Unstable bodies
Subtitle: Victorian representations of sexuality and maternity
By: Jill L. Matus.
Publisher: Manchester University Press; Distributed exclusively in the USA and Canada by St. Martin's Press
Published: 1995
Place of publication: Manchester; New York; New York, NY, USA
Language: eng
Number of pages: 280
Subjects: Women -- Great Britain -- Sexual behavior -- History -- 19th century.; Sexual ethics -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century.; Women and literature -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century.; Sex in literature.; Motherhood -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century.
Description: In a wide-ranging and provocative book, Jill Matus uses biomedical, social scientific and literary texts to interrogate Victorian concepts of sexual difference. Departing from the usual critical focus on Victorian conceptions of the sexes as incommensurably different, she emphasises the powerful effects in Victorian culture of notions of sexual instability and approximation.

While ideas about mutable or ambiguous sexuality provoked fear and fascination, they also served Victorian middle-class ideology by offering 'scientific' ways of constructing racial, class and national identity in terms of the body.

Throughout this period fierce public debates raged around prostitution, infanticide, working-class sexuality, female reproduction and domesticity. Drawing on works by Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot and the Brontes, Matus explores the dialogue between literary and other discourses of sexuality.

Unstable bodies deepens our understanding of the way Victorians articulated problems concerning gender and sexual difference, many of which continue to engage us in the late twentieth century, and it will be an essential reference work for students and scholars working in Victorian literary and cultural studies, feminist studies, and the history of sexuality.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 251-267) and index.