The Funambulists: Balancing Propriety and Deviance in the Portrayal of American Circus Performers, 1870s-1940s

Open Access
- Author:
- Tetuan, Hannah
- Area of Honors:
- History
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Arts
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Amy S Greenberg, Thesis Supervisor
Cathleen Denise Cahill, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- history
american history
social history
art history
gender studies
women's studies
circus
circus history
p. t. barnum - Abstract:
- This thesis examines how circus performers were portrayed during the golden age of the American circus, which encompassed roughly the last third of the nineteenth and first third of the twentieth centuries. It particularly focuses on those who belonged to marginalized groups in wider society—women, people of color, and those with disabilities and otherwise atypical bodies. I argue that these people were presented in a way that necessarily balanced propriety and deviance so as to allow audience members to indulge in “improper” fascinations while maintaining outward appearances of respectability. I do this by analyzing advertisements put out by circuses (mainly posters) and other non-circus affiliated publications (like newspaper articles), as well as additional information from a number of expert secondary works. The area of circus history is small and gradually emerging, but it merits scholarly attention. The circus was a major way that people experienced events and concepts beyond their local communities, and as such, it greatly influenced popular culture and helped shape how people viewed the world at large. It also provided a space for Americans to judge all of these new ideas as circuses stretched the standards of what was acceptable. The circus as an institution was simultaneously progressive and restrictive; it challenged and perpetuated social standards. The way in which the circus portrayed their diverse performers, therefore, reveals quite a bit about the corresponding changes in social attitudes during the time period, and about how much Americans were willing to accept—or reject—people who were vastly different from “normal.”