Critical Issues
The Clothes Make the...Man?
Eighteenth Century Masquerade and Disguise on the Web
(paper excerpts)
Masquerade and Gender: the eighteenth century versus the web
"Windows" of disguise on the web
Does Masquerade require an unveiling at the end?
The Masquerade Ball was one of the entertainment highlights of eighteenth century London. Begun by Count Heidegger and continued by Theresa Cornelya, masquerades were wildly popular in part, as Terry Castle establishes in Masquerade and Civilization, because they permitted guests to shed the rigidly constructed identities of the rule-bound eighteenth century in favor of flagrant new disguises. Ball-goers could adopt the dress of transvestites and other risque beings; could express sexual desire openly (a particularly liberating behavior for women), and could mix relatively freely with others because of the homogeneity--everyone was in costume--that their masquerades produced. This form of entertainment became a trope within other eighteenth century forms of entertainment: plays and novels. From John Dryden's Restoration Comedy, Marriage a la Mode, to Eliza Haywood's novella, Fantomina, masquerade often appears as a device that advances the progress of a sexual relationship while educating the masquerader about his or her intended sex partner. In these works, masquerade is a temporary but necessary device toward an ending in which much is revealed about the primary characters; this can lead to a celebration and marriage, as in Marriage a la Mode, or to a state as confusing as masquerade itself, as in Fantomina. Both the cultural practice and the literary trope deal with the ideal notion of masquerade as a tool allowing self-exploration, permitting a "multiplicity of selves" through a theatrical treatment of one's being; acting a part as if on stage prompts various aspects of the self to emerge and develop.
It could be argued that some of those practitioners of disguise on the internet have similar aims in mind. Like their eighteenth century predecessors, many internet users construct disguises, including email addresses (this often being the first opportunity people have had to choose an address, it can take hours to arrive at just the right name), MUD personas, avatars, and other forms. Do they do so to learn about others and to advance relationships, like many of their literary predecessors? What kind of education do they receive in disguising their "real" or "essential" selves on the web? In disguising aspects of their "real" or "essential" selves on the web, such as gender or race, what kind of education in the construction of identity do they receive? In short, what both the eighteenth century and our current fin de siecle examples ask is: what is at stake in publicly disguising one's identity, and how was this negotiated in the eighteenth century versus, or similarly to, today? To address these questions, we need to consider aspects of disguise and see how both systems negotiate these aspects
What is the role of gender in contrasting eighteenth centuröy masquerade and late twentieth century disguise on the internet? Focusing on eighteenth century literary texts, critics Terry Castle and Catherine Craft-Fairchild examine the freedoms masquerade does or does not permit to female characters, with the former author finding more freedoms than the latter. Specifically, while Castle says that masquerade permits female characters (as well as actual British women who attended London masquerade balls)a wider range of behavior stemming from the reduced accountability that their costumes allow, Craft-Fairchild, taking a purely literary approach in her 1993 book Masquerade and Gender, finds that masquerade is more likely to turn women into fetishized spectacles, passive objects of the male gaze.
Dryden's Marriage a la Mode, the first example of masquerade appearing in British Literature, bears similarities to gender-transgressing Shakespearian plays such as As You Like It, where Rosalind dressed as a boy explores whether, and then how deeply, Orlando loves her. The events of Act IV of Marriage a la Mode are more appropriately termed masquerade, however, because the two female characters, Doralice and Melantha don boys' garb in order to promote sexual exchanges, a goal consistent with those of Restoration Comedies. In masquerading as boys, Doralice and Melantha have arranged to meet their respective would-be lovers; Rhodophil, Melantha's lover, has been married to Doralice for three years, and Dorothea's lover, Palamede, is Rhodophil's best friend and Melantha's betrothed. Although the masquerades are quickly discovered, this scene shows the male lovers to be fools because they fail to recognize their lovers in disguise; and gives the women agency to openly express and act upon their sexual desires in ways that they are otherwise prohibited from engaging in earlier in the play. For example, the play opens with Doralice's song in praise of adultery, which is extremely frank yet cannot qualify as a speech-act because she presents herself as a spectacle, a potential passive recipient of another man's love, without taking steps to actively advance her sex life. Melantha similarly expresses an interest in Rhodophil but performs no actions toward advancing it. The boys' disguises they wear, therefore, thrust them into the arena of action.
The disguises also allow them to share, for a short time, the male privilege of openly desiring, and finding renewed attraction in their own current or would-be spouses. In Plots and Counterplots, Richard Braverman finds two examples of triangular constructs of desire in the play. Drawing on Rene Girard's theory of mimetic desire (which Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick would later use as the basis of her theory of the homosocial triangle), Braverman finds triangles that overlap, where Rhodophil comes to desire his wife again because Palamede wants her, and Palamede learns to desire Melantha because of Rhodophil's feelings for her. This construct of two men actively exchanging one passive woman functions throughout the play, except in the masquerade scene, where both Doralice and Melantha actively pursue their lovers, rendering the men passive, even witless. The scene in fact demonstrates masquerade's great potential for comedy when Palamede, the very man Doralice has dressed up to benefit, fails to recognize her.
In many ways, then, masquerade in Marriage a la Mode attests to Castle's vision of the trope as especially liberating for women, despite her own conception of masquerade in this play as too high, not popular enough (112). Castle's claim that masquerade is a "meditation on human possibility" suggests greater possibilities for women. For those who possess fewer possibilities within the bounded mundaneity of their lives, masquerade offers a wider net of freedom, a greater range of freeing behaviors, than for those whose libertine behavior was usually tolerated on a daily basis.
