Davis, Robert Con,Levan, Karen Malee Sheriff.2013-08-162013-08-162000http://hdl.handle.net/11244/6021This is a study of Louisa May Alcott's conceptions of female identity in her sensational and sentimental fiction. Presenting a historical and cultural analysis of the sentimental notion of femininity, I analyze how Alcott's interests in theatre and her experiences as a performer inform her depiction of the female role in mid-nineteenth-century America. I then try to reframe her fiction---or restore its lost impact---by discussing it in relation to recent theories of female socialization and identity. I also give a critical introduction to performance theory as a body of knowledge and a perspective of understanding fiction, and chapters focus on Alcott's childhood and adult autobiographies, Little Women and Work: A Story of Experience, her sensational narrative Behind a Mask: or, A Woman's Power, and several of her re-discovered anonymously and pseudonymously published sensational thrillers.The critical introduction, "Moving In/to a Performance Perspective, " characterizes the work of Performance Studies and discusses the theorizing of particular critics, such as Judith Butler, whose works contribute to an understanding of Performance Theory methodology. Individual chapters in the work are as follows: "Stretching the Bounds of Maiden Modesty: Performances of the Feminine Ideal in Behind a Mask"; "'A New Declaration of Independence': Performativity at Work in Work: A Story of Experience"; "The Appeal of Little Women: Competing Version of Female Independence"; and "Alcott's Other Women: The Threat of Performance in Alcott's Sensational Thrillers." The chapters focus on similarities between mid-nineteenth-century American culture's concern with social hypocrisy and feminine artifice and twentieth-century critics' theorizing of identity as a performative act. In analyses of individual works, I argue that Alcott employs "performative" narrative strategies that repeat with revision traditional plot devices and models of character development, drawing attention to her texts as subversive "performances" of literary and cultural norms and stereotypes. Themes that receive special attention include: an obsession with female appearance, the exploitative potential of female self-denial, the effects of women's movement into the public workforce, and female performance as a normalizing and subversive cultural practice in nineteenth- and twentieth-century culture.ix, 332 leaves ;American literature History and criticism.Women in literature.Women's Studies.American Studies.Feminism and literature United States.Literature, American.Alcott, Louisa May, 1832-1888 Criticism and interpretation.Thesis