Madwomen in the Killing Jar: Madness, Adaptation, and Performance in Kate Soper's Voices from the Killing Jar

Abstract

U.S.-American composer, writer, and performer Kate Soper describes a killing jar as “a tool used by entomologists to kill butterflies and other insects without damaging their bodies: a hermetically sealable glass container, lined with poison, in which the specimen will quickly suffocate.” This premise provides the central motif for her 2012 monodrama for soprano and chamber ensemble, Voices from the Killing Jar. In the piece, she adapts narrative elements from the stories of eight heroines—originating from a wide range of literary and historical sources—who she believes are trapped in their own metaphorical killing jars. This thesis examines Soper’s adaptation of these eight heroines’ texts through the lens of madness and madwomen. I analyze the musical and textual contents of three movements: “My Last Duchess: Isabel Archer,” “Mad Scene: Emma Bovary,” and “Her Voice is Full of Money: Daisy Buchanan.” Drawing on scholarship on performance-based madness and historical psychiatric practices in the United States, England, and France, I analyze Voices in the context of madness in music, history, and literature. Finally, I address the entire monodrama, engaging with the theme of spectatorship to demonstrate how the piece generates empathy for its “mad” heroines. By interpreting Voices from the Killing Jar in the context of madness, adaptation, and performance, this thesis contributes to a growing body of scholarship on transmedia adaptation and expands the study of madness in musical performance beyond the nineteenth century.