Coquettes Wives and Widows

<p>Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French theatrical works created an uneasy dialogue with the often-blistering depictions of marriage in contemporary writings by literary women. For over a century composers and librettists attempted to silence such anti-traditionalist views through dramas that ridicule banish or even more violently silence and subjugate female characters who resist marriage. These dramas portray independent-minded women as agents of chaos who deploy their sexuality to destabilize class demarcations or to destroy families and at times the monarchy itself.<br /><br /><em>Coquettes Wives and Widows: Gender Politics in French Baroque Opera and Theater</em> shows how dramatists wrested narratives away from women and weaponized those narratives in a defense of the status quo. It examines a wide range of works of different types: from Jean-Philippe Rameau's <em>Platée ou Junon jalouse</em> and André Campra's <em>Aréthuse ou la Vengeance de l'Amour</em> to representative works from the Comédie Franaise the Comédie Italienne and the fairgound theaters. Each theater offered denigrating portraits of independent women as dissolute obstinate and extremist.<br /><br />The operas and other theatrical works explored in <em>Coquettes Wives and Widows</em> reveal who (in the view of many at the time) should exercise authority to make choices about women's lives. They also give evidence of widespread fears about how society might change if it were to grant women themselves that responsibility.<br /><br />Marcie Ray is an Associate Professor of Musicology at Michigan State University.</p>