Search

Poverty and prostitution were some of the most important concerns for the Victorian mind and lots of associations and charities were established by the middle-class who tried to put an end to what was known as the “Great Social Evil”. At the same time, violence against women was another issue that provoked social uproar, especially when murder in strange circumstances happened. Many of the victims of this gender and sexual violence were fallen women marked by the stigma of their lack of respectability. Their bodies were disposable bodies and their lives were considered wasted lives not deserving the human condition. The Metropolitan Murder (2004) is part of Lee Jackson’s neo-Victorian trilogy whose protagonist Inspector Decimus Webb has as his aim to solve mysteries associated with the dark side of Victorian London. Also, he tries to restore order in the metropolis and clean it of the contamination and pollution that poverty and depravity convey. These characteristics find their echo in our current societies in the wasted lives of individuals who belong to the category of the “outcasts”. The aim of this paper is to analyse the lives of women in the Victorian past who carried the stigma of poverty and prostitution and were victims of all kinds of violence and discrimination. This analysis will be done under the prism ot theories associated with the notion of “watsed lives” and under the umbrella of the detection genre in neo-Victorian fiction. Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech.

This article touches upon issues of captivity, suppression, misrepresentations and exclusion of black people from a historical and cultural point of view through the analysis of Chase-Riboud’s neo-Victorian novel Hottentot Venus (2003). It also focuses on the implications and consequences for contemporary South Africa of situations of slavery and exploitation of African descended peoples. Notions of identity and moral and legal inclusion of black women into past and contemporary societies and communities will be also discussed from the point of view of postcolonial and gender and sexuality studies. The complexities of blackness and the violation of human rights as a result of these will be a substantial argument throughout the text represented in the historical and fictional character of the Venus Hottentot. She was seen as the icon of sexual deviancy and became a victim of the white colonizer as the embodiment of black racialized sexuality for Europeans. However, despite her vulnerability, in the narrative she gains agency in resistance in Butlerean terms. In the Hottentot Venus, Barbara Chase-Riboud tries to bring to light the experience and the memory of slavery as they constitute a key element in the reconstruction of the past and in the construction of a better future. Similarly, the process of recovery and identity construction in a postcolonial era determined by the traces of colonial trauma is an important element in the fictionalization of Sarah Baartman’s life as an icon of the idealization and problematization of South-Africa. These issues bring to the fore questions of race and feminism, the idealization of the colonies and colonized people in contrast with white imperial subjects, and the consideration of the contemporary neo-slave narrative as a neo-Victorian genre.

This special issue addresses contemporary representations of “vulnerable” bodies in transit in Anglophone literature and culture and explores their strategies of resistance. The use of the expression “bodies in transit” in this issue has to be understood both as a reference to the materiality of diasporic, exiled, migrating, trafficked bodies, and as an allusion to the metaphorical transition of these marginalized subjects from alienation to regeneration in multiple contexts. The interdisciplinary contributions in this special issue tackle vulnerability as a marginal(ized) and potentially enabling condition entailing the crossing of bodily, sexual, mental, ethical, cultural, and national borders. Ranging from literature to cinema, theatre and media, the articles address literary and cultural representations of historical, as well as racial, medical, and neo-liberal violence, in order to explore individual and collective forms of resilience emerging from vulnerability and marginalization.

The aim of my participation in this round table is to make an approach to an analysis of contemporary historical fiction through the lens of theories of vulnerability and resistance. In particular, I would like to address postcolonial neo-Victorian fiction in the light of Judith Butler’s most recent ideas. One of the main features of neo-Victorianism is the re-writing of the Victorian past to discuss contentious topics of the present. The presence of Victorian culture in our contemporary societies is so outstanding that issues that preoccupied the Victorian mind such as violence, sexuality or Empire have become the main topics of controversy in neo-Victorian productions of our time. On this particular occasion, I am very interested in making an analysis of how the Victorian colonial setting has an echo in new forms of imperialism. The relations between the metropolis and its colonised territories around the world in the nineteenth century can be seen as the forerunners of the relationships between old colonial powers like England and its old colonised subjetcs in Africa, Asia or Australia today. In this way, “traces” of the colonial past can be discerned in our postcolonial globalised ways of governing the planet. In this sense, the notion of the “Neo-Victorians-at-sea”, coined by Elizabeth Ho, becomes essential in the urdenstanding of England’s colonial and post-colonial power and its consequences for the re-writing of a history where the voices of “the other” can be heard. This notion of the voyage where identities become fluid with the sea and dependent on one another is especially relevant; even the ship can be envisioned as the colonial scenario where postcolonial encounters take place. Re-writing history means resorting to nostalgia as a tool to remember the past, but at the same time post-colonialism can be interpreted as a memorial practice. Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech.

