'Comic venus:' Women and comedy in American silent film

This dissertation explores a largely forgotten area of American film history, the contributions made by female comedians in American silent film. This project is primarily a recuperative history of the impact and importance of these comediennes, who were extremely popular during the silent era but have almost entirely faded from the popular imagination. In this dissertation, I argue that silent comediennes played an important role in a societal reconceptualization of femininity and gender roles in the first decades of the 20th century, using comedy to provide audiences with an alternative to other, more restrictive and repressive models of femininity circulating in American society. At a time when popular conceptions of femininity were rapidly changing, silent comediennes were both reflections of and central figures in the creation of new, modern femininities, as they used comedy's inherent liminality and transgressiveness in an attempt to reinterpret and redefine femininity on their own terms. In this work I focus on four distinct areas in which silent comediennes specifically contradicted and challenged conceptions of ideal femininity -- the idea that a proper woman should be refined, beautiful, chaste, and domestic.;In my dissertation I interrogate some of the complex and often contradictory popular discourses surrounding silent-era comediennes, from the idea that femininity and a sense of humor were mutually exclusive qualities to the belief that comedy was a decidedly lowbrow genre, unfit for women, and I examine the ways that various social and cultural tensions inform comediennes' performances. The impact of these comediennes continues to be felt today, and a primary goal of this project is not only to gain a better understanding of women's experience in the early 20th century, but also to better understand and appreciate the unruly and boundary breaking women who have followed, as Mabel Normand, Louise Fazenda and Clara Bow helped to pave the way for later comediennes, from Carole Lombard and Lucille Ball to Carol Burnett, Whoopi Goldberg and Tina Fey.