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who offends their customs. Later on, Isabelle goes to the court. However, it turns out that it is Isabelle’s trial rather than the Murderer’s. Instead of questioning the Murderer, the Judge blames Isabelle for cross-dressing as a man, and breaking the locals’ law. In the later scene, Isabelle meets Colonel Lyautey, who offers her a chance to visit Morocco.
The final scene is the succeeding scene of the first scene in Ain-Sefra. Séverine and Colonel Lyautey report Isabelle’s death to the Judge. According to Colonel Lyautey, no one finds Isabelle’s body except for her journals.
The complexity of Wertenbaker’s New Anatomies lies in the fact that the host-guest relationship is no longer an absolute one and is posited in an unstable position within the colonist context. On the one hand, the French are originally the visitors in Africa, and shall be treated as the guests by the locals in Algiers. However, the French seize the locals’ host position by force and further place the locals in inferior positions. On the other hand, as far as the locals are concerned, they still own the possibility of being the hosts in one remaining comfort area, which is the monastery. According to the locals, the monastery is the place where they are able to welcome their guests out of their own will.
Therefore, in this thesis, I will dissect the host-guest relationship among different
characters and discover the unstable interrelationship within the colonist context. In New
Anatomies, the idea of hospitality is being raised several times by the characters;
however, the meanings of hospitality are often distorted, and can possibly possess negative ways of interpretation. The unstable interrelationship of the host and the guest actually questions the practicability of hospitality in its social context.
1.1 Critical Background
In a general view on Timberlake Wertenbaker’s works, some critics have pointed out
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that most of the subject matters have much to do with history and myth of the past.
Wertenbaker makes use of the historical materials to highlight her concerned issues regarding the oppression that the minority groups face. The most favorable issues that have been widely discussed are feminist and ethnic concerns. The Love of the
Nightingale, for example, centers on the issue of women being silenced by the dominated
male society. D. Keith Peacock claims that New Anatomies “explores the pressures and effects upon women of having to adopt male behaviour if they are to survive in areas normally dominated by men” (164). As far as Peacock is concerned, Isabelle is the victim of the male dominated society, and a woman who manages to “find personal freedom” by leaving her homeland (165). In “Dancing with History,” Wertenbaker herself admits that she “always liked historical plays” (20). In this essay, Wertenbaker observes that the plays from the past seldom deal with the topics that relate to the domain of women.Therefore, when she decides to write plays about women, Wertenbaker notices that there are only a few female historical figures for her to refer to. “I had slightly better luck with Isabelle Eberhardt, an actual and remarkable historical figure—nonetheless, a minor one”
(“Dancing with History” 20). Isabelle Eberhardt thus becomes a protagonist of New
Anatomies.
When it comes to New Anatomies, critics focus on gender issue, colonialism conflict, the dramaturgy in different historical period, and boundary crossing topic. Discussion on gender issue is most commonly touched upon. Verna A. Foster states that Isabelle
Eberhardt’s “cross-dressing and its relation to the formation of sexual, gendered, and also religious and national identity” is Wertenbaker’s chief concern (109). According to Foster:
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Focusing on the fluidity of gender represented by cross-dressing and the fluidity of national boundaries represented by Eberhardt’s (re)invention of her own identity, Wertenbaker’s play remakes the historical fin de siècle Isabelle Eberhardt as a feminist icon for the early 1980s. (Foster 109; emphasis in the original)
Isabelle Eberhardt (1877-1904) was indeed a real historical figure, who was born in Geneva. Wertenbaker rewrites the life story of Isabelle Eberhardt and especially depicts her journey in North Africa. In the play, we learn that Isabelle endeavors to break the gender stereotype that is imposed on women in the era. According to Sophie Bush, Isabelle is presented as a “strong-willed female” protagonist (63). Bush observes that
New Anatomies “explore[s] women’s potential to redefine themselves” (267). In the play,
Isabelle manages to seek for knowledge and to explore the world herself.In Timberlake Wertenbaker and Contemporary British Feminist Drama, Nursen Gömceli categorizes New Anatomies as an “explicitly feminist” play, and discusses it with socialist feminist stance (78). According to Gömceli, New Anatomies is
Wertenbaker’s “first important feminist play,” in which she “presents the biography of Isabella Eberhardt, who lived in the nineteenth century as a European woman under the disguise of a male Arab, Si Mahmoud, to find freedom and acceptance among the
Muslims” (78). Gömceli observes that in “the late nineteenth century France,” “women’s place in the society was still limited to the domestic sphere and their primary roles were still wifehood and motherhood”; therefore, Isabelle Eberhardt is definitely a “marginal”
woman “who subvert[s] the conventions of patriarchal society” during the time period (91). However, between 1880 and 1914, French women began to strive for their legal
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rights against patriarchy. Isabelle Eberhardt lives within the period of high tension between men and women. Wertenbaker actually presents Isabelle as a masculine woman, who is willing to walk into the public sphere in search of knowledge and
self-fulfillment. In New Anatomies, Isabelle tries to get rid of the bondage imposed on women in the patriarchal society. Wertenbaker offers Isabelle an opportunity to become an
unconventional woman, who lives an adventurous life. Isabelle is able to carry out her dream, to strive for her own freedom and to set out for a journey in search of knowledge.