The Cambridge Female Refuge was an institution established in Cambridge Church Street in 1838 as a House of Mercy for the moral rescue of fallen women. Prostitution was a serious preoccupation at the time for both town and gown authorities. The University of Cambridge had its own regulations and female prison --the Spinning House -- to avoid promiscuity among students and the spread of venereal disease. The town authorities were also involved in the control of the trade in the areas under their jurisdiction. In this setting, this place was conceived as a refuge for women to return to the path of virtue and to be provided with proper employment at the beginning of the Victorian period . The aim was to instruct them religiously and morally to return them to their families and friends. In this sense, the aim of this paper is to demonstrate how the rules of the Cambridge Female Refuge reflect the ideology of containment and control of working-class women and the role of the local prominent classes and University authorities in philanthropy work that would mainly serve their interests. At the same time and following Judith Butler’s and Sarah Bracke’s theories, issues of vulnerability as well as of resilience and resistance concerning the inmates of the instituiton will be discussed in the light of archival sources. Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech.

Violence against women has been an important issue for neo-Victorian studies. Women’s bodies and minds have been the object of violence in Victorian times and historical fiction echoes traumas from the past that need restoration and healing in the present. Kate Williams’s The Pleasures of Men (2012) is an example of a novel where the protagonist, Catherine Sorgeiul, is a middle-class girl who lives in a house in the East of London with her uncle after a traumatic past. She needs to heal the scars of her suffering after becoming an orphan, but she believes herself to be evil. She feels a fascination for the murders committed by a serial killer nicknamed The Man of Crows in London in 1840. Catherine is a heroine with a vivid imagination and a mysterious past. This Gothic thriller takes the reader to a neo-Victorian city which becomes the landscape for female subjectless subjectivities. The victims of the killer and Catherine herself become fragmented, dislocated and haunted identities. London is the labyrinth where the lives of the poor and the destitute is precarious and has no value. The notion of Otherness can be found in the female victims as in Catherine herself, whose delirious psyche becomes akin to that of the killer. As the murders cause panic throughout the city, she comes to believe she can channel the voices of his victims and that they will lead her to the Man himself. However, lurking behind the lies she has been told about her past are secrets more deadly and devastating than anything her imagination can conjure. The aim of this paper is to show how neo-Victorian novels can speak about society’s crimes against women. These crimes need restoration and healing. At the same time, Judith Butler’s notions about vulnerability and resistance and Sarah Bracke’s ideas about resilience become relevant to claim for women’s agency after trauma as well as recovery through adaptation and forgiveness. Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

