his international conference is conceived as a contribution to the history of women in the nineteenth century, through the lens of a socio-professional category still little explored for this period: the stage actress. At once admired and maligned, she epitomizes the full range of issues surrounding women’s status throughout the century. The actress is both a woman who embodies imaginary representations and a worker who carries out her activity within the public sphere. She therefore stands at the intersection of two seemingly irreconcilable domains: on the one hand, she contributes to creating the images through which idealized and standardized visions of the “weaker sex” are shaped and disseminated; on the other, she escapes the juridical framework defined during the Revolution, which had invoked the concept of Nature to exclude women from citizenship by confining their authority to the domestic sphere and their reproductive function. Long considered the refuge of “fallen women,” the theatre appears as a space where women could enjoy a legal status that placed them on equal footing with men. Often freed from the tutelage of father or husband, they adopted the status of “fille majeure,” thereby exposing themselves to penal sanctions—that is, imprisonment, forced labour, or even execution. The theatre offered women the opportunity to practice a profession, to attain financial autonomy, and, for some, to achieve celebrity, which could in turn provide them with influence within the political sphere. Yet the harsh constraints of the profession, the networks of prostitution associated with it, the enduring influence of the patriarchal model in shaping the roles they performed—and upon which the longevity of their careers depended—also made them more vulnerable and more heavily exposed than other women to moral and social condemnation.
For these reasons, the stage actress represents a particularly valuable object of inquiry for the history of women in the nineteenth century, and more broadly for the study of gender relations shaped by labour. Actresses evolved within a professional world still in the process of structuring itself, without unified regulations, since the legislation concerning dramatic artists only took form gradually (Pr.vot, 2025). While the theatrical landscape was being liberalized, their employment conditions remained highly variable. Some could secure stability, for instance through the status of sociétaire at the Com.die-Fran.aise, but many moved from one short term contract to another and found themselves on the front line of the commercial risks borne by private theatrical enterprises. This raises numerous questions regarding the pressures exerted on women workers in the context of a newly established “masculine order,” but also concerning women’s strategies of action, cooperation, and resistance to improve their professional situation while operating within a framework constrained by the Civil Code.
Nevertheless, the actress has largely been neglected by historians. Her assimilation to prostitution—so often repeated in nineteenth-century literary discourse—likely explains why she has rarely attracted the attention of feminist scholarship, except when her activities extended into other professions that carried greater artistic prestige, such as authorship. A few theatrical celebrities were the subject of biographies during their lifetime, oscillating between hagiography and collective indictment of the profession as a whole. Theatre history manuals on nineteenthcentury France generally mention the same prominent figures: those associated with maleauthored aesthetic currents (female artists of the Romantic stage, such as Mlle Mars, Marie Dorval, Mlle George, or Marie Taglioni); or those who serve to illustrate a history of the actress centred on access to stardom and financial independence (Virginie D.jazet, R.jane, Sarah Bernhardt, among others). The conditions of theatrical labour have been studied for periods other than the one at issue here (the Middle Ages, the seventeenth, eighteenth, or twentieth centuries), but the nineteenth century remains insufficiently explored. Important groundwork has been laid in articles and collective volumes that examine the social status of actors regardless of gender, or the emergence of the star system (Charle, 2007; Fazio, 2011; Yon, 2012; Filippi, Harvey & Marchand, 2017; Qu.val, 2023, among others). One of the few large scale studies devoted exclusively to actresses remains Anne Martin-Fugier’s Comédienne: De Mlle Mars à Sarah Bernhardt (2001), which relies primarily on testimonies and on narratives embedded in contemporary novels (Balzac, Zola, the Goncourt brothers, etc.). This conference intends to mobilize other types of sources—mostly archival—in order to document the concrete factors shaping the life trajectories and professional experiences of actresses across diverse contexts. Contributions focusing on women who remained anonymous to posterity will be especially welcome.
This conference will be the first in a series of three to be held through the winter of 2028. Its aim is to document the working conditions of actresses in Europe. It seeks to foster dialogue among scholars who have reflected on the status of actresses within different political, economic, social, and religious contexts (France, Italy, Spain, Prussia, Great Britain, Austria, Sweden, etc.). Several non-exhaustive avenues of inquiry include:
- A study of wages and their variation according to roles or the attainment of “star” status
- An analysis of wage disparities between men and women, identifiable through the administrative archives of theatres
- An estimation of working time (including rehearsals, the number of roles learned and performed simultaneously, and tours in the provinces and abroad), made possible in particular through casting registers and contracts of engagement
- An analysis of theatre regulations and their provisions concerning pregnancy
- A reflection on how age, in relation to the system of roles, shaped actresses’ careers
- A study of judicial archives in order to identify lawsuits brought by or against actresses on professional grounds
- An analysis of the police des moeurs registers to deepen our understanding of the relationship between actresses and prostitution
Accommodation and meals will be provided, as well as travel expenses for colleagues not receiving institutional support.
The principal language of the conference will be French, but papers may also be presented in another language (to be discussed in advance with the organizers).
Paper proposals (maximum 3,000 characters) should be sent to: roxane.martin@univ-lorraine.fr and suzanne.rochefort@univ-lorraine.fr
The deadline is December 19, 2025
Created 6 December 2025
Last modified 6 December 2025