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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 July 2009
The English actress Fanny Kemble, whose 1832–1834 tour left her unrivaled among female performers in this country and who has been touted by historians as a sterling example of antebellum womanhood, emerges as a far more equivocal figure than previous histories suggest. Indeed, for someone who disdained the spurious histrionics of public life, she routinely exposed her own paradoxical nature: she hated the stage, yet recovered her family's fortunes through a luminous albeit brief acting career; she yearned for the simple pleasures of domesticity, yet castigated American women as “drudges” in her published controversial journal of 1835; she made a fortune performing Juliet and yet was described as “unfemininely masculine” by Herman Melville who, in a letter to a friend in 1849, went on to exclaim, “had she not, on impeccable authority, borne children, I should be curious to learn the result of a surgical examination of her person in private.” Kemble was a woman whose identity was in constant flux throughout the 1830s and 40s, which makes her American career an excellent site for materialist investigations of gender.
1. Davis, Merrell and Gilman, William H. eds., The Letters of Herman Melville (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960), 78Google Scholar.
2. Dudden, Faye, Women in the American Theatre: Actresses and Audiences 1790–1870 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 27–55Google Scholar. For a historical discussion of True Womanhood see Welter, Barbara, “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820–860,” American Quarterly (1966): 151–174Google Scholar. Dudden is not the only one to speak of Fanny Kemble as a True Woman or as a figure whose reputation was untouched by the proto-feminist activities associated with her. See also Booth, Alison, “From Miranda to Prospero: The Works of Fanny Kemble,” Victorian Studies (Winter 1995): 227–254Google Scholar and Johnson, Claudia, American Actress: Perspective on the Nineteenth-Century (Chicago: Nelson Hall, 1984), 93–94Google Scholar.
3. The Home Journal, 22 September 1849.
4. “The Drama,” Spirit of the Times, 8 August 1832 and 25 August 1832.
5. “The Drama,” Spirit of the Times, 22 September 1832.
6. “The Drama,” Spirit of the Times, 17 November 1832.
7. “The Drama,” Spirit of the Times, 6 October 1832.
8. Under the rubric “Female Equestrianism,” one reporter stated, “Whether riding astride is an accomplishment which becomes a lady is a question which may bear debate, but it cannot be concealed that the opinion of this country is against it.” Spirit of the Times, 3 June 1832.
9. Gough, Monica ed., Fanny Kemble: Journal of a Young Actress (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 142Google Scholar.
10. Johnson, 102.
11. Niles Register (I August 1835): 379; The Albion (8 August 1835): 269,271.
12. Dudden, 44. It is interesting to note that in A. H. Everett's review of the journal in the North American Review (see note 16) democracy is distinctly tied to “natural” gender relations. Everett comments at length on Kemble's discussion of unmarried American women whose libertine behavior before marriage lay in contrast to their submissive, retiring manner as matrons; English women's conduct was just the opposite as aristocratic privileges allowed them certain social extravagances once wed, as opposed to the English mistress who single-mindedly and reservedly sought a mate. Everett argues that “artificial institutions” such as a monarchy violate the “order of nature” because married women are socially conditioned to abandon their families. “The introduction in this, or any country, of a privileged order, monopolizing, by hereditary right, a large proportion of the wealth and power of the community, and holding all useful labor a disgrace and a derogation, would give at once to the younger married ladies of that class, not merely the ascendancy in their own social circles, but the virtual control of the whole machinery of the government.” In other words, democracy breeds right gender ideology and aristocracies/monarchies breed anarchy or “petticoat government.”
13. Ibid.
14. The Albion (8 August 1835): 269; Southern Literary Register 1 (May 1835): 531Google Scholar.
15. Southern Literary Register 1 (May 1835): 525Google Scholar.
16. North American Review 41 (July 1835): 112Google Scholar.
17. Ibid. 133.
18. Evans, Sarah, Born for Liberty: A History of Women in America (New York: The Free Press, 1989), 75Google Scholar.
19. North American Review 41 (July 1835): 111Google Scholar.
20. Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth, “Forward,” Fanny Kemble: Journal of a Young Actress, xiGoogle Scholar.
21. Southern Literary Register 1 (May 1835): 525Google Scholar.
22. North American Review 41(July 1835): 139Google Scholar.I should note that this passage from the journal, taken from the North American Review, does not exist in the modern edition of the journal as edited in 1990 by Monica Gough. Gough states in her preface that she worked from a copy at Columbia University Library; however it appears as though this copy and the published edition are incomplete.
23. “Cult of True Womanhood,” 152.
24. North American Review 41(July 1835): 139Google Scholar.
25. Burke, Kenneth, “A Rhetoric of Motives,” in The Rhetorical Tradition, eds. Bizzell, Patricia and Herzberg, Bruce (Boston: St. Martin's Press, 1990), 1020Google Scholar. I am indebted to my former graduate student, Michelle Sullivan, for inspiring me to think about Burke's ideas on rhetoric in a new light.
