![]() ![]() Eliza, who has, she tells us, "never been the type to try and grab the spotlight," is the conventionally feminine one. Angelica, who stands center stage as she raps, "I’ve been reading Common Sense by Thomas Paine / So men say that I’m intense or I’m insane," is the rebellious one. Angelica and Eliza fall neatly into the old conventional/rebellious dichotomy. The trap of the two-woman love triangle is not one that Hamilton entirely avoids. Hamilton avoids the trap of good woman versus bad woman - almost Surely no man has ever been asked whether he's a Freddy or a Henry, but you can take a BuzzFeed quiz to determine whether you’re an Eponine or a Cosette. But the key difference between two-man love triangles and two-woman love triangles is that Freddy and Henry are not being made to stand in for all men. There are musical love triangles with two men in them, of course, like My Fair Lady, where Eliza Doolittle chooses between Henry Higgins and Freddy. It suggests there are two ways to be a woman, one of which is acceptable and one of which is despicable. The problem with this narrative structure is that it asks the audience to sort all women into two types and then pick one of those types to hate: This kind of woman is okay, but not this kind. Either one of them might be too much of a bitch. The conventionally feminine one is too dull or too passive or too boring, maybe, or the rebellious one is too slutty or too shrill or too angry. Sometimes a musical tips the scales by giving the good woman the good song - everyone loves Eponine and her soulful "On My Own," but it takes a rare soul to fall in love with Cosette after her forgettable "In My Life." The subtext is clear: One of these women is good, and the other is bad. Sometimes the bad woman turns out to be secretly cold, like the Baroness with her villainous plan to send the von Trapp children to boarding school ("Baroness Machiavelli!" another character exclaims). Jekyll and Hyde’s Emma is chaste and pure, while Lucy is a prostitute who tells her customers to "bring on the men."Īnd traditionally, musicals are not shy or subtle about telling their audiences which of the two women is worth rooting for. In the film version of The Sound of Music, the immaculately coiffed Baroness watches in horror as Maria exuberantly overturns a rowboat in her homemade dress. In Les Misérables, Cosette is obedient and passive, while Eponine brawls with her father in the streets. ![]() Traditionally in musical theater, when two women are points in a love triangle, one of them is sweetly, traditionally feminine and the other rebels moderately and attractively against gender roles. The classic love triangle formula gives us one good woman and one bad woman The Schuyler sisters follow that love triangle formula closely, right up until they don’t. Part of the reason for this confusion - is the musical making a feminist statement? Being horrifically regressive? Are the Schuyler sisters boring? Are they fascinating? - is that their story arc has the structure of a very old and not very feminist musical theater trope: the two-woman love triangle in which one woman is good and the other is bad. Two Gay Matts) opine that "this show is all about the bitches." New York magazine insists that the show’s treatment of its women "invites questions." The New York Times says, "We love, but love, the assertive revolutionary women." Elsewhere in the New Yorker, Hilton Als writes that the Schuyler sisters are the weakest part of the show, calling them "plot points in silk," while YouTube critics Matt Steele and Matt Palmer (a.k.a. In the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan is happy to announce that the Schuyler sisters are "not politically correct" because they are not "forced to adopt the usual modern scattershot bitterness at their plight." In a New Yorker article on the women of Hamilton, Michael Shulman approvingly calls the Schuyler sisters "almost" feminist. No one can quite decide what Hamilton is doing with the Schuyler sisters. ![]() And at the play’s conclusion, a somber Aaron Burr sings, "They say Angelica and Eliza were both at his side when he died." Throughout the rest of the show the Schuyler sisters weave in and out of Hamilton’s life, reminding him of the world that exists outside of the policy he’s writing. The sisters meet young Hamilton early in Act I and are both instantly smitten, but perceptive, quick-thinking Angelica decides to encourage Hamilton to pursue sweet, kind Eliza rather than go after him herself. Related The 2016 Grammys let everyone watch (part of) Hamilton for free ![]()
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