Watching Hannah: Sexuality, Horror and Bodily De-Formation in Victorian England - Rilegato

Reay, Barry

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 1861891199 ISBN 13: 9781861891198

Casa editrice: Reaktion Books, 2002

Riassunto

Arthur Munby (1828–1910) was a Victorian gentleman from a respected family of Yorkshire lawyers. He left behind diaries that record his life-long obsession with working-class Victorian women, whom he interviewed, photographed and wrote about. This obsession led to his relationship with, and eventual secret marriage to, his maidservant Hannah Cullwick.

Working women fascinated Munby because they disrupted his Victorian ideal of femininity: their bodies were altered by physical exertion and dirt, and they were also often deformed by disease. Drawing not only on the diaries but also on a vast, untapped archive of documents, photographs, poems and sketches, Watching Hannah is far more than an account of a compulsive observer of working women and a fetishist of hard-working female hands, however. The author analyzes Munby's obsessions in relation to changing definitions of gender, sexual identity and class to reveal wider male preoccupations with femininity, the body, deformity, masculinity and – most of all – sexuality, at a pivotal point in European history.

Su questo libro

L'autore:

Barry Reay is Professor of History at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. His books include Popular Cultures in England, 1550–1750 (1998).

Product Description:

Book by Reay Barry

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Reaktion Books
• Data di pubblicazione: 2002
• ISBN 10: 1861891199
• ISBN 13: 9781861891198
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero edizione: 1
• Numero di pagine: 224