Actresses as working women : their social identity in Victorian culture /

This important study, grounded in Marxist and feminist theory and the "New History" methodology of Lawrence Stone, discounts many of the findings of the only other recent books on the subject Michael Baker's The Rise of the Victorian Actor (CH, Jan'79) and Michael Sanderson's From Irving to Olivier: A Social History of the Acting Profession in England 1880-1983 (CH, Jun'85) for being too narrowly limited to successful West End performers and casually assembled data. Davis (Harvard) includes suburban and provincial theater and music hall performers, and explodes many a myth about actresses with substantial evidence, ranging from census reports to court records. The chapters cover actual working conditions and wages, the equivocal social position of females in the profession ("Victorian actress" is almost oxymoronic), and the implicit and explicit erotic and pornographic implications of costume, gesture, and the playhouse environment. The 14 plates relate mostly to this last, semiotically treated, topic. Crucial reading for the serious theater historian, this book will also interest those concerned more generally with feminist and Victorian subjects.-J. Ellis, formerly, Mount Holyoke College