Victorian Freaks: The Social Context of Freakery in Britain [Hardcover]

Ph.D. Marlene Tromp (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 8, 2008 | ISBN-10: 0814210864 | ISBN-13: 978-0814210864 | Edition: 2

While “freaks” have captivated our imagination since well before the nineteenth century, the Victorians flocked to shows featuring dancing dwarves, bearded ladies, “missing links,” and six-legged sheep. Indeed, this period has been described by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson as the epoch of “consolidation” for freakery: an era of social change, enormously popular freak shows, and taxonomic frenzy. Victorian Freaks: The Social Context of Freakery in Britain, edited by Marlene Tromp, turns to that rich nexus, examining the struggle over definitions of “freakery” and the unstable and sometimes conflicting ways in which freakery was understood and deployed. As the first study centralizing British culture, this collection discusses figures as varied as Joseph Merrick, “The Elephant Man”; Daniel Lambert, “King of the Fat Men”; Julia Pastrana, “The Bear Woman”; and Laloo “The Marvellous Indian Boy” and his embedded, parasitic twin. The Victorian Freaks contributors examine Victorian culture through the lens of freakery, reading the production of the freak against the landscape of capitalist consumption, the medical community, and the politics of empire, sexuality, and art. Collectively, these essays ask how freakery engaged with notions of normalcy and with its Victorian cultural context.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“While there has been extensive work on American freak shows, less had been done on the significance of the freak in England. Scholars and students gain much insight from the essayists’ invocations of disability studies as a model for thinking about freakishness and freakishness as a model for contemplating disability. Victorian Freaks will therefore be a welcome addition to the growing body of works on freaks and disability studies from a literary perspective.” —Elsie Michie, associate professor of English, Louisiana State University

 

 

“Victorian Freaks is particularly noteworthy for its often-nuanced analysis of freakery. The figure of the freak is represented not simply as a victim of cultural prejudices, but as an agent who actively negotiates a version of subjectivity through the performance and manipulation of cultural codes regarding deviance and normalcy.” —Tamar Heller, author of Dead Secrets: Wilkie Collins and the Female Gothic

About the Author

Marlene Tromp is John and Christine Warner Professor of English and Director
of Women's Studies at Denison University in Granville, Ohio.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Ohio State University Press; 2 edition (April 8, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0814210864
• ISBN-13: 978-0814210864
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #772,654 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Marlene Tromp, Professor of English and Women's Studies and Director of the Division of Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies at Arizona State University's New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, is the author of two scholarly monographs on the long nineteenth-century: The Private Rod, a study of marital violence, sensation fiction, and the law in nineteenth-century England and Altered States, a book on seances and mediumship in Victorian Britain. She has also written a new book on the Titanic disaster, Untold Titanic. An excerpt of this book will be offered as an eBook soon, so please visit the website or keep checking Amazon.