Glastonbury & Love in a Maze
Music festivals & eighteenth-century erotica. Yes there's a connection, bear with me
I’ve been a bit sad lately; also very happy, because that’s what parenting a toddler is like. Are you full of grief or exhausted by joy? Do you, maybe, just need more sleep?
But hey! Glastonbury is on the telly!
I love festivals. I’m a bit surprised when anyone says they don’t like them (you don’t like happiness?) Yes they’re expensive, like everything else right now, but at least this one is streamed to our tv. One of my friends sets up tents in her sitting room for the experience.
My Glastonbury highlights so far are:
PJ Harvey, in what I’m calling her witch era. So powerful. I’ll admit to loving her earlier material a bit more than her most recent work, which makes me feel like a boring old man, but lately it feels like she holds her voice in a more neutral-sounding, meditative zone, whereas in To Bring You My Love she used her full, incredible expressive range. She closed her set with ‘To Bring You My Love’. Yesss.
AURORA: “This is one of your pixie people,” my husband said, and Aurora looks undeniably like an elf. At first I felt she was going to be wafty and ethereal, then she said to the audience (in delicate tones) “Oh fuck me, this is hard. I feel like I’m doing a shit in front of you,” and I paid attention. Her set became a joyous, cathartic experience. I love her.
Camila Cabello: Not my usual genre (needs more guitars) but anyone who starts her set dressed up as a wolf is someone I will watch. Much playing around with sexy pop tropes in her set. At one point her dancers smeared ice lollies on her, which stressed me out (just eat them, they’re melting) and later on she fucked a roundabout, which seems like it really shouldn’t be possible. Strong voice, strong stage presence.
That’s all I’ve managed to see so far. If you watched, send recommendations!
Watching Camila Cabello’s set reminded me, unexpectedly, of a much older performance: a novella by Eliza Haywood called Fantomina (1724). It is quite raunchy for a female-authored text of its era: Fantomina is a genteel lady, who gets an intense crush on a nobleman named Beauplaisir, and sets out to seduce him.
There’s a troubling lack of consent in Fantomina and Beauplaisir’s first encounter. We could see this novella as a revenge fantasy, in which Fantomina tries to regain power by any means at her disposal. She does not approach Beauplaisir as herself, but dressed up as a sex worker, a fantasy she’s designed to appeal to him (is his consent, too, being undermined here?). We could also argue that in Haywood’s time, women were not supposed to express sexual desire at all, especially outside of marriage, making Fantomina’s wishes more difficult to judge than they would be otherwise. She’s not supposed to voice her feelings, even to herself. How are we supposed to know what they are? It is complex.
In any case, Beauplaisir has a tendency to bed women, become bored, then leave them. Fantomina adopts various disguises in order to keep his interest. First she disguises herself as a sex worker; next as a servant girl; then as a widow:
she was so admirably skill'd in the Art of feigning, that she had the Power of putting on almost what Face she pleas'd, and knew so exactly how to form her Behaviour to the Character she represented, that all the Comedians at both Playhouses are infinitely short of her Performances: She could vary her very Glances, tune her Voice to Accents the most different imaginable from those in which she spoke when she appear'd herself.
Each version of Fantomina charms Beauplaisir into bed, then he leaves her, necessitating a new disguise. He’s not going to change, and, improbably, he never recognises Fantomina under her various masks.
Eventually, she becomes pregnant. She desperately hides the pregnancy until ‘she was seiz'd with those Pangs, which none in her Condition are exempt from’:
She could not conceal the sudden Rack which all at once invaded her; or had her Tongue been mute, her wildly rolling Eyes, the Distortion of her Features, and the Convulsions which shook her whole Frame, in spite of her, would have reveal'd she labour'd under some terrible Shock of Nature.
All disguises are are now over. It’s impossible to pretend any more. Beauplausir is startled by the labouring body of a woman he’s been close to so many times; he doesn’t want to know about this.
Much, of course, differs between Haywood’s time and ours, but some aspects of the novella feel very familiar. Disguise is still an expected part of female sexuality. Female popstars go through multiple costume changes and reveals on stage; they keep metamorphosing to hold our attention. Male stars can do this, can be visually spectacular and chameleon-like - but they will also rock up in jeans and a t-shirt. They don’t keep changing, necessarily.
I enjoyed Camila Cabello’s set partly because she leaned into the ridiculousness of the whole performance. Sometimes, sexuality is very silly. Being literally smeared in ice lollies or appearing on stage as a twerking wolf makes this very evident.
It’s good, isn’t it, when we can be ourselves?
This is so interesting… glad I stumbled upon it! Thank you
Wow, that IS raunchy for a lady writer in 1725. (Just looked up the date.) Did not know about Eliza Haywood. Fascinating.
Shared your anxiety about Camila Cabello’s ice lolly antics, watching Glastonbury. Quick, they‘ll melt!