Caught in the Act

Theatricality in the Nineteenth-Century English Novel

Joseph Litvak

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9780520074545
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780520911376
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Litvak demonstrates that private experience in the novels of Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Eliot, and James is a rigorous enactment of a public script that constructs normative gender and class identities. He suggests that the theatricality which pervades these novels enforces social norms while introducing opportunities for novelists to resist them. This approach encourages a rethinking of the genre and its cultural contexts in all their instability and ambivalence.


Litvak demonstrates that private experience in the novels of Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Eliot, and James is a rigorous enactment of a public script that constructs normative gender and class identities. He suggests that the theatricality which pervades the

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• The Infection of Acting Theatricals and Theatricality in Mansfield Park
• The Governess as Actress The Inscription of Theatricality in Jane Eyre
• Scenes of Writing, Scenes of Instruction Authority and Subversion in Villette
• Dickens and Sensationalism
• Poetry and Theatricality in Daniel Deronda
• Making a Scene Henry James’s Theater of Embarrassment
• Actress, Monster, Novelist Figuration and Counterplot in The Tragic Muse
• Conclusion
• INDEX