In this essay I will discuss why Elizabeth Howe states in, The First English Actresses: Women and drama 1660" 1700, that the first English actresses were used as sexual objects and what means through the chapter in which he explores the different ways in which "the actress's sexuality was exploited by the playwrights who wrote for her." "? Get an original essay During the 18th century, women's roles in life were primarily domestic, and in theater, female characters were "assigned to dependent boys from an inferior "adult male" family. For women, "their place was in the house, even if the house belonged to someone else." Only 100,000 women out of 900,000 worked on some farms and factories and it was only in 1600, soon after the Restoration of King Charles II, that "Charles II issued a royal warrant that only women should play female roles", as she believed that men dressing up as women were immoral. It is possible that women occasionally performed mystery plays for public spectacles as early as the 15th century, however no women were employed in commercial theater before the Restoration. "The exact date of the actress's debut is not known, but is usually assumed to be 8 December 1660, when a woman is known to have played Desdemona in a King's Company production of Othello by Thomas Killigrew." Killigrew's business patent allowed women to appear on stage to show "harmless and instructive representations of human life" and the first English actresses came from diverse backgrounds as the profession required women to be able to read, memorize verse, sing and dance. At the beginning of her chapter, Howe says she is not surprised that the first role played by a woman in the play was the character of Desdemona. She describes how the character of Desdemona "is a part well suited to an actress's seductive emphasis on femininity: she is gentle, passive and vulnerable, is suspected of being a whore and is ultimately the victim of horrific violence in bedroom". What Howe means when he says this is that at that moment the audience was excited, curious and eager to see women perform with the sensuality they brought to the stage. This is because the objectification of women as sexual commodities inspired the evolution during the period of writing plays to make actresses seen as sexual props on stage instead of being seen as equal to their male peers. Howe then explains how "actresses were often required to do nothing more than pose, like paintings or statues, to be looked at and desired by the play's male characters and, presumably, male spectators" and then gives an example of "couch scenes ". ' which were seen in comedies throughout the period. She explains that "female characters were sent to lie at a distance, asleep on a sofa, bed or grassy bank where, helplessly attractive and probably seductive and disabled, their beauty involuntarily aroused a fiery passion in the hero or villain who came across it." The reason Howe explains this is because it was a common motif born out of the introduction of women on stage to use "couch scenes" in which an attractive actress was placed sleeping center stage on a bed or couch in a state in which the actress was partially undressed. According to Fraser, "a young woman was sometimes forced to sacrifice her virtue to obtain a coveted place at the theater." This leads to the idea of ​​rape which was usually often seen in "couch scenes". Furthermore, “male culture has transformed thewomen's bodies into objects of male desire, converting them into sites of beauty and sexuality for men to gaze upon". Since the sofa scenes involved partially undressed women being discovered by the male protagonist, the first women on the English professional scene were also exploited through trouser roles.and rape scenes as well as the sofa scene.Howe states how "the most striking manifestation of sexual exploitation in the play is its depiction of rape because the rape scenes were an excuse to remove the clothes". feminine, as he states Howe: "Rape quickly proved to be the most effective means of exposing naked female flesh." During the late 17th century, female characters were exploited to please the public. According to Case, "women appear as an exploited class." inside an exploited class"; rape became more explicit as it became more expected. Anne Bracegirdle was an English actress "who specialized in stage rape". The practice of rape objectifies women as sexual objects. Prostitution was especially common in London, because if you were fired without any reference your options would be limited. There were almost no work rights for women. “An employer might fire a servant for the slightest cause: rudeness, dishonesty, suspected theft, or even inconvenience.” According to White, "it is probably safe to assume that prostitution was a large source of income for young women in London." This is because when actresses first appeared on stage, they were paid poorly. “A young actress would receive 10 to 15 pennies a week and would be expected to work for free at the beginning of her career” (Fraser, 2002, p. 518). Some actresses garnered praise for their talent and the most famous of these actresses was Nell Gwyn. When the theaters closed, there were no places for Gwyn's talents that would allow her to turn to prostitution. The idea of ​​prostitution and being a whore is mentioned earlier at the beginning of the chapter where Howe mentions a quote from Harold Weber that says, "In practical terms, the freedom women have gained to play themselves on stage it was to a large extent the freedom to play the role of a whore." whore. The reason Howe used this quote is because of actresses like Nell Gwyn. Between 1660 and 1700, a quarter of the plays staged in that period included women playing trouser roles. “It has been calculated that of some 375 plays produced on the public stage in London, including modifications of pre-Restoration plays, eighty-nine¦ contained one or more roles for actresses in male dress.” According to Howe, "breeches roles proved enormously popular with audiences." Howe says this because female actresses playing male characters have made audiences very erotic about seeing female bodies through tight male costumes. Howe talks about this and how it is an easy way to entertain the audience through the state of undress "common to both tragedy and comedy". A way of dressing could be equally erotic... there was no doubt that the actress was really impersonating a man.' Howe then says, "the reveal of a masked woman's true sex provided a useful opportunity to showcase an actress' physique." This gave an ironic twist to the entry of women. Instead of being a positive development, it only served to objectify the genre. Nell Gwyn usually played trouser roles by parading around the stage showing off her legs. According to Kemp, “breeches disrupt gender hierarchies by allowing women to act in masculine ways,” however, Dusinberre..