Rose Blossom Speaks

Whatever shall I do? My sister Lily has been kidnapped, and now the townsfolk are threatening to hang Ned Harris, my true love! If only I could save Ned, so that he may restore Lily to me! ¹

In West of Everything, Jane Tompkins (1992) observes the role of women in westerns. She notes that women are often absent (p. 9), and when they are present, they are generally portrayed as loquacious, weak, and helpless (pp. 60-61). Tompkins concludes that women in westerns represent a repressed, sentimental Victorian culture, from which westerns seek to break free.

Westerns come in many forms. Tompkins’ book reflects on western novels, television shows, and films. Westerns also exist on the stage, often in the form of musicals like Annie Get Your Gun and Calamity Jane, as well as old-fashioned melodramas like Deadwood Dick. This essay examines the role of one of the heroines in the melodrama Deadwood Dick through my own autoethnographic writing while performing the role of Rose Blossom in a community theatre production of the show. Throughout rehearsals and performances, ² I kept a journal of my thoughts regarding the character. This journal allowed me to reflect on Rose and the situations she faced, as well as develop the character so that I could embody her to the best of my ability. In this essay, I observe that the audience plays a major role in the interpretation of the performance, thus allowing for the western melodrama to evolve and adapt to the twenty-first century.

Deadwood Dick tells the story of two heroes, handsome but inept Ned Harris and his partner, the skillful but rough-and-tumble Wild Bill Hickok, who set out to save two young heroines, the blind and beautiful Lily Blossom and her lovely and spirited sister Rose, from the evil plot of the villain, Black’n Red. When Rose is kidnapped, leaving Lily “lost” (Taggart, 1981, p. 19) and “helpless” (p. 64), Ned and Bill set off to find her, while trying to protect Lily from Black’n Red, who knows Lily holds the key to finding a long lost gold mine. Aiding and interfering with the heroes’ task are a host of other characters, including Chet Pussy, a scheming bartender and assistant villain, and Pong Ping, a kind-hearted Chinese immigrant who works as a cook at the Mantrap Saloon. When Rose and Lily are finally reunited they are held hostage by Black’n Red, who threatens to kill them.

Melodramas like Deadwood Dick are a specific type of theatrical work, and therefore represent westerns in a specific way. Curry (2005) notes that the western genre is one of melodrama’s many descendents. Melodramas are characterized by their emphasis on one-dimensional, “simplistic characters” (Toll, 1976, p. 147), “visual spectacle, musical support, and excessive rhetorical expression” (Wattenberg, 2011, p. 55). Audiences are expected to be active participants in the melodramatic performance; they are encouraged to cheer, boo, hiss, applaud, and even throw popcorn at the villain (Curry, 2005, p. 7; Taggart, 1981, p. 89). Melodramas focus on a set of oppositions, most commonly the virtuous/villainous dialectic, the civilization/savagery dialectic, and the male/female dialectic (Wattenberg, 2011, p. 58). Wattenberg (2011) observes that “in nineteenth-century melodrama, the distinction between civilization and savagery came to be closely associated with popular notions of gender” (p. 60). Female characters represent the piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity of what Barbara Welters (1966) refers to as “the cult of true womanhood,” while male characters are characterized by their strength and ability to protect female characters. The heroes and heroines in Deadwood Dick exemplify these stereotypical roles.

At first, I was reluctant to audition for the show. Deadwood Dick, like many old-fashioned scripts, is riddled with racist language and sexist innuendos. Unlike most westerns, where women and non-Whites are absent (Tompkins, 1992, p. 9), Deadwood Dick features a number of women, most of which are weak, lovelorn, and talkative, as well as one Asian American, who is often called a number of derogatory terms, especially by the villain. I was particularly uncomfortable with the explicit racist language surrounding the character of Pong Ping. Before auditioning, I expressed my concerns to the director, who offered to work with my suggestions and ultimately decided to cast me as Rose Blossom. Since Rose had very few racist lines, and the director permitted me to change the few that did exist, I happily accepted the role.