The aim of this round table is to present an overview of the aims, research topics and theoretical framework of the new project “Bodies in Transit 2: Genders, Mobilities, and Interdependencies”. This project has connections with the previous one, “Bodies in Transit: from Conflict to Healing” in its focus on embodiment, and on how bodies are historically transformed through social relations and their technologies from feminist, queer, and posthuman theoretical approaches, but departs from it by shifting the focus from violence and healing to the body and its metamorphoses within a wider network of human and non-human actions. Rather than approaching the topic in discontinuous units, ie. one isolated example of conflict (with ensuing trauma and healing process if any) in its contemporary literary rendering, we aim to look at bodies as immersed in ever-widening circles of relations and interdependences with other natural and/or social formations. This general topic comprises four specific concepts that will be addressed in four work packages: Embodiments, Mobilities, Interdependencies, and Accountability. Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the situation of prostitution in Cambridge and its regulation by the middle of the nineteenth century based on archival research. Cambridge Universitiy was characterised at the time by being a singular institution regarding its relationship with town and with the application of its own norms within its jurisdiction. As a consequence, the University of Cambridge had its own system of regulation of prostitution through a proctorial system within its boundaries and with a place of detention for prostitutes known as the Spnning House. In this place, located in Hobson’s Charity, St. Andrew’s Sreet, fallen women were confined for a number of days as a way of punishment for their immoral activity. In this University prison, women were detained under unsalubrious conditions which, on some occasions, ended in the illness or premature death of some of the inmates. In particular, I am going to focus this paper on the close scrutiny of the “Rules for the Government of the Spinning House” of 1849 and 1854, which include the regulation of the inmates’ behaviour together with their diet. Also the rules that applied to the Matron, the Chaplain and the Medical Officer will be discussed in the light of some census data and prison records. As a result, a number of issues concerning the treatment of Cambridge prostitutes by University authorities can be discerned. Also the dreadful consequences of the system and the implication of different social agents can be examined through the close reading of these primary sources. Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the situation of prostitution in Cambridge and its regulation by the middle of the nineteenth century based on archival research. Cambridge Universitiy was characterised at the time by being a singular institution regarding its relationship with town and with the application of its own norms within its jurisdiction. As a consequence, the University of Cambridge had its own system of regulation of prostitution through a proctorial system within its boundaries and with a place of detention for prostitutes known as the Spnning House. In this place, located in Hobson’s Charity, St. Andrew’s Sreet, fallen women were confined for a number of days as a way of punishment for their immoral activity. In this University prison, women were detained under unsalubrious conditions which, on some occasions, ended in the premature death of some of the inmates. In particular, I am going to focus this paper on one case study: the death of Elizabeth Howe being a prisoner in the Spinning House in 1846. From the testimonies upon oath of a numer of witnesses, including the keeper, the surgeon, and family, and neighbours and friends of the deceased together with the depositions of the coroner and the verdict of the jury after the enquiry, a number of issues concerning the treatment of Cambridge prostitutes by University authorities can be discerned. Also the dreadful consequences of the system and the implication of different social agents can be discussed through the close reading and analysis of these primary sources. Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech.

Pornography is and has been a contentious issue in the Victorian past and in our contemporary societies, and the role of women in the business has been very much discussed by Victorian and contemporary critics and academics alike. The concern is a double-edged matter: on the one hand, we have the question of women as writers of pornography and bookbinders of pornographic books, and, on the other, their role in the pornographic market as the victims of sexual exploitation. Both issues are an important concern for the neo-Victorian agenda with the publication of historical fictions that give voice to silenced matters. These fictions also reflect the presence of pornography in our contemporary world and question our modernity and civilisation regarding sexual matters. The Diary of Dora Damage (2008) by Belinda Starling provides us with the Victorian context to analyse the role of women in the pornographic trade and to decipher all the possibilities that the business provides both for their emancipation or discrimination. Dora Damage is a woman whose husband is a bookbinder in Lambeth in the 1850s. Her husband’s illness and the threat of ending up in the workhouse make her consider the possibility of becoming a bookbinder herself. However, although she starts working with “decent material” she finds herself working for certain members of the aristocracy binding pornographic texts. In the second half of the nineteenth century pornographic books circulated among members of certain private societies like Les Sauvages Nobles who consumed these obscene publications in private circles. This led to the passing of the first Obscene Publication Act of 1857. The selling of pornographic materials became a flourishing business and Holywell Street became the centre of all kinds of transactions. The aim of this paper is to contend that Dora achieves independence and agency in a man’s world and, at the same time, re-affirms her sexual identity despite being a Victorian wife and mother. This, in the context of a Neo-Victorian novel, will also allow us to analyse how pornography is not such a liberating and emancipating activity for the women of the new millenium. At the same time, Judith Butler’s notions of a precarious life, mourning and violence will provide the theoretical framework for this paper. Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech.

