Part One is an examination of four areas in colonial society where certain relationships forged particular sexual, racial and gendered identities, which illustrate how anxiety about gender, race and sexuality was manifested and expressed by convict women and by the male officials who attempted to contain them.

In Chapter One, on board the convict ships, we can see how the confined space on these ships created anxiety about sexual order and disorder and how these dynamics defined a particular relationship between the ships' surgeons and the convict women. Mutiny and rebellion on these ships carried sexual meaning as women came to be defined as the agents of disorder.

This theme of disorder is further developed in Chapter Two. Once ashore, we trace how the presence of convict women on the colonial landscape came to represent an anxiety about the polluted nature of women's sexuality, thus unsettling masculine self-control. The racial implications of discussions of convict women are explored as a means of understanding how white, ruling-class, masculine identity was shaped vis-à-vis convict women's difference. In Chapters One and Two, the themes of looking and seeing, sensory delight and deprivation are also pivotal in these interactions.

The different avenues of resistance available to convict women are considered in Chapter Three. These are analysed in terms of how resistance assumed different meanings for men and women, especially in terms of the expression of convict women's desire and pleasure.