The implicit sexism in the script was a different story. Unlike the racist language, sexist themes could not be changed or eliminated from the script without altering the author’s intent; therefore, I was being asked to portray a stereotype, as were all of the actors. Rose’s storyline placed her in a stereotypical position: She is kidnapped by a man with whom she later falls in love, she attempts to use her words to save him from hanging, she faints after threatening to kill herself, and she is ultimately taken hostage by one of the villains before being rescued. Toll (1976) notes that melodramatic heroines were meant to epitomize virtue; they exemplified “the miracle of love and delicacy, the paragon of excellence, the earthly angel” (p. 147). Yet as I began to envision the character, I realized that Rose wasn’t the perfect example of a melodramatic heroine—her sister Lily was. I wrote in my journal:

In a lot of ways, Rose is the typical heroine—sweet, innocent, a bit judgmental, easily falls in love. But Rose is one of two heroines, and I have to contrast her with Lily. Lily is described as the fragile, languishing heroine, while Rose is “sparkling, vivacious, and resplendent.” So I need to blend the character—she has a little more spunk than most western melodramas would let a woman have. She confronts the man who stole her sister away. She’s not afraid of saying what she thinks. She’s energetic, gullible, and defensive of her sister. My major concern is making Rose a little too real. Real women (and men) struggle with their emotions and reactions to the situations they face, and Rose does this, too. She is conflicted when she falls in love with the man who kidnapped her and lies in an attempt to save him from hanging. But this show thrives on stereotypes in order to make the audience laugh, and Rose is a little too relatable, maybe. Which is why I overact like crazy—it makes her more of a caricature. Rose’s stereotype is that of the overly-dramatic woman. Everything is a big deal to her.

Once I began to analyze the character, I became more comfortable with my role. I played Rose as an over-the-top, larger-than-life character with grand gestures and a loud, whiny voice. The character was not meant to be a serious representation of women, according to the way the director envisioned the play; rather, Rose was a tongue-in-cheek response to western melodramas’ treatment of women—a stereotype of the lovelorn heroine. I sought to represent her as such.

I am certain that Black’n Red knows of my sister’s whereabouts! Yet when I confronted him, he simply laughed at me, as if I didn’t matter. There must be someone who can find Lily! How I miss her so! ³

Audiences generally seemed to understand that all of the characters were meant to be tongue-in-cheek stereotypical images, rather than representations of real people. They cheered for the heroes and for Pong Ping; they booed the villain and sighed when the heroines entered. On occasion, the audience would even talk back to the performers, which was encouraged in this production of Deadwood Dick. Audience reaction allowed the performance to change each night, bringing different elements of the show into focus.

During two performances, the audience actually cheered for Rose. It happened during a scene where Rose is being threatened by Chet, who wants her for himself, and she grabs a knife on a table and points it at him. When he asks her if she really thinks she can kill him, she turns the knife on herself and replies, “No, but come one step closer and I shall lay violent hands upon myself!” (Taggart, 1981, p. 82). In my journal, I wrote,

The past two nights, the audiences went crazy cheering. It’s like they love the idea of female empowerment; Rose taking charge of her own destiny and not being defenseless. Unfortunately, the scene requires me to ruin that moment—I have to turn the knife on myself and faint, in true heroine style. Because that’s what western melodramas do. The woman can’t triumph because she’s nothing more than a thing, a backdrop, for the men in the show. I have to be saved; I can’t save myself. I can’t be empowered, because that’s emasculating to the men in a western.

It broke my heart to turn the knife on myself those two nights. As a feminist, I loved that the audience wanted to see a woman empowered, taking her fate into her own hands, but as an actor, I recognized that I had to represent the script as it was written. I had to remind myself that I was playing a stereotype, and that Rose had to be weak and needed to be saved. While Lily may have been the typical heroine in the show, leaving Rose to defy certain expectations, for the most part, Rose still needed to adhere to “the cult of true womanhood” (Welters, 1966). She still needed to be saved by the men in the show. And yet I couldn’t help thinking that Rose’s empowerment was in line with one of the purposes of westerns. Westerns rebel against the “female, domestic, ‘sentimental religion,’” (Tompkins, 1992, p. 38) of Victorian culture. If Rose had killed the villain and run off with the hero, would that have been out of line with the characteristics of the western, which celebrate freedom and “offer an escape from modern industrial society” (Tompkins, 1992, p. 4)? Or would it have just been reenvisioning the western in a different way, allowing Rose to break away from the Victorian culture that so defines her character?

If I had killed Chet, could I have found Lily and run off to marry Ned, never having to see Black’n Red ever again? Could I have found my “happily ever after” that way, too? ⁴

As Wattenberg (2011) notes, not all melodramas are the same; “different playwrights wrote to different audiences, who might view the basic oppositions underlying melodramas in different lights” (p. 64). Indeed, an audience in a traditional melodrama can change the meaning of a performative text and the outcome of a particular dramatic narrative. Because melodrama allows audience members to become emotionally invested in the characters through their own participation, audience members both influence and are influenced by the melodramatic text. As audience members, when we experience a western, no matter the medium (e.g., melodrama, film representation, or the western novel), we bring a piece of ourselves to it. We might enjoy it for the sense of freedom or nostalgia it gives us, we might appreciate it for the classic art form that it is; or might we envision how we can update it for a contemporary audience along the lines of gender representation and constructions of power, thus allowing the past to inform the present?