_ElectiveAffinities - iSites

Tableaux Vivants and Triviality 157
the status of the performer. Whereas the figure frozen in a pose is the presented
"material," she can likewise be recognized as the creative instance. In practice,
the latter status was seldom fully acknowledged in women, in part due to the
belief that women were at most capable of copying "real art." Instead, truly
creative aspects of tableaux were generally ascribed to the men who helped
stage the performances. Goethe accordingly draws attention to the role of
Lady Emma's future husband Lord Hamilton when he sees her perform in
Naples: "Der alte Ritter halt das Licht dazu und hat mit ganzer Seele sich
diesem Gegenstand ergeben. Er findet in ihr alle Antiken, alle schonen Profile
der sizilianischen Munzen, ja den Belvederschen Apoll selbst" (HAll: 209).
Emphasizing Lord Hamilton's intellectual investment {Seele), Goethe leaves
the act of interpretation to him, a reference that becomes more comprehensible
when it is recalled that tableaux performers did not speak. Instead, a
voice apart from the staging, typically a male voice, suggested interpretations
through commentary or poetic passage.^^ Following a kind of gendered division
of cultural labor, Emma Hamilton is relegated to an object Lord Hamilton
manipulates in order to draw out her latent meanings. In spite of tableaux
vivants' focus on female performers, their bodies could require male intervention
to become truly intelligible.
Goethe's subsequent pronouncements regarding Emma Hamilton's performance
reinforce the gendered division of labor and recall the way tableaux
vivants were often approached by contemporary observers. Goethe appreciates
the intellectual and artistic content of Emma Hamilton's performance in
terms of her poor intellect. Goethe confesses,
Darf ich mir eine Bemerkung erlauben, die freilich ein wohlbehandelter Gast
nicht wagen soUte, so mu6 ich gestehen, daB mir unsere schone Unterhahende
doch eigentlich als ein geistloses Wesen vorkommt, die wohl mit ihrer Gestalt
bezahlen, aber durch keinen seelenvollen Ausdruck der Stimme, der Sprache
sich geltend machen kann (HAl 1: 332).
According to Goethe, the tableaux are entertaining because their performer is
beautiful: "eine schone Unterhaltende" who is nonetheless "ein geistloses Wesen,"
she achieves effects with her figure. Yet, since tableaux performers did
not speak, Goethe's denial of intellectual status to Emma Hamilton must derive
from his recollection of their personal conversations. The failure to dissociate
information gleaned from personal interactions from a performer's public appearance—in
other words, to regard tableaux as an art form that co-mingles
private and public realms—is a tendency commonly found in Goethezeit audiences.^"
Male observers applying prevailing conventions of public and private
behavior reported titillation in seeing a married woman "reveal" herself in
public by emulating figures more compatible with the (sexualized) confines of
the private sphere: sphinxes, nymphs, muses, Cleopatra, and Mary Magdalene,
to name but a few.^^ Costuming likewise suggested that a woman's private side