Is She A Woman?: Alternative Critical Frameworks for Understanding Cross-Dressing and Cross-Gender Casting on the Victorian Stage

As the study of nineteenth-century theatre has expanded over decades, extent and popularity cross-dressing cross-gender casting on Victorian stage is being revealed. Yet there an enduring tendency in criticism to situate transvestite performances within broad-brush assumptions binary attitudes towards gender amongst audiences. Universalised norms thinking have long been discarded critical analysis fiction, their lingering influence studies arguably unhelpful. Building vital pioneering work Jacky Bratton, this article will focus careers Louisa Cranstoun Nisbett Mary Anne Keeley, two prominent acclaimed mid-century actresses, drawing reviews, memoirs, commentaries attempt construct alternative theories for how they were viewed understood. The popular success language ideas employed by reviewers commentators record explain them reveal far more flexible, multiple, fluid, complex, imaginative roles identities than allowed established narratives.