In Rage and Reason, Wertenbaker herself considers that “Isabelle Eberhardt was one of the first women who de-objectified herself, became what she was and went on a quest . . . and she certainly found something” (Stephenson and Langridge 140).
Wertenbaker thinks that a woman’s intellect, which is the “mental make-up,” is more important than her appearance (Stephenson and Langridge 139). Consequently, in New
Anatomies, Isabelle is indeed portrayed as a well-educated and courageous woman who is
brave enough to seek for a position that is not subordinated to men.“[T]he best scenes in New Anatomies,” according to Foster, “are those dealing with gender and cross-dressing,” which reflects “Wertenbaker’s original interests” (119).
Foster especially points out that Wertenbaker invents the Parisian salon scene in the play so as to “reflect on cross-dressing, gender roles, Orientalism (with which the women are fashionably obsessed), representation, and identity” (117). In the Parisian salon scene, women cross-dress as men for different purposes. Verda Miles, for example, dresses as a man when she performs on stage. Lydia claims that she gets inspiration to write seriously when she dresses as a man. Besides the contents of New Anatomies, the performance of the play itself highlights the issues on gender politics. New Anatomies is made to perform
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entirely by five female actresses. Each woman plays both female/male character, and European/African roles. Maya E. Roth writes that:
This staging requires performers to translate across cultures of difference—of gender, ethnicity and language communities—foregrounding the embodied process of stage translation even while modeling that people and our bodies, like places, navigate complex cross-cultural encounters and hybrid
transformations. (159)
According to Roth, both the dramaturgy and the contents of New Anatomies direct to the idea of traversing gender boundaries. In Roth’s words, “New Anatomies transforms gendered boundaries in the space of performance itself, by featuring women performers in rigorously layered diversity” (159). Regarding the cross-dressing issue, Peacock notes that:
Although there are a number of male characters, Wertenbaker intended the play to be performed by a cast of five women, a circumstance that, in consequence of cross-dressing both by the actresses and the characters whom they portray, makes the audience constantly aware of the play’s central concern, that of sexual stereotyping. (164)
New Anatomies is a play that demonstrates the fluidity of gender, and breaks conventional
gender stereotype.Another issue being discussed in New Anatomies is the link between “colonialism and gender tropes” (Roth157). Isabelle Eberhardt, the protagonist, travels to Africa as a European cross-dressed adventurer. The time period of New Anatomies is set during French colonialism in Africa; therefore, Roth states that the play “excavate[s] Western
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European colonialism, . . . layering complicated cross-cultural histories with diverse local and global circuits of exchange” (Roth 156). Foster mentions that the play “depict[s] the conservative, racist French colonial community in Algeria” (Foster 117). Foster observes that:
Wertenbaker protects Isabelle from appearing complicit with the French but makes Séverine comment on the colonial aggression implicit in Lyautey’s proceedings, as she refers to the ‘conquest’ or at least the ‘digestion’ of Morocco. (118)
Wertenbaker depicts the French colonial experience in North Africa, and shows how the Europeans devour the land. In the play, Wertenbaker also maps out the contours of the cross-cultural society in the colony.
New Anatomies is a drama based on the life story of Isabelle Eberhardt; therefore,
critics are concerned about how the playwright deals with the historical facts. Foster takes a great interest in inspecting how Wertenbaker selects the documentary sources and portrays/reinvents the life of Isabelle Eberhardt. The selected and invented materials in a play reveal a playwright’s concern. Foster contends that in New Anatomies, Wertenbaker“selects, condenses, and imaginatively reinvents significant experiences from Eberhardt’s life to construct an intensely individualistic protagonist through whom she can explore the fluidities of gender and cultural/national identity” (120). To Foster, Wertenbaker obtains materials from the past, and communicates them with the concerns of the contemporary society. A play might receive different audience’s receptions for the time being. For example, in the twenty-first century (a post-9/11 world), “negotiating
historical changes in the circumstances of reception” becomes an unavoidable concern in
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presenting New Anatomies within “discourse on Western attitudes to Muslim people and societies and on relations between East and West” (113). When appreciating New
Anatomies, contemporary audience may be amazed at Isabelle’s relationship with the
Arabs. As time passes by, a play indeed gains vitality with different interpretations through new anatomy of its contents and its ways of performance.Finally, boundary-crossing theme is also an issue that critics would touch upon. In