26. McConachie, Bruce, “Using the Concept of Cultural Hegemony to Write Theatre History,” in Interpreting the Theatrical Past, ed. Postlewait, Thomas and McConachie, Bruce (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1989), 46–47Google Scholar.
27. “The Fanny Kemble Divorce Case,” New York Herald 28 November 1848Google Scholar.
28. Armstrong, Margaret, Fanny Kemble: A Passionate Victorian (New York: Macmillan Company, 1938), 282Google Scholar, and “Libel for Divorce,” The Home Journal (12 December 1848). This periodical printed a detailed history of the proceedings which included the very long narrative that Kemble wrote about the events leading up to the divorce.
29. The Home Journal, 16 December 1848. Kemble observed this restriction regarding contact with the Sedgwicks; however in April of 1845, Kemble received an envelope from Butler with a letter in it from Elizabeth Sedgwick. Because Kemble thought that Butler intended her to read the letter, she opened it and was castigated by her husband during the divorce proceedings for violating the terms of her agreement.
30. Garvey, T. Gregory, “Risking Reprisal: Catharine Sedgwick's Hope Leslie and the Legitimation of Public Action by Women,“ ATQ 8.4 (December 1994): 287Google Scholar.
31. Kelly, Mary, ed., The Power of Her Sympathy: The Autobiography and Journal of Catharine Maria Sedgwick (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1993), 132, 133Google Scholar.
32. Armstrong, 176.
33. “Risking Reprisal,” 288.
34. Kelley, Mary, “Negotiating a Self: The Autobiography and Journals of Catharine Maria Sedgwick,” New England Quarterly 66,3 (Sept. 1993): 368CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
35. Sherwood, Dolly, Harriet Hosmer, American Sculptor, 1830–1908 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1991), 20Google Scholar.
36. See The Home Journal, 15 September 1849 and 22 September 1849. This subject is taken up in detail later in this essay.
37. “Libel for Divorce, with Answer and Exhibit,” Home Journal, 16 December 1848Google Scholar.
38. As quoted in Herzberg, Bruce, “Michel Foucault's Rhetorical Theory,” in Contending with Words: Composition and Rhetoric in Postmodern Age, eds. Harkin, Patricia and Schilb, John (New York: MLA, 1991), 71Google Scholar. The Said passage comes from The World, the Text, and the Critic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), 216Google Scholar.
39. Rosenberg, Carroll Smith, Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 178Google Scholar.
40. “Cult of True Womanhood,” 173.
41. “Libel for Divorce, with Answer and Exhibit,” Home Journal, 16 December 1848Google Scholar. It is interesting to note that throughout the divorce proceedings, Butler only refers to the children as HER children, regardless of the laws of coverture which legally made both girls HIS children, leaving Kemble with no legal right to them.
42. Wister, Fanny Kemble, Fanny: The American Kemble: Her Journal and Unpublished Letters. (Tallahassee: South Pass Press, 1972), 201Google Scholar; “Libel for Divorce, with Answer and Exhibit,” Home Journal, 16 December 1848Google Scholar.
43. “Libel for Divorce, with Answer and Exhibit,” Home Journal (16 December 1848)Google Scholar.
44. Dudden, 49–50.
45. Ibid.
46. See Kraditor, Aileen S., Up From The Pedestal: Selected Writings in the History of American Feminism (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1968), 183–188Google Scholar.
47. Ibid.
48. Toynbee, William ed., The Diaries of William Charles Macready 1833–1851 (London: Chapman and Hall, 1912), 2:242Google Scholar.
49. “Libel for Divorce, with Answer and Exhibit,” Home Journal, 16 December 1848Google Scholar.
50. “Mrs. Butler's Pantaloons,” The Home Journal, 15 September 1849Google Scholar.
51. Bloomer, Amelia, “Mrs. Kemble and Her New Costume,” The Lily 1,12 (December 1849): 94Google Scholar.
52. “Female attire,” The Lily 3,2 (February 1851): 13Google Scholar
53. Boston Herald, 27 Jan 1949. As quoted in Kahan, Gerald, “Fanny Kemble Reads Shakespeare: Her First American Tour, 1849–1850,” Theatre Survey 24 (1983): 84–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
54. Ibid. 82.
55. For further evidence regarding Vandenhoff's, misogyny see my article entitled “Acting Between the Spheres: Charlotte Cushman as Androgyne,” Theatre Survey 37,2 (November 1996)Google Scholar.
56. “Mrs. Butler” The Home Journal, 22 September 1849Google Scholar.
57. Hale, Sarah Josepha, ed., Woman's Record; or, Sketches of All Distinguished Women from “the Beginning” til A.D. 1850 (New York: Harper and Bros., 1853) reprinted by Source Books (New York, 1970)Google Scholar. See 714–18.
