Nan Mullenneaux is a lecturer in international writing in Duke University’s Thompson Writing Program and Duke Kunshan University.

“A richly detailed study of the rhetorical and performative strategies employed by nineteenth-century American actresses to construct the public identities as ideal, middle-class domestic women upon which their success depended. The work is solidly grounded in the context of mid-nineteenth-century American nation building, social mobility, and changing roles for women and vividly illustrates the development of a new, distinctive voice and culture for the young republic. Nan Mullenneaux’s work is a welcome and highly readable addition to theater scholarship as well as an engaging work of social and women’s history in its own right.”-Amy Lehman, director of graduate studies, Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of South Carolina

• List of illustrationsAcknowledgementsIntroduction: The Axe and the Faint 1. Opportunity or Necessity?2. Trials and Vicissitudes3. Domesticating Mobility and Nationalizing Transnationalism4. Child Actresses: Private Family, Public Persona, and National Identity5. Embodying America: Race and Class6. Reinventing the Private Family: Children and Siblings7. Acting Couples versus Acting Coupled8. Domestic Differences9. Managing Motherhood10. Later Life and LegaciesAppendixNotesBibliographyIndex

Nan Mullenneaux is a lecturer in international writing in Duke University’s Thompson Writing Program and Duke Kunshan University.

“A richly detailed study of the rhetorical and performative strategies employed by nineteenth-century American actresses to construct the public identities as ideal, middle-class domestic women upon which their success depended. The work is solidly grounded in the context of mid-nineteenth-century American nation building, social mobility, and changing roles for women and vividly illustrates the development of a new, distinctive voice and culture for the young republic. Nan Mullenneaux’s work is a welcome and highly readable addition to theater scholarship as well as an engaging work of social and women’s history in its own right.”-Amy Lehman, director of graduate studies, Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of South Carolina

• List of illustrationsAcknowledgementsIntroduction: The Axe and the Faint 1. Opportunity or Necessity?2. Trials and Vicissitudes3. Domesticating Mobility and Nationalizing Transnationalism4. Child Actresses: Private Family, Public Persona, and National Identity5. Embodying America: Race and Class6. Reinventing the Private Family: Children and Siblings7. Acting Couples versus Acting Coupled8. Domestic Differences9. Managing Motherhood10. Later Life and LegaciesAppendixNotesBibliographyIndex

Nan Mullenneaux is a lecturer in international writing in Duke University’s Thompson Writing Program and Duke Kunshan University.

“A richly detailed study of the rhetorical and performative strategies employed by nineteenth-century American actresses to construct the public identities as ideal, middle-class domestic women upon which their success depended. The work is solidly grounded in the context of mid-nineteenth-century American nation building, social mobility, and changing roles for women and vividly illustrates the development of a new, distinctive voice and culture for the young republic. Nan Mullenneaux’s work is a welcome and highly readable addition to theater scholarship as well as an engaging work of social and women’s history in its own right.”-Amy Lehman, director of graduate studies, Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of South Carolina

• List of illustrationsAcknowledgementsIntroduction: The Axe and the Faint 1. Opportunity or Necessity?2. Trials and Vicissitudes3. Domesticating Mobility and Nationalizing Transnationalism4. Child Actresses: Private Family, Public Persona, and National Identity5. Embodying America: Race and Class6. Reinventing the Private Family: Children and Siblings7. Acting Couples versus Acting Coupled8. Domestic Differences9. Managing Motherhood10. Later Life and LegaciesAppendixNotesBibliographyIndex