Gender Equality and the Role of Women Theatre Professionals in Late Seventeenth- and Early Eighteenth-Century France

This chapter will examine the theatre as one of the few areas where women were able to enjoy full professional equality with men throughout the greater part of the seventeenth century. Inevitably, most commentators on this period have concentrated on the actress on stage. The focus of this chapter, however, is on the contribution women made to the “theatre industry” more generally—as actresses, of course, but also as administrators, box office employees, ushers and in the myriad other roles required for the operation of the theatrical enterprise. Many of these women occupied positions of great (and frequently financial) responsibility over decades; evidence of the respect in which they were held is discernible in account books and other documents. A number of actresses took on such functions following their retirement from the stage, no doubt as a means of supplementing the pension they received from the troupe, and access to them was so fiercely contested that they had to be allocated by ballot. The conclusion of the chapter, therefore, will examine a consideration of the ways in which theatrical troupes “looked after their own,” whether male or female, both once they had ceased to perform and beyond, considering in particular the options open to elderly actresses