44 “She made almost an income”: The Tragic Muse, p. 494.
45 “She has in a supreme degree”: Henry James, The Scenic Art, edited by Allan Wade (New Brunswick, 1948), p. 129.
46 “the female grotesque”: Mary Russo, “Female Grotesques: Carnival and Theory,” in Teresa de Lauretis, ed., Feminist Studies/Critical Studies (Bloomington, Ind., 1986).
47 “spell of intense astonishment”: Carl Schurz, The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz I (New York, 1907), p. 276 ff.
48 Recent criticism of Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Summer Will Show (New York, 1936; repr. London, 1987) has not focused on the actress theme. Terry Castle argues that Summer Will Show is an exemplary lesbian fiction that rewrites the standard heterosexual plot. See her “Sylvia Townsend Warner and the Counterplot of Lesbian Fiction,” Textual Practice 4 (Summer, 1990). Claire Harman’s introduction to the Virago edition emphasizes Warner’s imagery, her Flaubertian objectivity, and her ultimately tragic view of revolution. In “Ideology, Ecriture, 1848: Sylvia Townsend Warner Unwrites Flaubert,” RSSI, vol. II, nos. 2–3 (1991), Sandy Petrey presents a different political reading.
49 a Jewish Corinne: Minna is also suggestive of performers like Ruth Draper, who recited their own sketches in London in the 1920s and were popular in lesbian clubs and cafés.
50 Mlle Déluzy, as she walked in the court of the Conciergerie, seemed to many to be carrying on like an actress: “Elle sait que beaucoup de regards sont fixés sur elle de toutes les fenêtres. Les gens qui l’ont vue disent qu’elle prend des poses.” Hugo, Choses vues II (Paris, 1913), p. 278.
51 History remembers the Duc de Praslin (his family name was Choiseul, part of the name of one of Rachel’s aristocratic biographers) as a cad as well as a wifekiller; the Dictionnaire de biographie française (Paris, 1959) further observes that the letters the duchess sent him after their 1837 separation “témoignent d’une grande élévation de pensées.” (“Choiseul [Praslin]”, vol. 8, p. 1214.) Mlle Déluzy is recalled as having been the duke’s mistress as well as “la maêtresse de la maison” during the years he lived separately from his wife, in the same household. Rachel Field’s novel uses the conventions of governess fiction to file a belated brief for her heroine: the reader is meant to be persuaded that, like Jane Eyre, Mlle Déluzy maintained her innocence in spite of her passion.
TEXT
Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris: 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 3.1, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, 4.5, 4.6, 4.7, 4.8, 4.9, 4.10, 4.11, 4.12, 4.13
Collections de la Comédie-Française: 2.1, 4.14
Harvard Theatre Collection: 4.15
Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery: 1.4
Musée Carnavalet, Paris: frontispiece, 4.16, 5.1
Private collection, New York: 5.2
Private collection, Paris: 4.17
Réunion des Musées Nationaux, Paris: 4.18
COLOR INSERT
Portrait of Rachel, J.-L. Gérôme: Collections de la Comédie-Française
Talma in the Role of Nero, E. Delacroix: Collections de la Comédie-Française
Rachel, E. Dubufe: Collections de la Comédie-Française
La Sybille, E. Delacroix: Private collection, Japan
Mlle Rachel, W. Etty: York City Art Gallery
Rachel’s costumes: Billy Rose Theatre Collection, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts; Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations
Rachel with the company, H. de Montaut: Private collection, Paris
Caricatures of Rachel: Musée Carnavalet, Paris
La Tragédie, E. E. Amaury-Duval: Collections de la Comédie-Française
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rachel M. Brownstein, a resident of New York City, is Professor of English at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York.
She is the author of Becoming a Heroine.
Tragic Muse Page 41