Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-xtgtn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T12:12:11.742Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

THE GOVERNESS, HER BODY, AND THRESHOLDS IN THE ROMANCE OF LUST

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 March 2014

Duc Dau
Duc Dau*
Affiliation:
University of Western Australia
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In his groundbreaking study of Victorian pornography, The Other Victorians, Steven Marcus draws on passages from The Romance of Lust (1873–76) to elucidate his now-famous term, “pornotopia.” To Marcus's mind, this text, like other pornographic novels, has few, if any, redeeming features. While the literary novel fleshes out the lives of its characters, pornography dwells endlessly on fleshly relations, he argues. Pornography, in fact, tends towards utopian fantasy, towards pornotopia. “More than most utopias,” says Marcus, “pornography takes the injunction of its etymology literally – it may be said largely to exist at no place, and to take place in nowhere” (268). In a pornotopia, time is always bedtime (269), life begins not at birth but at the moment of sexual awakening (270), and relations between characters are merely juxtapositions of bodies, body parts, and organs (274). Introducing an orgy scene from The Romance of Lust, Marcus asserts, “[t]his novel comes as close as anything I know to being a pure pornotopia in the sense that almost every human consideration apart from sexuality is excluded from it” (274). Pornography's lack, that is, its apparent disconnection from realistic settings and human relations, is a consequence and sign of human deprivation. “Pornotopia could in fact only have been imagined by persons who have suffered extreme deprivation,” he holds, “and I do not by this mean sexual deprivation in the genital sense alone. . . . The insatiability depicted in it seems to me to be literal insatiability, and the orgies endlessly represented are the visions of permanently hungry men” (273). Thus, “[i]nside of every pornographer there is an infant screaming for the breast from which he has been torn” (274).

