Angels in the theatre: Mid -Victorian actresses and the representation of respectability

Who were the angels in the theatre? In the mid-Victorian period, a remarkable shift occurred in the professionalization of the theatre, the respectability of performance, and the depiction of actresses. My interdisciplinary analysis of the representation of both historic and fictional actresses uncovers the intricate connections linking the personae of actresses and the ideology of Victorian femininity. In addition to some better-known sources, such as George Eliot's Daniel Deronda and Charlotte Bronte's Villette, I examine less-studied works to assess the variety of ways in which the mid-Victorian actresses came to be received as respectable. By analyzing plays like Dion Boucicault's Grimaldi; or, The Life of an Actress and T. W. Robertson's Vie, novels like Harriett Jay's Through the Stage Door and Geraldine Jewsbury's The Half Sisters, and prose like Dinah Mulock Craik's A Woman's Thoughts about Women and Madge Kendal's Dramatic Opinions , this project studies a broad spectrum of representations of angels in the theatre. In addition to fictional and dramatic representations, my work examines the representations of historic actresses to illustrate how the cult of celebrity actually enabled these women to achieve social mobility. Through performances, both actual and textual, actresses began to be defined and to redefine themselves by middle-class standards of femininity. The growing number of representations of actresses as angels reveal new tensions in Victorian class and gender roles. In this project, I argue that by constantly negotiating the boundaries between the actresses' public careers and their private respectability, these depictions of angelic stars offer unique insight into Victorian culture. The repeated representation of respectable actresses exposes the anxiety inherent in Victorian definitions of class, gender, and propriety. These representations reveal the extent to which the anomalous position of the actress defied the era's seemingly strict social and gender codes.