To what extent does one’s character determine one’s actions? Which of his actions, if not all, make up a man’s character? Most importantly, is virtue to be located first in character, intention, or action? These questions worried Enlightenment thinkers who sought to ground morality in human nature rather than divine or natural law, a project that necessarily granted “character” a certain pride of place in eighteenth-century philosophical and literary culture. My project traces a genealogy of character by looking at what it meant to act OUT of character and by putting pressure on notions of interiority and free will.