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 42 , Issue 2 , June 2014 , pp. 281 - 302
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Acton, William. The Functions and Disorders of the Reproductive Organs in Youth, in Adult Age, and in Advanced Life. 3rd ed. London: John Churchill, 1857.Google Scholar
Aldrich, Robert. The Seduction of the Mediterranean: Writing, Art and Homosexual Fantasy. London: Routledge, 1993.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ashbee, Henry Spencer [Pisanus Fraxi, pseud.]. Catena Librorum Tacendorum. New York: Jack Brussel, 1962.Google Scholar
Ashbee, Henry Spencer. Index Librorum Prohibitorum. New York: Jack Brussel, 1962.Google Scholar
Bernstein, Susan David. “Designs after Nature: Evolutionary Fashions, Animals, and Gender.” Victorian Animal Dreams: Representations of Animals in Victorian Literature and Culture. Ed. Denenholz Morse, Deborah and Danahay, Martin A.. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007. 65–79.Google Scholar
Bhabha, Homi. “The Third Space – Interview with Homi Bhabha.” Identity: Community, Culture, Difference. Ed. Rutherford, Jonathan. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990. 207–21.Google Scholar
Castle, Terry, ed. The Literature of Lesbianism: A Historical Anthology from Ariosto to Stonewall. New York: Columbia UP, 2003.Google Scholar
Cleland, John. Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure: Fanny Hill. Frogmore: Mayflower Books, 1973.Google Scholar
Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. “Monster Culture (Seven Theses).” Monster Theory: Reading Culture. Ed. Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1996. 3–25.Google Scholar
Colligan, Colette. The Traffic in Obscenity from Byron to Beardsley: Sexuality and Exoticism in Nineteenth-Century Print Culture. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.Google Scholar
Collins, Richard. “Marian's Moustache: Bearded Ladies, Hermaphrodites, and Intersexual Collage in The Woman in White.” The Sensational Wilkie Collins: Reality's Dark Light. Ed. Bachman, Maria K. and Richard Cox, Don. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 2003. 131–72.Google Scholar
Collins, Wilkie. The Woman in White. Ed. Sutherland, John. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, Volume 1. Transl. Hurley, Robert. London: Penguin, 1998.Google Scholar
Frantz, David O. Festum Voluptatis: A Study of Renaissance Erotica. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1989.Google Scholar
Girdwood, G. F. “On Hermaphroditism.” Lancet 2 Dec. 1859: 639–41.Google Scholar
Hall, Donald E. “Graphic Sexuality and the Erasure of a Polymorphous Perversity.” RePresenting Bisexualities: Subjects and Cultures of Fluid Desire. Ed. Hall, Donald E. and Pramaggiore, Maria. New York: New York UP, 1996. 99–123.Google Scholar
Hills, William C. “A Case of Hermaphroditism.” Lancet 25 Jun. 1873: 129–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunt, Lynn. “Introduction: Obscenity and Origins of Modernity, 1500–1800.” The Invention of Pornography: Obscenity and the Origins of Modernity, 1500–1800. Ed. Hunt, Lynn. New York: Zone Books, 1993. 9–45.Google Scholar
“Julia Pastrana and Her Child.” Lancet 3 May 1862: 467–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kearney, Patrick J. A History of Erotic Literature. London: Macmillan, 1982.Google Scholar
Kendrick, Walter. The Secret Museum: Pornography in Modern Culture. Berkeley: U of California P, 1996.Google Scholar
Krafft-Ebing, Richard von. Psychopathia Sexualis, With Special Reference to the Antipathic Sexual Instinct. 12th ed. Trans. Rebman, F. J.. New York: Rebman Company, n.d.Google Scholar
Laqueur, Thomas. Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1992.Google Scholar
Lecaros, Cecila Wadsö. “The Victorian Heroine Goes A-Governessing.” Silent Voices: Forgotten Novels by Victorian Women Writers. Ed. Ayres, Brenda. Westport: Praeger, 2003. 27–56.Google Scholar
Loney, William. “On a Case of Hermaphroditism.” Lancet 7 Jun. 1856: 624–25.Google Scholar
Lutz, Deborah. Pleasure Bound: Victorian Sex Rebels and the New Eroticism. New York: W. W. Norton, 2011.Google Scholar
Marcus, Steven. The Other Victorians: A Study in Sexuality and Pornography in Mid-Nineteenth-Century England. New York: Basic Books, 1974.Google Scholar
Martial. “Epigram VII.67.” Trans. George Augustus Sala. Castle. 488–89.Google Scholar
McCalman, Iain. Radical Underworld: Prophets, Revolutionaries, and Pornographers in London, 1795–1840. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1988.Google Scholar
McClintock, Anne. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. New York: Routledge, 1995.Google Scholar
Mendes, Peter. Clandestine Erotic Fiction in English 1800–1930: A Bibliographical Study. Aldershot: Scolar, 1993.Google Scholar
Munich, Adrienne. Queen Victoria's Secrets. New York: Columbia UP, 1996.Google Scholar
Ofek, Galia. Representations of Hair in Victorian Literature and Culture. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009.Google Scholar
Pal-Lapinski, Piya. The Exotic Woman in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction and Culture: A Reconsideration. Lebanon: U of New Hampshire P, 2005.Google Scholar
Peakman, Julie. Mighty Lewd Books: The Development of Pornography in Eighteenth-Century England. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.Google Scholar
Pease, Allison. Modernism: Mass Culture and the Aesthetics of Obscenity. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000.Google Scholar
Pfister, Manfred. “Introduction.” The Fatal Gift of Beauty: The Italies of British Travellers. An Annotated Anthology. Ed. Pfister, Manfred. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996. 1–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poovey, Mary. Uneven Developments: The Ideological Work of Gender in Mid-Victorian England. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1988.Google Scholar
Porter, Roy, and Hall, Lesley. The Facts of Life: The Creation of Sexual Knowledge in Britain, 1650–1950. New Haven: Yale UP, 1995.Google Scholar
The Romance of Lust. Originally publ. as 4 vols. Ware: Wordsworth Edition, 1995.Google Scholar
Roodenburg, Herman. “Venus Minsieke Gasthuis: Sexual Beliefs in Eighteenth-Century Holland.” From Sappho to De Sade: Moments in the History of Sexuality. Ed. Bremmer, Jan. London: Routledge, 1989. 84–102.Google Scholar
Rosenman, Ellen Bayuk. Unauthorized Pleasures: Accounts of Victorian Erotic Experience. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2003.Google Scholar
Sade, Marquis de. “Philosophy in the Bedroom.” Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom and Other Writings. London: Arrow, 1991. 177–367.Google Scholar
Schick, Irvin C. The Erotic Margin: Sexuality and Spatiality in Alteritist Discourse. London: Verso, 1999.Google Scholar
Sigel, Lisa Z. Governing Pleasures: Pornography and Social Change in England, 1815-1914. Piscataway: Rutgers UP, 2002.Google Scholar
Sigel, Lisa Z. “Introduction: Issues and Problems in the History of Pornography.” International Exposure: Perspectives on Modern European Pornography, 1800–2000. Ed. Sigel, Lisa Z.. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2005. 1–26.Google Scholar
Sigel, Lisa Z. “The Rise of the Overly Affectionate Family: Incestuous Pornography and Displaced Desire among the Edwardian Middle Class.” International Exposure: Perspectives on Modern European Pornography, 1800–2000. Ed. Sigel, Lisa Z.. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2005. 100–24.Google Scholar
Stern, Rebecca. “Our Bear Woman, Ourselves: Affiliating with Julia Pastrana.” Victorian Freaks: The Social Context of Freakery in Britain. Ed. Tromp, Marlene. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2008. 200–33.Google Scholar
Stephens, Elizabeth. “Pathologizing Leaky Male Bodies: Spermatorrhea in Nineteenth-Century British Medicine and Popular Anatomical Museums.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 17 (2008): 421–38.Google Scholar
Storr, Merl. “The Sexual Reproduction of ‘Race’: Bisexuality, History and Racialization.” The Bisexual Imaginary: Representations, Identity and Desire. Ed. Bi Academic Intervention, , Storr, Merll, Davidson, Phoebe, Eadie, Jo. London: Cassell, 1997. 73–88.Google Scholar
Swinburne, Algernon Charles. The Swinburne Letters. Ed. Lang, Cecil Y.. 6 Vols. New Haven: Yale UP, 1959.Google Scholar
A Treatise of Hermaphrodites. London: n.p., 1718.Google Scholar
Tromp, Marlene, and Valerius, Karyn. “Toward Situating the Freak.” Victorian Freaks: The Social Context of Freakery in Britain. Ed. Tromp, Marlene. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2008. 1–18.Google Scholar
Turner, Victor W. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969.Google Scholar
Williams, Linda. Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the “Frenzy of the Visible”. 1989. Berkeley: U of California P, 1999.Google Scholar
Young, Robert J. C.Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race. London: Routledge, 1995.Google Scholar