In nineteenth-century England, the theatre and the theatre district, where ballet and dancers were seen, represented spaces where conventional notions of gender, class and respectability were transgressed and negotiated. In this article, Nead discusses how different parts of the city allowed individuals, particularly women, to take on and exploit different roles and how this transgression of Victorian boundaries between female/male, domestic/public, and interior/exterior was problematic for middle-class Victorians who attempted to control and police conventions of morality and respectability. Since the ballet took place in theatres where these transgressions and negotiations occurred (respectable middle-class women vs. promiscuous and sexually-available dancers), Nead’s article will help me explore how women were both consumers and producers of gender identities that society both upheld and condemned and how these roles were manipulated.