Anna Cora Mowatt and the Performance of Mesmerism
A mid-nineteenth century public reader, actress, playwright, and author, Anna Cora Mowatt, has been deemed the first “lady elocutionist” because she established a career as a public reader without having previously been an actress. Anna Cora Mowatt ended her public career as a public reader due to a deliberating respiratory disease. In her search for comfort and cure, Anna began a treatment regimen called “mesmerism.” Mowatt provided a detailed description of her experience with mesmerism in her autobiography. Within Anna’s description of her experience of mesmerism, she claims to have unwittingly portrayed an alternate persona which called herself “the Gypsy.” According to Taylor (2009) who authored The Lady Actress, Anna’s Gypsy character served as a way in which she could break the Victorian social constraints and strict rules that smothered women. When Anna would undergo mesmerism, she could break away from the repressive behavioral norms imposed upon upper-class American women without gaining the negative social stigma that would normally be placed upon a person who behaved they way she did. Of course, only a few of Anna’s closest friends were privileged enough to observe her private performance in which “The Gypsy” wrote poems, told fantastic stories, and who regularly engaged in debates concerning philosophy and religion, which would have been extremely unacceptable for a woman in the Victorian era.
Continue reading
