A scandalously successful life as an actress and a tragically early death seemed to cast Aimée Desclée in a stereotypical romantic mould, as did a succession of emotionally-fraught roles, notably in the plays of the younger Dumas. But contemporaries praised the new realism she brought to the passionately wayward women she portrayed. In what did this ‘realism’ consist, and in whose eyes did the virtual equation of female desire with neurosis constitute ‘reality’? John Stokes, who teaches in the Department of English in the University of Warwick, here follows an outline of her career and its context with detailed examinations of the creation, nature, and reception of her most famous roles – finally exploring the effects of the events surrounding the creation of the Third Republic and the impact of the Paris Commune of 1870 on the way in which male playwrights and audiences perceived the women she played in her later years. John Stokes recently contributed the section on Bernhardt to Bernhardt. Terry. Duse: the Actress in her Time, with Michael Booth and Susan Bassnett (Cambridge, 1988).
