Charlotte Charke

Charlotte Charke:

ACTRESS, NOVELIST, PLAYWRIGHT, AUTOBIOGRAPHER

Known for:

Regularly presenting herself as a man in everyday life and for her autobiography A Narrative of the Life of Mrs Charlotte Charke.

Born: 13 January 1713

Died : 6 April 1760 (Aged 47)

“Remarkable for her adventures and misfortunes.” (London Evening Post, 1760)

The representation of women, throughout history and in today’s media driven society, is important as it shapes and influences the readers thoughts and perceptions of people. It is a common theme throughout our research, especially earlier in history, that women are criticized much more frequently than men. It is the work of the resistant women in history who have not been deterred by the way they are presented by the media that encourages new generations of women to resist stereotypes and create names for themselves. Many of the women discussed in this website were and continue to be hugely successful within the theatre industry. For women, such as Mrs Patrick Campbell, Mary Robinson and Joan Littlewood their resistance allowed them to excel in their fields and create new opportunities for women. Therefore, their resistance can be calculated as a factor in their rise to success.

Charlotte Charke is a representation that this is not always the case. One of the most influential pieces of writing printed thirty years after Charke’s death “Anecdote of Mr Charke”(Whyte, 1796) which Felicity Nussbuam quotes from the Mirror account describing Charke’s life as “Incontrovertibly tragic” (Nussbuam, 1989). Charke had an extremely hard life from birth, describing in her autobiography how she felt an “impertinent intruder”(Charke, 19756: 16) and an “unwelcome guest into the family” (Charke, 1759: 15). During her life Charke had multiple failed marriages, was arrested several times for debt, she was constantly rejected and alienated from the elitist theatre society that her father dominated and rebelled through her satirised plays that she performed. Towards the beginning of her theatre career she took an interest in starring in breeches roles, roles in which she performed as a man, which she continued to do throughout her career. After taking an interest in travesti roles she also began appearing as a man in public consequently moving against the heteronormative patriarchal society.

Charke’s resistance towards the rigidness of the ideals surrounding gender in the 1700s means she forces us to question our understandings of gender. When Charke first made her debut in London’s theatre industry she performed in a stereotypically feminine minor role of Mademoiselle in The Provok’d Wife. It was a year later that she made her first appearance in a travesty, or breeches, role. She continued to resist stereotypical gender norms and continued to perform in travesti roles. Many men rebuked these roles believing that women were unfit to act masculine parts due to their voice’s being “sweet and low, not passionate, vigorous, and ardent”(Female Romeos, 1896). It was also argued that females could not play men as it is impossible to “ disguise her form” (Female Romeos, 1896). This reduces the reason that women cannot play male roles down to nature and biology. Therefore, from this reasoning men shouldn’t have been playing female parts, even though they had been for hundreds for years prior.

Through my research I have discovered that there is a huge argument surrounding Charke and her resistant gestures specifically her cross-dressing and portraying a man on and off the stage. There are some readings of Charke’s autobiography A Narrative life of Mrs Charlotte Charke and plays that present her as a significantly successful feminist however there are others that believe that “Charke’s most transgressive gestures-her imitation of and challenge to her father.“ (Mackie, 2020) This is in reference to Charke’s performance in one of her many travesti roles. Her most predominantly resistant role would have been her appearance as the character Lord Place, which was a parody of her father Colley Cibber. The play Pasquin was a satirised attack at the government run by Robert Walpole and is one of Henry Fielding’s plays that encouraged Walpole’s passing of the Licensing Act in 1737. This subsequently gave the Lord Chamberlain the ability to control and censor what was being performed about the British government. Charke ‘s resistance towards her father begins in comic guise where a young Charlotte Charke is pictured wearing a wig and a coat to impersonate her father.

The reasoning behind Charke’s resistance of disregarding her gender can be brought into question when considering that perhaps she chose to appear as a man, not to undermine and resist conforming to gender, but to affirm the belief that “the value of the masculine on which the patriarchy and her own cross-dressing depend”(Mackie, 2020) is higher than the value of being a woman. Charke herself in her Narrative wishes to “clear her reputation to the world” (Charke, 1755: 15) and does this through asking her father for forgiveness and for her to accept his “repentant child” (Charke, 1755: 15) back into his life. By asking her father for absolution and placing her worth into his hands this only reinforces the value of “masculine, patriarchal conventions” (Mackie, 2020). Charke’s repentant tone of her Narrative is also reflected in Mary Robinson’s memoirs published in 1803. Robinson was a very successful actress and wrote her memoirs with an apologetic tone, leaving many feeling as though she was searching for redemption, not unlike Charke.

