ACTRESSES AS WORKING WOMEN by the actress whose independence, education, allure, and flouting of sexual mores (unavoidable conditions of the work) gave her access to the male ruling elite while preventing her from being accepted by right-thinking and—especially—feminine society Like most prejudices, this depended chiefly on ignorance, fear, and the perception of exceptions as general rules In Henry F Chorley’s 1845 novel Pomfret, the English characters reveal their stock of prejudices when an eminent opera singer, Helena Porzheim, comes within their sphere Although Chorley exaggerates for a slightly comic effect, the assumptions and rumours that he details about Porzheim are a checklist of uppermiddle class Anglo-Saxons’ social anxieties: She was the daughter of a noble family somewhere in Austria, who had been cast out by her relations for wishing to go on the stage She was the niece of a Jew rope-dancer… She had stilettoed one of her lovers at Milan with her own hands Two duels had been going to be fought about her, had not Government interfered, and sent her out of Lombardy with an armed escort One duel had been fought with pistols, in her own coach, as she drove from the theatre; and both combatants were dead One was an Englishman There had been no duel at all; but she had certainly embezzled large sums of money, and lost them all at play… She had slapped his Majesty of Wurtemberg in the face in his own box She travelled with loaded pistols in her cabas She never spoke to women She belonged to the Greek Church She had previously injured her eyes while playing at Tarocco [Tarot] She never stirred a mile without a physician, a secretary, and two adopted children.2 Porzheim’s singing and acting transfixes the Pomfret circle Their social encounters demonstrate the unjustified persecution of a wholly modest woman, yet Mrs Pomfret’s views on artists such as Porzheim are intractable: There is something in the publicity of the lives these people must lead, which must end in the total destruction of everything like delicacy They may have great virtues, I will concede; but they are best seen from a distance.’3 Only the younger generation sees the machinery of class privilege and cultural habituation that perpetuates actresses’ stigma Miss Pomfret argues: 70