... anger outward in later years, challenging societal expectations about women's comedy. White's later comedy has frequently parodied the innocent, domestic characters she played in her youth while asking audiences to accept older women as sexual beings. Both women use their outsider status to challenge...

... Fields's comedic persona, which forced audiences to confront the realities of voices and bodies that did not conform to classical ideals, in the context of more recent theoretical work on the economy of charged humor (Rebecca Krefting) and the place of women's comedy within contemporary culture (Linda...