The London Lock Hospital was founded in the middle of the seventeenth century to cure venereal disease both in men and women, following the trend of specialized hospitals that proliferated in the period. A few decades later, the London Lock Asylum was erected by public subscription to seclude fallen women released from hospital who showed an inclination at reform. However, by the second half of the nineteenth century, another philanthropic activity was added to that of the Hospital and Asylum, which consisted in the development of two new branches of the Institution: the Missionary one and the Educational one. Following the pattern of Lady Visitors who devoted their time to the religious instruction of inmates in institutions and working-class homes of the 1860s to the 1890s, City Missionaries proliferated and the London Lock became involved in this movement and was known as the Dean Street Mission. The Mission Woman did rescue-work with female out-patients but also visited them in their homes and places of accommodation. Also, through the London Lock Chapel, a number of organizations were established to help the poor of the district with food, clothes and money matters such as the Friendly Visiting Society, the London City Mission (Westbourne Green District), the Provident Society, the Westbourne Penny Provident Bank, the Soup Kitchen and the Dorcas Society. As far as education and religious instruction were concerned, the Westbourne Schools, St. John’s Servants’ School, Bible classes, and Sunday and Night Schools were run to provide children, men and women with some basic knowledge or to train them in working-class professions. Finally, leisure activities were organized together with the educational ones, and the Mission House and the Young Men’s Society provided people in the area with instruction in moral habits and decent entertainment. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to prove how the London Lock became involved as an Institution in the process of indoctrinating and educating the poor and the former inmates of the Hospital and Asylum as well as in the philanthropic and missionary work which characterized the Social Purity Movement of the latter part of the Victorian period. As happened with similar institutions of the time, the evangelical spirit and the middle-class values in relation to notions of morality and respectability impregnated all the activities aimed at the reformation of the working poor and the transformation of their identities. The information in this paper is based on the research conducted on the archives kept at the Royal College of Surgeons of England in London, and informed by a postmodern and discourse theory approach to the history of medicine. Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech.

In his third Inspector Decimus Webb novel, a detective from Scotland Yard, Jackson Lee re-appropriates the crime-fiction genre to portray several stories of gender abuse and violence. Several women become the victims of “The Cutter”, including Rose Perffit, who is an aspiring debutante and the daughter of a respectable middle-class family. At the same time Lee makes use of the Neo-Victorian genre to recover aspects of the Victorian archive like the popular pleasure gardens, a kind of public entertainment that provides the setting to discuss issues of morality, sexual exploitation and reform so important for the Victorian mind but also of relevance in our contemporary societies. The role of religion and rescue work is emphasized from the very beginning, and allusions to many events and cultural aspects of the period are frequent, following the Neo-Victorian trend of re-writing the past. Also, the novel’s commitment to the crime-fiction genre facilitates the appearance of chaos and disorder—a natural feature of crime fiction—within society and, furthermore, creates the atmosphere for the investigation of the mystery, the restoration of order—when possible—and the pursuit of the truth in the hands of the male protagonist. This attempt at the restoration of order is also a prevalent characteristic of our contemporary chaotic world. Following Julia’s Kristeva’s notion of the abject and Judith Butler’s theories of gender, violence and mourning, this paper aims to discuss issues of the Victorian neglected other and contemporary concerns about the deaths and suffering of the “prostituted other”. Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech.

La presente tesis está dedicada al estudio de los Asilos de Magdalenas, creados durante el siglo XVII y destinados a mujeres que al encontrarse en una situación desfavorable no se adaptaban al código moral que la Iglesia y el Estado imponían, así como al análisis de los productos culturales creados sobre el tema. La tesis se divide en dos partes. Dentro de la primera parte podemos encontrar una breve seguida de los capítulos uno—dedicado al estudio del catolicismo irlandés—y dos—centrado en la revisión histórica de estas instituciones en Irlanda. Dentro de la segunda parte, podemos encontrar una breve introducción seguida del capítulo tres, cuatro y cinco. Estos tres capítulos están dedicados al análisis exhaustivo de novelas, películas y obras de teatro basadas en los Asilos de Magdalenas. Finalmente, el último capítulo está dedicado al establecimiento de conclusiones generales. En general, mi intención en esta tesis ha sido triple: cuestionar el trabajo social que se creía que las monjas y las mujeres filántropas desarrollaban con el establecimiento de Hogares de Rescate y Asilos de Magdalenas en Irlanda, ver cómo la cultura popular y la literatura han contribuido a la comprensión y reconstrucción del pasado irlandés y volver a definir la identidad irlandesa y el lugar que ocupan las mujeres en Irlanda dando voz a este grupo minoritario, siempre subyugado por la doctrina católica. Tras llevar a cabo los objetivos marcados anteriormente, puedo concluir que los Asilos de Magdalenas sirvieron como medio de represión; la cultura popular y la literatura han contribuido a la comprensión y reconstrucción del pasado irlandés ayudando a esas mujeres en las secuelas de una juventud traumática; finalmente, la vulnerabilidad no es una condición natural de las mujeres sino una impuesta por las instituciones de poder que las subyugan.

International audience