In the preface of the inaugural issue of The Dramatic Mirror and Literary Companion, "the Author" calls for Americans to emulate England's respect for drama: In England dramatic history is a portion of its literature, identified with its interests, linked to its destiny, and associated with the proudest names in the highest walks of learning and science, who deemed it no disgrace, not only to indite plays but make them the subject of learned criticisms, in fact all their productions show a striking partiality for the welfare of the drama (The Author. The Dramatic Mirror and Literary Companion 1. 1:1). The assumed alliance between literature and theater belies the fact that both were considered morally suspicious activities and raised concerns of immersion into a fictional world of excited sensations. Literature and theater frequently justified themselves with claims of edification; one reads novels and views plays, not for entertainment, but to learn.^The Dramatic Mirror and Literary Companion insists that the theater has moral potential and responsibility, but in the 19th century, the theater was still associated with prostitution and transgressions of class, race, and gender boundaries. The Dramatic Mirror's emphasis on the moral wholesomeness of particular plays, its frequent call for a renewed American theater, and criticisms of immodest behavior in theaters (e. g., throwing wreaths and flowers, and the excessive use of standing ovations) in subsequent issues demonstrate the periodical's preoccupation with convincing a skeptical audience of the theater's moral worth. Literature did not welcome the camaraderie with the theater that The Dramatic Mirror suggests, despite the intertwining of literary and theatrical spheres; the novel often sought identification with middle class moral standards by contrasting itself with theater. Seduction, the passions, and the body threaten to derail education and lead to moral ruin.^Critics of fiction claimed the same threats existed in novel-reading, which literature projects onto the theater as a means of identifying fictional genres with education. The ideal novel-reader is a private individual intellectually detached and grounded in reality, while the theater-goer is susceptible to sensuality, loss of individual identity, the passions. The theater seduces, but the novel only teaches. Actresses often appear in novels as figures of seduction, violent emotion, and moral corruption; they are inevitably fallen women and examples of lost innocence, especially in the didactic genre of the morality tale. The Bildungsroman came to dominate the novelistic form, but in the early 19th century, the morality tale was a staple of children's education, particularly young girls'.^While the Bildungsroman illustrates the hero's education through lived experience, the morality tale strives to educate the reader through vicarious experience, providing a cautionary example of the characters' failed education. This thesis examines performance, deception, and seduction in relation to education. Kierkegaard's claim that seduction and education belong to the same movement, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Bildungsroman/educational treatise Emile will provide a theoretical context for examining nineteenth century fiction's complex relationship to performativity, the passions, the body, seduction, and education, particularly the education of women. Female education typically consisted of preparation for marriage and motherhood, as well as a few "pretty" accomplishments such as playing the piano or sketching. The ideal woman was not worldly or virtuous, but innocent and pleasant, suitable for the domestically-bound roles of wife, hostess, and mother.^Even in this construction, however, female education is entwined with performance, desire and the passions, since she is educated to be an attractive partner for a man. For example, Rousseau bans art from Emile's education until adolescence, but the stage plays a crucial role in the education of Sophie, an education directed towards molding Sophie into the proper object of Emile's desire. The novel also introduced further complications regarding female education, since many women gained an informal education through reading fiction. Women's informal education was also tied to the passions and imagination; the novel readership was largely female, and many of the anxieties surrounding the harmful effects of novel-reading are also anxieties about the state of women's education and the possibility of corrupting their innocence through their excessive, sensual interest in fiction. If the novel teaches, it also threatens to seduce.^Marriage is the typical frame of the female Bildungsroman; the woman's education is intimately tied to her experience of romantic love, and the proper husband is also the proper tutor. In the morality tale, the improper lover serves as a tutor of vice, corrupting the woman's innocence and introducing her to the passions without the knowledge necessary to control them. Susanna Rowson's extremely popular novel Charlotte Temple, however, illustrates the dangers of such a limited education. Many girls' academies, including Rowson's Young Ladies Academy, were established in the early 19th century, indicating more serious interest and concern for formal female education. The literature includes seduction narratives and morality tales: Susanna Rowson's Charlotte Temple, and less widely read novels including Margaret Blount's Clifford and the Actress, Barry St. Leger's Mabel the Actress, and Richard Penn Smith's The Actress of Padua and Other Tales.^These lesser-known narratives are also concerned with education and seduction, particularly the seduction that leads the actress to the stage to become a seductress herself, and later, her education through an impossible love interest. All of these narratives pivot on the actress' rejection of the stage for romantic love, at which point she transforms from a potentially violent and morally questionable character into a noble, self-sacrificing heroine. The actress is denied the typical female Bildungsroman of education through marriage, and receives only a negative education of the virtue she has already lost. Such an education of what must be denied the fallen woman indicates an anxiety over the ability of the arts to teach without also corrupting; if the novel also seduces and excites the passions, it threatens to morally corrupt the reader, rendering useless the instruction in virtue it might provide.^The morality tale's didactic effectiveness depends on its preemptive intervention, providing an example that does not amount to a real experience of vice. Theatrical publications such as The Dramatic Mirror and Literary Companion will provide theater's attempts to appeal to middle class morality and claim theater's educational benefits. "The Seducer's Diary" from Kierkegaard's Either/Or is important for contrasting the male seducer/aesthete with the seductress/aesthetic object of the actress in other narratives; Kierkegaard's seducer also functions to seduce the reader, so that the Judge in the second part may counter the errors into which the aesthete's narrative lures the reader. Susanna Rowson's academy and nineteenth century writings on female education will also be addressed and considered in reference to Rousseau's Emile.