In her essay, "Many masks, many selves," Wendy Doniger suggests that self-impersonation or masquerading is a form of self-identification. An account taken from English cutler Thomas Mills in 1618 adds to Doniger's claim by suggesting that entertainment, emotional release and social justice also serve as other means for such self-impersonations in addition to identity of the self.
Introduction:
In conversing with his wife Agnes, a cutler named Thomas Mills provided a detailed account of a typical charivari that took place on May 27th, 1618. Generally, the term charivari referred to a ritualized mechanism of social control, common in England and in surrounding areas in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries; the noisy, chaotic processions enabled the community to express their collective dismay over adulterous relationships, cuckolded husbands, abusers or other social offenders of the like. Mills' description of the events that took place in the small market town of Calne, England illustrate specifically such a procession in which the participants donned masks both as a form of entertainment and emotional release as well as for the depiction of mockery to help serve as a form of community control and social justice. However, in her essay "Many masks, many selves," Wendy Doniger argues that people engage in self-impersonations or masquerading for the sole purpose of self-identification. While Doniger's emphasis on identity of the self does have a certain validity and importance, she still overlooks the idea that the purpose of masquerading may extend beyond identifying and finding ones own self. Therefore, the account provided by Thomas Mills complements Wendy Doniger's thesis regarding self-impersonations by putting forth emotional release and social justice as other rationalizations for the act of masquerading.
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