'Acting a part' in Jane Austen's fiction

Building on the recent studies on the influence of the theatre on Jane Austen’s fiction and the recent reappraisal of the links between the novel and drama in the eighteenth century, this thesis develops a specific aspect of drama in which Austen was invested throughout her life and which informs her understanding of character: the question of acting. By recovering the ways in which Austen weaves acting techniques from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries into her novels, the modern reader is able to understand how acting shapes Austen’s conception of social behaviour and communication. Acting in the eighteenth century was understood as the representation of human passions on stage. Actors used a system of theatrical gestures that visually translated the character’s internal feelings. Austen adapts these techniques in her novels in sequences where characters’ feelings are perceived as articulated through the body, placing them in a framework of theatricality. By exposing the theatrical dynamics that surround characters’ actions, Austen’s fiction problematizes the neat dichotomy between literal and metaphorical acting, blurring the distinctions between sincerity and duplicity. Most controversially, Austen’s novels demonstrate that even the truth must be acted. This thesis examines the question of acting in Austen from the Juvenilia to Emma by contextualising her novels within the contemporary theatrical culture of her time, through an analysis of contemporary acting manuals, theatrical reviews, and theatrical prints and portraiture.