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In "Performance and Femininity, " Arons examines a series of texts
by eighteenth-century German women in order to illuminate how women
writers of the time used theater and performance both to
investigate female subjectivity and to intervene in the dominant
cultural discourse of femininity. Arons's study focuses on works
featuring heroines who, for the most part--like their authors--lead
lives with public dimensions, primarily by working as actresses.
The texts she chooses all call attention to the difficulties that
the eighteenth-century conception of the self as sincere and
antitheatrical presented for women. By highlighting the fact that
the social audience that determines a woman's reputation is almost
always a fickle and untrustworthy "reader" of female subjectivity,
these works expose the untenable position into which the discourse
of sincerity placed women, paradoxically requiring them to perform
the very "naivete "that was, by definition, not supposed to be
performable. Arons's original argument takes an interdisciplinary
approach, drawing from the fields of literary criticism, cultural
studies, theatre history, and performance studies, and reveals how
these women writers exposed ideal femininity as an impossible act,
even as they attempted to reproduce that act in their writing and
in their lives.
In this book, Wendy Arons examines how women writers used theater
and performance to investigate the problem of female subjectivity
and to intervene in the dominant discourse about ideal femininity.
Arons shows how contemporary demands for sincerity and authenticity
placed a peculiar burden on women in the public sphere, especially
on actresses, who - like professional writers - overstepped the
boundaries of what was considered proper behavior for women.
Paradoxically, in their representations of ideal women engaged in
performance, these writers expose ideal femininity as an impossible
act, even as they attempt to perform it in their writing and in
their lives.
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