Virginie Ancelot’s Comedy for Women

Abstract

From 1824 to 1875 Virginie Ancelot (1792–1875) hosted one of Paris’s most influential literary salons. From the late 1820s through the 1840s Ancelot produced an impressive corpus of plays, 21 of which were staged at Paris’s premier theaters, making her the most prolific woman dramatist of her time. Her influence on the Paris theater industry extended beyond her contributions as a writer in that from 1842 to 1846, in collaboration with her husband, she managed the Théâtre du Vaudeville. As was the case with many popular forms of theater of the day, Ancelot’s plays—comédies, comédies mêlées de chant, and drames—have been dismissed or forgotten altogether, the assumption being that these works, which aimed at public diversion and lucre, lacked the substance and style worthy of critical attention and further study. Such oversight ignores Ancelot’s ability not only to create cleverly structured plays, engaging characters, and theatrical art, but also to use humor to bring to light the plight of the everyday women who comprised much of her audience. Aware that the untold stories of bourgeois women were virtually absent from the Parisian stage, Ancelot adapted their experiences as the basis for her comedies.