Performance and Femininity in Eighteenth-Century German Women's Writing: The Impossible Act

She explores the tension between the prevailing antitheatrical ethos with regard to feminine subjectivity and the need to perform; the novels she examines frequently question whether virtue in the performer was essential to representing virtue successfully onstage. Arons then contrasts the submission expected of women within the domestic sphere to the self-sufficiency required to flourish in the theatrical profession; she often discusses her findings with regard to contemporary acting theory and drama, especially Lessing's bourgeois tragedies "Miss Sara Sampson" and Emilia Galotti .