During the French Revolution in 1789, it must have been almost impossible for a writer in Britain not to engage with politics. Any examination of literature of this time shows that the French Revolution influenced novelists, poets, diarists, painters, and generally artists of any kind. At first glance, however, female playwrights appeared reluctant to engage with the French Revolution in particular. Perhaps because it was such a politically and socially divisive event, they avoided commenting in detail or taking a side. None of the female-authored plays staged during that time deal with the Revolution as a main subject.
The only play that is unequivocally about the French Revolution is Inchbald’s The Massacre (1792). It was, however, never staged or even published during her lifetime. While the massacre of the title supposedly refers to the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre in France in 1572, it is very obvious to the reader that Inchbald is actually writing about the September massacres of 1792. The timing and setting of the play, as well as the fact that the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre is hardly ever mentioned, heavily imply that the story is really about contemporary events in France. The September massacres, lasting from September 2 to September 6 1792, were a period of unprecedented violence during the French Revolution. Encouraged by rumours of a counter-revolutionary plot, mobs attacked prisons in Paris, and executed prisoners, often finding them guilty of treason in impromptu courts. By the end of the massacres, over a thousand people had become victims of this violence. It was one of the events that contributed majorly to the opposition against the Revolution in other countries, especially in Britain.
It appears that Inchbald never intended this play for the stage, but wrote it as a closet drama. It has only three acts, making it easier for people to read through at home, there is very little action and a great deal of dialogue, which would not make it ideal for a theatrical production. There are only two female roles, and one of them is practically non-speaking. Given how many roles Inchbald usually wrote for actresses, suddenly depriving them of good parts in this play is out of character. But for a closet play this character division makes more sense – Inchbald would not be concerned about writing roles for her colleagues in a play that was never going to reach the stage, and female readers at home would find it easier to read through the play with family members or a friend. The non-public nature of The Massacre accounts for how much it differs from Inchbald’s other works. It is also, of course, a tragedy, and therefore stands out from the comedies which were her more usual genre.
The Massacre is a departure for Inchbald not only in its form, but also in its tone and characterisation. She very rarely writes about anything in an entirely serious tone, and even serious subjects in other plays are frequently treated with a dry, black humour. But in this instance the whole play is entirely serious. Clearly she perceived it as so important that she could not soften or mitigate its impact in any way. In her Advertisement for The Massacre, Inchbald quotes a statement by Horace Walpole about one of his own plays:
‘The subject is so horrid, that I thought it would shock, rather than give satisfaction, to an audience. Still I found it so truly tragic in the essential springs of terror and pity, that I could not resist the impulse of adapting it to the scene, though it never could be practicable to produce it there’.[1]
Inchbald stresses how applicable this quote is to her own work, and states her belief that it will explain why The Massacre has not been performed. Walpole’s quote also serves as a kind of warning – if the reader was expecting one of Inchbald’s usual comedies, this was far from being one.
