Negotiating Voices in Romantic Theatre: Scottish Women Playwrights, Gender and Performativity

This article is concerned with the double binds of a gender-based and cultural- geographical marginalization which has resulted in the neglect of three notable Scottish female dramatists: Jean Marshall, Christian Carstairs and Mary Diana Dodds. The essay considers the parallel exoticisation of both the feminine and the northern as ex-centric to the dominant cultures of masculine, London-based theatre and criticism. Herein, questions of canonicity are raised as the fates of many female writers were decided by the endorsement or neglect of canonical male figures such as Walter Scott (for which witness Joanna Baillie) or Lord Byron (the figure whom Dodds self-consciously invoked). Similarly, issues of geographical and cultural colonization are raised as the article considers some of the critiques of imperial power contained within these feminine texts and the ways in which they manipulated a self-performative address in order to resist objectification; and to negotiate the terms of “otherness” inscribed in the dominant culture of the time