Acting like a lady: British women novelists and the eighteenth -century stage.
Item
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Title
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Acting like a lady: British women novelists and the eighteenth -century stage.
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Identifier
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AAI9946205
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identifier
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9946205
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Creator
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Nachumi, Nora Gabriella.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Rachel Brownstein
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Date
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1999
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, English | Theater | Women's Studies
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Abstract
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This project examines the influence of the theater on late eighteenth-century British women novelists. It emphasizes the theater's feminist aspects and contends that Elizabeth Inchbald, Frances Burney, and Jane Austen used their theatrical experience to empower female readers.;Chapter One considers how actresses and female playwrights challenged repressive definitions of femininity. It establishes that approximately 30% of the women novelists published in Britain between 1660 and 1818 were involved in the theater. The comparative respectability achieved by women novelists after mid-century, I argue, can be read as a role that left them in a unique position from which to challenge contemporary ideas about female nature.;Chapter Two shows how Inchbald's work as an actress and playwright colored her depiction of female experience. Inchbald drew on a standardized language of theatrical gesture to achieve a "silent" criticism of patriarchal authority. In Inchbald's fiction, characters' bodies create a sense of emotional immediacy designed to provoke a sympathetic response in other characters and in the reader. By dramatizing the body's expressive capacity, Inchbald suggests how women may achieve a degree of agency within patriarchal society.;Chapter Three examines Burney's interest in contemporary debates about whether actors feel the emotions they represent. Burney's familiarity with this debate qualified her reading of conduct material, which insists on a direct correlation between a woman's countenance and character. In her novels, Burney transforms scenes into stages in order to dramatize the impenetrability of women's exteriors. Her novels show women how to evade the surveillance effected by conduct-book descriptions of the feminine ideal.;Chapter Four explores the relationship between Austen's irony and her experience as a theatergoer. Austen's irony endows readers with a divided perspective: while we sympathize with Austen's heroines, we evaluate their decisions based on what we know to be true. Austen's irony helps her contest the idea that women's emotional susceptibility impedes their capacity for rational thought. The project concludes with an appendix detailing the involvement of women novelists in the professional theater and in private theatricals.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
