The Promise and Limits of Female Stage Celebrity

This chapter examines the celebrity of English actress Fanny Kemble, whose 1832-34 tour demonstrated the continued viability of the American market for English stars. During the tour, journalists tried with difficulty to mobilize Kemble’s unique reputation as a literary actress to manage social and nationalist tensions in American theater. Kemble’s celebrity also spoke to questions about the legitimate parameters of women’s participation in public life. She drew genteel white women into the theater in unprecedented numbers. But when Kemble violated the narrow gender performance expected of her by journalists and publics, she faced a vicious backlash that also targeted her identity as an Englishwoman, underscoring the narrow and contradictory terms of female stage celebrity.