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“I’m the author of The Lady Actress: Recovering the Lost Legacy of a Victorian American Superstar. It’s a book about the life and career of Anna Cora Mowatt, a person who was rather famous during her lifetime and is almost completely unknown now. She was the first woman to author a hit comedy on Broadway. She had successful careers as a public reader, an actress, a novelist, and a poet as well. Mowatt, the daughter of wealthy New York family, skillfully and tenaciously held on to her status as a person respectable enough to be received in high society while arm-deep in what was considered a to be a very depraved profession. In those days, actress were generally assumed to double as prostitutes. Although there were accomplished theatrical professionals like Fanny Kemble and Charlotte Cushman who were greatly admired by even the most stuffy, moneyed, Victorian Americans, rank and file female performers were considered vulgar, possibly criminal personages. A proper pre-Civil War parent of any income bracket would look on the announcement that their daughter had decided to become an actress much the same way a contemporary parent react to their child saying, ‘Mom, Dad, I’m dropping out of college and becoming a stripper!’”
Kelly S. Taylor interview at IndieSpotlight, October 1, 2010

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This time period was characterized by the ending of the Victorian era, which had celebrated women’s work as good household management. Domesticity was shown to be the only appropriate working task for women. To have women take a place on the stage, or in any career for that fashion, seemed almost intolerable as it presented a trespassing into men’s economic territory.

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In the case of Anna Cora Mowatt, it is a testament to her performative ability that Edgar Allen Poe had criticized (or at least remained largely unimpressed with) her poetry. As a noteworthy and supportive critic of Mowatt, I believe that Poe only remained unaffected by Mowatt’s poetry because he knew her to be capable of so much more. He wasn’t saying that she was incapable of producing poetry as much as he was saying that he was uninterested in it because he knew how vast her talent was, and poetry simply did not accommodate such tremendous talent. In a sense, this was an affirmation of her true ability to write, read, perform, and maintain her status as a “lady” in the intolerable eyes of a Victorian society in which she lived.

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Kemble who started her career by acting with her father, later on discovered the power of reading Shakespeare. She valued dramatism and had harsh words for theater because of its lack of reality. This reminded me of Stanislavsky’s performance methods. The importance of human nature should be as real as possible. “Men does not live by bread alone” (Thompson) is a great saying that still answers why performers who do not make enough money still do what they do for our society today. Her sense of feminism and passion for performance is incredible because the powerful women in the past opened doors to equality.

Cushman’s sense of acting was criticized by many people. Her acting as Romeo and Lady Macbeth brought many questions to minds. Because she brought power and strength as a woman to stage, she was referred to as too violent. Her physical characteristics and emotional strength is judged because it carries masculine characteristics. She later on made a career out of her readings which the audience enjoyed the most.

The society was not ready for women to take such strong rolls in acting. These three women seem as they are stand up performers of today. Their power and dedication to performance was seen as awkward and not welcomed by many people. Through performance, they pushed the limits to equality and showed the society that women are just as capable of reading and performing as men.

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During the Victorian Age women were viewed as porcelain dolls; fragile and delicate creatures who were incapable of engaging in intellectual discussion. Anna Cora Mowatt; however, was unique in that she used her rhetorical skills to subliminally convince her audience that she (a woman) was deserving of her own autobiography as both an intellect and a virtuous Victorian woman. In the following essay I will delve into the reasons why first person narratives by Victorian female authors were considered inappropriate, how Mowatt overcame these prejudices, and the strategies that she utilized in order to develop an accepted persona.

When an individual writes an autobiography, him or her tends to write in first person. Using the word “I” conveys the idea that the individual has knowledge of importance; consequently, Victorian women had difficulties persuading others to take them seriously. What superior knowledge could a woman possess? The only information that women were expected to understand/employ was knowledge of domestic matters (i.e. morality, virtue, being a good wife). Anna Cora Mowatt, who was a “spin doctor” of her time, used rhetorical strategies that aided in her effectiveness as a writer, actress, and public reader. I believe the successful impact of these strategies, signifies the importance of rhetorical studies in our education system.

First, Mowatt overcame the difficulties of writing as a woman in the Victorian Ages by giving solid, believable, and acceptable reasons for writing. More specifically, she developed a persona that was direct, sincere, and humble. When a woman is living in patriarchal times, she has to learn to be creative when attempting to convince her audience. Mowatt found a medium between self-denial and self-expression so that she could get her point across in a sympathetic (but not egotistical) manner. For example, Mowatt asked the readers at the end of her autobiography whether she had bad grammar and whether she was too egotistical. Perhaps leaving the reader with a feeling of humbleness, convinced her audience that she was deserving of this opportunity, as she preserved her feminine persona.

Likewise, Mowatt did not associate herself with the feminist movement taking place at the time to avoid discredit. In my opinion, her dismissal of the women’s movement played the biggest role in her success. Because Victorians were prude and patriarchal, women had to assume a subordinate role to be taken seriously, particularly because men were their only chance to be heard. Associating herself with the new group of feminists would have killed her career. Nevertheless, Mowatt did not abandon all that she stood for, she merely maintained a feminine nature while stressing the importance of intellectual/professional accomplishments and the social/moral respectability of actresses. Thus, the writer picked her battles, giving in on some to achieve success as a Victorian woman living in oppressive times.

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