It is no accident that the computer and certain software programs provide the entrance to avenues of disguise on the web. In her book Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, Sherry Turkle finds the name of the operating system "Windows" an apt metaphor for the many components of the self that one can explore through the internet (14). "Windows," the IBM-compatible operating system that Macintosh enthusiasts such as myself point out is modeled on the Mac theory of computer user-friendliness, presents its user with an outline or iconic selection of programs and files. The choices are many, and opening a file permits the user to delve deeper into that aspect of work or interest. Windows, and the Mac OS, also permit more than one file to remain open at the same time, creating the possibility, if the computer has enough memory, of sampling from and combining different files, or simply of being, virtually, in two or more places at once. Functions like "background printing" promote increased productivity, as two tasks can be accomplished at once. In advanced multitasking, Windows and the Mac OS permit users to function in different ways using one interface, playing a game while printing a document, for example.
On the internet, the windows multiply at a faster rate since one web site may contain dozens of links. Like the computer files only more so, web sites permit the user to pursue different aspects of the self through paths provided by links, search engines, web rings, and other means of URL referrals. One can pursue personal hobbies and interests--Turkle's idea of the many components of the self, which we might call "bookmarks" (or "favorites," depending on one's browser of choice)--and can also create new selves, coexisting on-line creations. One can "surf" between posing as a character named "Elvira" in a chatroom, "glowgirl" in an on-line dating service, and one's own name when reading about a personal interest.
Hypertext fiction is a good example of this dynamic in a contained form. While M.D. Coverley's example of hypertext fiction, Fibonacci's Daughter has a front page, like a browser, from there it presents multiple ways of traveling through the story. Three of its main themes are gambling, mathematics, and a murder mystery, so the reader theoretically begins with whichever of those avenues appears most interesting...
Both also pose dangers to the masquerader that the disguise will be taken too seriously, with disastrous results. This issue combines the issues that Castle and Craft-Fairchild seem to divide, those of agency and spectacle. Despite how much agency a masquerade may lend its wearer, danger arrives when the masquerade prompts others to act, often in an equally out-of-body sense. Agency may disappear if spectacle prompts others to act, sometimes in a retaliatory fashion. In Fantomina this takes the form of a rape when Fantomina does not fully commit to her new persona, a prostitute. In the story, the upper-class Fantomina lusts for a man, "Beauplaisir" from her remote perch in the theater. Realizing that she would have access to him if she disguises herself as a prostitute and enters the "pit" where prostitutes meet clients, Fantomina ÿat first embraces her new role as a way to defer Beauplaisir, saying she cannot meet with him that night because she has contracted with another client. When she cannot maintain the facade the next night, however, and must confess the truth of her virginity, Beauplaisir refuses to relinquish his hold on the masquerade and rapes her, then pays her for sex, making the new identity "real". She is insulted by his payment but realizes that refusing it would make him question her disguise, so she takes advantage of his ignorance and continues to function as a prostitute for three months.
The recent arrest of Disney executive Patrick J. Naughton also suggests the potential for danger in disguising one's identity on-line. (LA Times, 12/6/99) Posing as a 13-year-old girl in a chatroom centered around men's sexual fetishes about underage females, Naughton was arrested at the Santa Monica pier where he had gone to meet his correspondent, an FBI agent himself disguised as a young paramour. Not only does this example suggest that the internet will continue to provide a forum for law agents to lawfully disguise their own identities in order to catch those who adopt unlawful disguises, but it points to an unusual method of defense that acknowledges the internet's widespread potential for self-camoflauge. Naughton's lawyers claim that his innocence rests on the Internet functioning as a "massive masquerade ball" where people habitually lie about everything. His new persona, then, is in keeping with the fantastic quality of the internet, and is therefore "legal". This is taking Turkle's finding that many people go online to purposely represent themselves deceptively, and drawing the erroneous conclusion that therefore, the internet is an institution of and for deception. This is analogous to the difference between eighteenth century literary representations of characters in masquerade, whether attending masquerade balls (like Tom Jones) or disguising themselves (like Fantomina); and the actual London balls themselves . Like the fictional example of Fantomina, then, Naughton has run the risk of creating a persona that has been taken too seriously by others--but because his gender and age accord him power, his masquerading is too threatening to be celebrated, as Fantomina's is by several feminist critics.
Varied as they are, the above examples pose another question: must masquerade reach an end point where the disguise is removed? Does Fantomina have to unveil herself to Beauplaisir, or does someone have to fly across the country to meet the unknown correspondent, in order for the masquerade to be complete? "Complete" is a loaded word, because it suggests that this potential end point, the union of the fabricated and the essential selves, produces a whole Ï being. That this is not the case can be testified to by several travelers who have arranged to meet their mysterious strangers, only to realize that the experience still resembles a blind date. Added to the blind date is, I am wagering, some lurking knowledge of the person that may now seem disconnected and confusing. Was the person telling the truth about her past, his hobbies, or was the person acting the part of the invented character? Castle writes that the result of masquerade is a "material devaluation of unitary notions of the self" (4). It would seem that an extension of this concept into the end point of masquerade would result in further fragmentation of the self. Whom are you facing? What components belong to the essential person, the masquerading figure, or both? From this disunified background, can there be a chance for future growth with another person, as seems to be the aspiration of many on-line masqueraders?
