Description |
199 pages : illustrations,portraits ; 24cm |
Series |
Picturing history |
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Picturing history.
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Contents |
1. Watching Hannah -- 2. Harriet's Nose: Horror, Bodily De-formation and Femininity -- 3. Venus in Dirt: Servitude and Mastery -- 4. Disordering Bodies: Gender Hybridity -- 5. Dorothy's Hands: Feminizing Men -- 6. Sexuating Arthur |
Summary |
"Watching Hannah describes and sets into context the obsession of a Victorian gentleman and civil servant, Arthur Munby (1828-1910), with the bodies of working-class and disfigured women. It was a fascination that led to his eventual secret marriage to the maidservant Hannah Cullwick - a relationship grounded in a complex interweaving of class, gender and racial hierarchies. Although the story of Munby's obsessions has been told before, Barry Reay provides a totally new approach, drawing on a vast archive of letters, photographs, poems and sketches. His book details Munby's fixation with female bodies, in particular with the daily disruptions of Victorian male ideals of femininity through bodily exertion, dirt and deformity. However, Watching Hannah is far more than an account of a fetishist of hardworking female hands. Reay unpacks one man's fantasies to reveal wider male preoccupations with femininity, the body, deformity, masculinity and - most of all - sexuality during a pivotal point in European history."--Book Jacket. h@ |
Notes |
Author is Professor of History at the University of Auckland, New Zealand |
Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
Notes |
English |
Subject |
Munby, Arthur Joseph, 1828-1910.
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Cullwick, Hannah, 1833-1909.
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Women employees -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century.
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Body image -- History -- 19th century.
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Femininity -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century.
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Working class women -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century.
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Women -- Employment -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century.
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Women employees.
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SUBJECT |
Great Britain -- Social conditions -- 19th century. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85056943
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LC no. |
2007310170 |
ISBN |
1861891199 : |
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