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Book Cover
Book
Author Reay, Barry.

Title Watching Hannah : sexuality, horror and bodily de-formation in Victorian England / Barry Reay
Published London : Reaktion, 2002

Copies

Location Call no. Vol. Availability
 MELB  305.4209410934 Rea/Whs  AVAILABLE
Description 199 pages : illustrations,portraits ; 24cm
Series Picturing history
Picturing history.
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.
Cullwick, Hannah, 1833-1909.
Women employees -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century.
Body image -- History -- 19th century.
Femininity -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century.
Working class women -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century.
Women -- Employment -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century.
Women employees.
SUBJECT Great Britain -- Social conditions -- 19th century. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85056943
LC no. 2007310170
ISBN 1861891199 :