caa a22 4500 378884298 CHVBK 20180305123439.0 cr unu---uuuuu 161128e200407 xx s 000 0 eng 10.1515/zaa.2004.52.3.213 doi (NATIONALLICENCE)gruyter-10.1515/zaa.2004.52.3.213 Klaiber Isabell "A Woman Could (Not) Do It” - Role-Play as a Strategy of ‘Feminine' Self-Empowerment in L.M. Alcott's "Behind a Mask,” "La Jeune,” and "A Marble Woman” [Elektronische Daten] [Isabell Klaiber] Alcott's sensational stories about actresses and female artists provide the perfect field for experiments with alternative gender roles as women of these professions do not seem to fulfill ordinary female roles in the first place. While literary scholars generally agree on the emancipating use of disguises in Alcott's sensational fiction, the various purposes gender roles are exploited for have not yet been investigated in any detail. This essay shows that, through their subversive play with established gender categories, some of Alcott's female characters determine their own social identities as women. Their ‘unfeminine' deceptions of others explicitly serve their ‘feminine' virtues and, thus, eventually help to empower these figures as ‘true women.' In these morally hybrid and sensational female characters, Alcott expands the established repertoire of oppositional female types such as the ‘true woman' and the femme fatale by introducing the alternative, more complex and individualistic gender category of a ‘feminine femme fatale.' © 2014 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik De Gruyter 52/3(2004-07), 213-230 52:3<213 2004 52 zaa https://doi.org/10.1515/zaa.2004.52.3.213 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1515/zaa.2004.52.3.213 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Klaiber Isabell NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik De Gruyter 52/3(2004-07), 213-230 52:3<213 2004 52 zaa CC0 http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0 nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-gruyter