Julia Margaret Cameron’s Dimbola: Victorian Photographic Tableaux Vivants and the Art of Domestic Performance

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This essay examines how Julia Margaret Cameron’s home, Dimbola, functioned as an artistic and cultural space shaped by her staged photographic performances at home associated with Victorian theatrical home entertainment. Many critics have dismissed the significance of women’s activities within the home as mere domestic work intended to fulfill practical needs, thereby reducing the domestic and feminine space of the home to a place of rest. However, this essay argues that Cameron's lady’s touch in the house was her artistic and cultural work to create her own domestic culture. By seamlessly blending creative photographic work with domestic responsibilities, this essay suggests that Cameron transformed her home into a cultural hothouse for theatrical performances and the creative production of photographic tableaux vivants of literature. The essay first explores how Cameron established her own domestic theater culture, reflecting the public Victorian entertainment traditions of tableaux vivants and amateur theatricals. This essay then examines how Cameron’s domestic theatrical culture intersected with her staged photography by reflecting her radical and modern understanding of her era. This analysis is exemplified by Cameron’s photographed tableaux vivants, Vivien and Merlin, based on Alfred Tennyson’s “Merlin and Vivien” from Idylls of the King.