Unpacking Rachel Félix's “constructed” and “self-constructed” Jewishness

Abstract

This paper aims at unpacking the cultural, historical and political significance behind the representations (including pictures, caricatures, journalistic articles, etc.) and self-representations of Rachel Félix (1821–1858), the first prominent Jewish performer on the French and British and American stage, as a prism which may afford a broader discussion about the literary formations of the figure the Jewish female artist Félix, renowned for her exquisite beauty and daring sensuality, serves as an excellent paradigm of how Jewish artists used and, at times, manipulated their “biblical"/"oriental"/ “sensual” beauty with the aim of promoting their artistic career. My discussion, adopting a New Historicist outlook, also aims at explaining the correlation between such literary formations and their political implications with regards to the representation of Jewish artists. Since the identity of an actress is so obviously “constructed,” and because of the intricate relationship between the Jewishness, artistic vocation and femininity, the figure of Félix provides a direct engagement with a particular set of cultural and political assumptions about Jewish female artists. Looking at Félix's literary and artistic representations by her contemporaries and at her own self-representation as reflected on the stage and in her letters leads us to a better understanding of the relationship between the cultural, political and artistic constructs of Jewish female artists.