Constructing Celebrity:  Strategies of Nineteenth Century British Actresses to Enhance Their Image and Social Status

Kelly, Lisa Michelle

doi:https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-wzbm-kf43

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Constructing Celebrity: Strategies of Nineteenth Century British Actresses to Enhance Their Image and Social Status

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Celebrity, reputation, and identity were complex issues for nineteenth-century British actresses. This dissertation examines how actresses responded to, integrated, and defied gender norms and social structures as they performed “authentic” identities for consuming publics. I investigate how actresses participated in charity events and bazaars, autobiographical writing, and advertising campaigns in order to rehabilitate and normalize their reputations and to achieve social mobility and acceptance. I document examples, patterns, and trends of actresses participating in charity events to raise money for social causes over the course of the nineteenth century to show how liveness and proximity to fame drew middle- and upper-class consumers and event organizers to interact with actresses outside of the theatre and created opportunities for actresses to enhance their reputations and use their celebrity to increase the value of goods being sold or personal moments of interaction at events. I examine how actresses controlled the narratives of their lives through their autobiographical writing; responding to their public reputations and creating public identities in which they could situate themselves as representatives of model femininity. I also close read examples of advertisements featuring actresses that appeared in nineteenth-century popular periodicals geared towards women to demonstrate how the images and testimonials of actresses could increase demand for consumer products. The way actresses participated in each of these identity-forming domains also impacted their ability to navigate the other domains more successfully. In this dissertation I show how actresses reconfigured and capitalized on the concepts of private and public life. I parse how the ideas of reputation and celebrity are used intentionally by actresses to create acceptable public identities and by event organizers and advertisers to increase the value of interactions with actresses and the consumer products they endorse.

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