Pernicious Female Role Models and Mid-Victorian London’s Stage

Hutcheon identifies as ‘historiographic metafiction’ those pieces of fiction that expose that our cultural perception of past events is changing and malleable (129). Even though Hutcheon’s theory of historiographic metafiction has been mainly applied to fiction from the post-modern era, certain elements of historical inspiration can be traced back to fiction from the Victorian period. In this article, I propose to turn to the popular theatre of the mid-Victorian period to scrutinize the manipulation of historical female figures, paying close attention to the representation of Lucrezia Borgia as a strong-minded woman. To do so, I analyse the mid-nineteenth century as a moment for asking questions about feminine identity, feminist movements, and alternative representations of female history. By turning to lesser-known mid-Victorian popular plays by H.J. Byron, Charles Matthews, and Leicester Buckingham I will further contribute to an ongoing archaeological task of recovering lost female voices and interpretations from our recent past.