And the play itself certainly deserves this warning. The play starts with Madame Tricastin fearing that her husband has been killed on a visit to Paris, and this fear accompanies her throughout the rest of the play, until, tragically, he actually survives and she dies instead. This constant threat of violence very effectively captures the atmosphere during the September massacres, in which events must have seemed unpredictable and deaths occurred frequently. No doubt it also reflected the mood in Britain, where the volatile situation in Europe caused concern and uncertainty. The threat of mob violence was an especially present one for someone as closely associated with the theatre as Inchbald, since theatre audiences had a history of becoming violent to express their displeasure. Both Drury Lane and Covent Garden had seen riots in 1744 and 1763 respectively, and there were to be more theatre riots at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Inchbald’s representation reflects these anxieties, at a time when they were fuelled by the violence of the French Revolution, and by events such as the Priestley Riots (1791) which brought the fear of hostile crowds home to England.[2]
From the list of characters, it may appear that The Massacre is a very male-centred play, and in comparison with Inchbald’s other works it certainly is. Madame Tricastin is the only female character with any significant dialogue and stage time. However, she plays a very important role. Madame Tricastin is a constant reminder of how one person’s actions affect others. She does this first by telling Tricastin they should leave the country rather than try to fight; when he objects, she reminds him that he has a family who would be devastated if he died in the fighting. She does it again in the second Act, preventing Tricastin from killing himself in despair at being surrounded (I, 1, and II, 1, respectively). In the last Act, Madame Tricastin is herself killed by the mob; the soldiers who witness this are so affected by her death that they do not engage in combat but instead guard her corpse from being mistreated. She becomes a powerful visual symbol of the consequences of violence. The shock of seeing her dead body prompts the character Glandeve to reaffirm the need for reason and humanity, and his final speech almost reads like her funeral service:
‘the good (of all parties) will conspire to extirpate such monsters from the earth. It is not party principles which cause this devastation; ’tis want of sense — ’tis guilt — for the first precept in our Christian laws is charity — the next obligation — to extend that charity EVEN TO OUR ENEMIES.’ (III, 2)
Madame Tricastin’s fate helps the male characters and the audience to determine what is morally right. There is no denying that this representation casts women in a much more passive role, and especially in the case of Madame Tricastin recalls the way Burke wrote about Marie Antoinette – as a virtuous, feminine mother figure who is the victim of the uncivilised mob.[3] Perhaps Inchbald felt that the form of the tragedy called for such a female character. It is after all very difficult to imagine one of her usual witty heroines in Madame Tricastin’s situation. Their sarcasm, wit, skilful manipulation of social settings, and knowledge of gender expectations would be of no use to them here.
There is also a suggestion that Madame Tricastin has been made more helpless than she already is by her society’s gender expectations. When her husband Eusèbe decides that flight is impossible and that they should try and fight their attackers, his friend suggests that Madame Tricastin should have a weapon as well:
‘Menancourt: Give her an instrument of death to defend herself — our female enemies use them to our cost.
Eusebe: No, by Heaven! so sacred do I hold the delicacy of her sex, that could she with a breath lay all our enemies dead, I would not have her feminine virtues violated by the act.’ (II, 1)
His refusal to even consider that his wife should be able to defend herself means that once she is separated from him, she has no way to fight back. Clearly women are not unable to use weapons, as Menancourt specifically mentions other women who do just that. Her ‘delicacy’ and ‘feminine virtues’ are of no help at all to her, since they cannot protect her. Inchbald is suggesting that trying to be too delicate and self-sacrificial, and caring too much about what other people define as virtuous, is harmful to women. However, Madame Tricastin really is in a position where there is no good way out for her. Complying with her husband’s wish that she should be delicate and feminine means she is helpless. But if she had decided to ignore him and fight back, she would have lost her reputation, and with it, her femininity. Faced with the decision between her life and her virtue, she prefers to die, and that gives us a powerful insight into the importance late eighteenth-century society placed on female virtue.
The Massacre is an interesting development in Inchbald’s writing career. Not only was she writing in a genre she had not attempted before, but she also engages with contemporary politics in a new way. This is not a consequence of either her changing personal opinions or a move towards becoming a writer of tragedies. After The Massacre, Inchbald returned to writing the comedies she was known for, producing Every One Has His Fault and Wives as they Were, which feature some of her most cynical, cutting humour. If it is not therefore the case that she wanted to change her genre of choice or her portrayal of women, it must be that the subject matter simply called for a different approach.
Notes:
[1] Elizabeth Inchbald, The Massacre, in Memoirs of Mrs. Inchbald, Including her Familiar Correspondence with the Most Distinguished Persons of her Time, ed. by James Boaden (London: Bentley, 1833), p. 357.
[2] See Marilyn Butler, Romantics, Rebels and Reactionaries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 47.
[3] Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (London: Dodsley, 1790), p. 78.
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