Charlotte Charkes resistance can also be challenged through questioning whether her cross-dressing as a man means that “masculine Charke is somehow more “real” and more significant than the feminine Charke, the repentant daughter eager to reclaim her place in family and society”(Mackie, 1991: 843). This eagerness to be accepted into society is shown by Charke voicing her apprehensiveness at the beginning of her Narrative at it being “the product of a female pen” (Charke 1955: 11) revealing her awareness of the “knowledge and anxiety over an ambiguous gender performance.” (Higa, 2017: 5). Here Charke’s use of the wording “female pen” is as Higa suggests a “phallic symbol with a feminine descriptor” (Higa, 2017: 5) whilst she is resisting her own physical gender boundaries, she gives the masculine power to the feminine. Looking at this through a feminist lens, it is understandable why Charke wrote under her own name and not Charles Brown, her name when she appeared in public as a man. In the 1700s her autobiography was a big step forward for women as hers was one of the first autobiographies to have ever been written by a woman.

During Charke’s life her fascination with gender and writing is clear through her desire to be involved in theatre during her adult life but also clear through portrayals of her. Some of the most famous being a young Charlotte Charke wearing a huge coat and a wig to impersonate her father. As well as an incredible portrayal of Charke in relationship to her father Colley Cibber; Poet Laureat. This portrayal shows a rebellious daughter “fascinated with and challenging the father's features” (Churchill, 1997:72). Colley Cobber is seated in the centre of the portrait, however, the “stage is stolen by a little girl, commonly assumed to be Charke, darting in from behind to seize her father’s pen” (Churchill, 1997:72). This is a brilliant representation of Charke as her mischievous and dogged persistence is clearly portrayed to the audience. It also demonstrates the desire for Charke to follow in her father’s footsteps to write, even so desperately far that she has to physically take the pen out of his hand as she is doing in the portrait.

Charke notoriously doesn’t fit into a historical theatrical stereotype, due to her inability to be classed as a pure virginal woman or an unvirtuous whore, she cannot be put in a box. This is a huge step forward for women as she presents an idea that there is more beyond how men categorize women. However, this also means that her resistance poses as a threat as she is ‘other’. The portrayal of Charlotte Charke in the Mirror by Whyte “clearly fits one of the conventional and restrictive paradigms of the early woman writer” (Churchill, 1997: 76) which would suggest why this description of Charke continues to influence nineteenth and twentieth-century scholars and the way they accepted this portrayal of her with such ease. “Anecdote of Mrs Charke” (Whyte, 1796) framing Charke as “humbled and disconsolate” (Whyte, 1796) was released thirty years after Charke’s death and describes her life as “inconvertibly tragic”. Whyte’s portrayal of Charke as a pathetic figure continued along the dominant ideals of many biographical and scholarly research throughout the nineteenth and twentieth century.

Whyte’s slanderous article is why representation of women is so important. In complete contrast to Whyte’s description of Charke, her autobiography presents her as anything but a pathetic figure. Her portrait in the book is a “hopeful portrait of a respectable confident older woman” (Churchill, 1997:76) this can be seen through the confidence in her posture and the gaze off to the side which is predominantly used to imply a hopefulness for the future. This is nothing like how Whyte described her and how many people interpreted her work after the influence of his article. Whyte’s article has shaped many people’s readings and interpretations of Charke’s Narrative as well as her plays. This leads me to pose the question, Why the discrediting and demeaning attack on Charke? While Churchill suggests the true “motivations of its author remain obscure” Churchill, 1997:76) it seems clear that he couldn’t overcome the lasting effect of Charke’s resistance and her threat as a “menace to society” (Churchill, 1997:76) even so many years after her death.

So What?

Charlotte Charke’s resistance is so important as it lay the foundations for women today, opening up opportunities that weren’t previously there. She broke down preconceived ideas of what a woman was and used that to open opportunities for herself to further her career, ideas such as women not being able to perform in manly jobs such as a gentleman’s porter, a baker and a merchant. Charke’s resistance to these gender boundaries shows her inner desires “for the liberty of a man, the love of a woman and the recognition of her father” (Fawcett, 2016: 63) all of which are clear themes throughout her Narrative.

Considering Charke’s work within a historical context she made great strides for both women and queers. Considering her love and comfort for appearing as a man, I would argue that her most effective form of resistance was her writing her autobiography as a woman. Especially given that the photo Charke uses to portray herself is of her a confident, hopeful woman. In writing so openly and truthfully about her life she broke down the preconceived notion that women’s writing was full of “Nonsense and inconsistencies”(Higa, 2017) and implored the reader to give her writing at least the attention of “ A common criminal” (Charke, 1755:11). Here, Charke tries to prevent people forming negative opinions on her work and disregarding it before they have even read it. This is why Charke’s resistance is so important as; although there is still a way to come, women within today’s society largely do not have to justify their writing and ideas in opposition to the fact that they are a woman. Women like Charke placed the foundations of this ease of expression hundreds of years before. Therefore, although Charke’s resistance did not make her celebrated or successful during her career, it allowed future generations of women such as Mrs Patrick Campbell and Joan Littlewood to be heard and supported in the future.