Caught in the Act

Theatricality as deployed here encourages the rethinking of the 19th-century novel and its cultural contexts in all their instability and ambivalence. This rethinking yields not only a new interpretation of the 19th-century novel, but also a new theatrical approach to interpretation itself.

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Litvak demonstrates that private experience in the novels of Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Eliot, and James is a rigorous enactment of a public script that constructs normative gender and class identities. He suggests that the theatricality which pervades these novels enforces social norms while introducing opportunities for novelists to resist them. This approach encourages a rethinking of the genre and its cultural contexts in all their instability and ambivalence.