Fanny and Adelaide: The Lives of the Remarkable Kemble Sisters (review)

Fanny and Adelaide: The Lives of the Remarkable Kemble Sisters. By Ann Blainey. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2001; pp. x + 339. $27.50 cloth.

Of the nineteenth-century actresses who had significant careers upon the English-speaking stage, Fanny Kemble (1809-1893) is currently one of the most popular, attracting a great deal of attention from contemporary scholars of theatre studies, Southern history, and women's history. Recent articles, book chapters, and biographies champion Kemble as an extraordinary woman and celebrate her independence, feminism, and abolitionism—progressive in an age when true women were domestic, silent, and submissive. Ann Blainey, an Australian scholar and author of two literary biographies, adds to the burgeoning discourse on Kemble in a compelling new double biography of Fanny and her younger sister, Adelaide.

As Blainey makes clear in her preface, her book complements recent studies such as Catherine Clinton's Fanny Kemble's Civil Wars (2000) and Civil War Stories (1998). The new focus on both Fanny and Adelaide explores their intimate relationship and the dynamic interactions of the extended Kemble family. There is much talk of the sisters' aunt Sarah Siddons, father Charles Kemble, and mother Marie Therese. Blainey argues that Fanny and Adelaide "were promoters of the status of women before that cause was fashionable" and that past biographers "have not fully understood the low social status of women in the theatre of the time, and how that humble status affected and spurred Fanny" (x). While certainly this perspective on Kemble has been discussed in the last several years by Faye Dudden and others, Blainey introduces new information. Much of this is revealed by a large cache of lost Kemble letters given to the author by Adelaide's great-granddaughter; these inspire an enlightening rereading of several hackneyed interpretations of Fanny's career. Moreover, half of Blainey's book concerns Adelaide, who was one of the most famous English-born opera stars of the nineteenth century, and whose life heretofore has received only passing mention. Indeed, it is Adelaide's story that seems to dominate this book and it is her letters, written to the family of Count Thun in Bohemia between 1838 and 1879, that inform much of the scholarship behind the narrative.

Recent successful biographies of theatrical figures, such as Lisa Merrill's book about Charlotte Cushman and Michael Holroyd's multi-volume discussion of George Bernard Shaw, place their subject not only within historical context but also within contemporary theoretical discourse. Not so with Blainey's biography, which is a much more traditional exploration and, in parts, woefully heterosexist. While certain theoretical overtures (especially in regard to a performance analysis of the sisters' stage careers) might have added texture and insight to Blainey's recounting, her book is—generally speaking—a delightful read, lively and moving, and provides a fascinating new glimpse into the lives of both sisters.

One of the book's strengths lies in its questioning of repeated tropes concerning Fanny's acting career and her relationship to her slave-owning and supposedly much despised husband Pierce Butler. According to most accounts, Fanny loathed the stage and only trod upon the boards to rescue her father Charles from debt and to save from ruin the Covent Garden Theatre, which he managed. She was a dutiful and self-sacrificing daughter, appearing in public only out of what she herself described as a sacred motive. Although Fanny's debut as an actress was indeed motivated by her father's financial burdens and her later publications indicate that she always hated the profession, Blainey argues that, contrary to popular opinion, Fanny's letters reveal that she actually adored acting and yearned to return to the stage after her marriage to Butler forbade it. In fact, Fanny found the stage so compelling and the euphoria of public performance so overwhelming that she feared embracing a career that could become so addicting. If Fanny did later convey the...