Victorian Burlesque History

London’s Victorian burlesque featured in the 1830s and 40s blended the use of humor and the female body to entertain their audiences. It showed cladly dressed women dancing to songs rewritten with a comedic twist while revealing what was underneath their clothes and flirted with the audience. ‘it involved transgressive comedy and songs, but the primary attraction of burlesque was sex . . in the form of ribald humor and immodestly dressed women.’ (Kenrick, n.d.). Burlesque performers sort to pick holes in the way society saw life, to do this they looked at high class arts such as opera and plays and recreated parts of them adding a witty humour to make fun of the upper class. ‘Historically, traditional burlesque engaged in the practice of striptease but used humour, through its application of parody, satire, imitation, and exaggeration, as a technique to critique elements of …show more content…
‘Any subject was fair game for the comedic barbs of burlesque performers like Thompson, and they often took sharp aim at social conventions, especially questioning accepted ideas of the proper place of women’. (find out how to cite the beginnings of burlesque) Though they have been known to look at many different aspect of life it is the restrictions placed on members of society based on their gender that Thompson and her troupe would really focus on. By bring a new form of sexual identity to their performances in the way of ‘gender blending’ (nally, 2009) Thompson would really push the boundaries on the natural and unnatural aspects of gender roles. ‘Lydia.. Thompson’s sexual and gender identity not only questioned how women were ranked and restricted in society but also tangentially questioned the ‘naturalization’ of white bourgeois power with its ‘legitimate’ access to the ‘perks’ of power, money and status’(Wilson, 2008,