According to Butler, we are all engaged in constant power relations as political individuals, but... more According to Butler, we are all engaged in constant power relations as political individuals, but minority groups are more exposed to violence; their lives are worth less and their recognition in the public sphere is negated (Butler, Precarious Life 20, 34). In Ireland, those dissenting voices were children who did not conform to the Catholic moral code of behaviour, being banished from the public sphere, and confined in Industrial Schools during the twentieth century. After their release from these institutions, where they suffered physical, psychological, and sexual abuse, these victims were silenced and concealed in the public sphere. Using Butler’s theory of power and Trauma Studies (Kaplan, Herman, Laub), our intention in this article is twofold: firstly, to see how the digital press challenged normative power by giving visibility to displaced subjects and secondly, to see how the digital press asked both society and perpetrators for ethical responses to heal the wounds of vict...
ES Review. Spanish Journal of English Studies, 2021
Katy Darby’s neo-Victorian novel The Whores’ Asylum (2012) is set in Oxford in the 1880s. The Got... more Katy Darby’s neo-Victorian novel The Whores’ Asylum (2012) is set in Oxford in the 1880s. The Gothic plays an important role in the process of re-writing the Victorian period as a mirror of our contemporary societies where depravity and lack of humanity co-exist with modernity and civilisation. The protagonists—Stephen, Edward and Diana—are involved in the process of showing sympathy for the lives and deaths of the destitute and the dispossessed. Under the stance of Judith Butler’s theories of mourning and violence, my analysis has a two-fold aim: to discuss issues of the Victorian past such as venereal disease, prostitution and gender violence in the text, and to question to what extent the novel can be an attempt to hear the voices of the victims of sexual exploitation, giving them restoration and agency. However, my conclusion is that the text does not grant the victims of sexual exploitation real voice or agency.
The London Lock Hospital was a charitable institution founded in the eighteenth century for the c... more The London Lock Hospital was a charitable institution founded in the eighteenth century for the cure of venereal disease both in men and women. However, the London Lock Asylum was added with the aim of reforming prostitutes and fallen women who had been previously released from the Hospital. They were religiously and morally instructed and trained for a working-class job. The Lock Asylum Committee minutes for 1836-1842 included certain entries for patients for 1824; the Asylum Regulations for 1840 are part of a manuscript containing the Laws of the London Lock Hospital and Asylum. These regulations are particularly relevant to an understanding of the way an institution like this works, the official mechanisms established for admittance and refusal, as well as for release and provision for the future of these women. Therefore, this paper seeks to examine the role of institutional policy at the beginning of the Victorian era in the cure and reform of women who were considered sexually...
Consideradas "marginadas", las madres solteras fueron recluidas en hogares de madres y ... more Consideradas "marginadas", las madres solteras fueron recluidas en hogares de madres y bebés y lavanderías de Magdalena durante el siglo XX, donde fueron privadas de sus hijos (Luddy 2011: 109-126). My Secret Mother (2015) y A Song for Bridget (2018) de Phyllis Whitsell exploran el régimen de poder en los hogares para madres y bebés, que dejó a miles de mujeres en Irlanda en una posición vulnerable, y el negocio de adopción que tenían las monjas, lo que privó a miles de mujeres de su derecho a ser madres (Garrett 2010: 330-343). En este artículo, nuestra intención es explorar el trauma causado tanto en las madres solteras como en los niños ilegítimos por el sistema de corrección católico irlandés y qué fuentes de resistencia se les ofrecen para restaurar sus identidades después de su liberación. Para ese fin, emplearemos Estudios de Trauma.
Miscelánea: A Journal of English and American Studies, 2021
The presence of Empire in the Victorian period and its aftermath has become a new trope in neo-Vi... more The presence of Empire in the Victorian period and its aftermath has become a new trope in neo-Victorian studies, introducing a postcolonial approach to the re-writing of the Victorian past. This, combined with the metaphor of the sea as a symbol of British colonial and postcolonial maritime power, makes of Joseph O’Connor’s novel Star of the Sea a story of love, vulnerability and identity. Set in the winter of 1847, it tells the story of the voyage of a group of Irish refugees travelling to New York trying to escape from the Famine. The colonial history of Ireland and its long tradition of English dominance becomes the setting of the characters’ fight for survival. Parallels with today’s refugees can be established after Ireland’s transformation into an immigration country. Following Judith Butler’s and Sarah Bracke’s notions of vulnerability and resistance together with ideas about ‘the other’ in postcolonial neo-Victorianism, this article aims to analyse the role of Empire in the...
Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Irish Catholic Church adopted and spread a... more Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Irish Catholic Church adopted and spread a gendered moral discourse to educate women in chastity, purity and passivity. In the twenty-first century, this religious discourse has been maintained and reinforced with the medicalisation of women’s bodies and the pressure put on female subjects to become mothers. Following feminist and resilience studies, we will analyse Martina Devlin’s short story “Alice through the Bathroom Mirror” (2003) to see how the female body is objectified, dehumanised and pathologized by men, and how gender expectations can be challenged by resisting subordination and objectification.
The Cambridge Female Refuge was an institution established in Cambridge Church Street in 1838 as ... more The Cambridge Female Refuge was an institution established in Cambridge Church Street in 1838 as a House of Mercy for the moral rescue of fallen women. Prostitution was a serious preoccupation at the time for both town and gown authorities. The University of Cambridge had its own regulations and female prison --the Spinning House -- to avoid promiscuity among students and the spread of venereal disease. The town authorities were also involved in the control of the trade in the areas under their jurisdiction. In this setting, this place was conceived as a refuge for women to return to the path of virtue and to be provided with proper employment at the beginning of the Victorian period . The aim was to instruct them religiously and morally to return them to their families and friends. In this sense, the aim of this paper is to demonstrate how the rules of the Cambridge Female Refuge reflect the ideology of containment and control of working-class women and the role of the local prominent classes and University authorities in philanthropy work that would mainly serve their interests. At the same time and following Judith Butler’s and Sarah Bracke’s theories, issues of vulnerability as well as of resilience and resistance concerning the inmates of the instituiton will be discussed in the light of archival sources.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech
Issues of sexploitation proliferate in social media and the news all over the planet. 1 Press art... more Issues of sexploitation proliferate in social media and the news all over the planet. 1 Press articles focus on the various angles of the sexual violence business: that of the victim and the perpetrator, and also the profitability of the sexual market as well as politics and policy related to the sex trade. Contemporary audiences are witness to the suffering and trauma of those traditionally labelled as 'the Other', when sexual and race identity come to the fore, rendering particular individuals or groups targets of sexual violence. The neo-Victorian texts discussed in this special issue try to write back to aspects of sexual exploitation that happened in the Victorian past, so as to create an arena for the debate and contestation of today's reality regarding same or similar matters. In Marie-Luise Kohlke's words, "[b]y projecting illicit and unmentionable desires onto the past, we conventionally reassert our own supposedly enlightened stance towards sexuality a...
Belinda Starling’s The Journal of Dora Damage (2008) is a neo-Victorian Gothic novel which discus... more Belinda Starling’s The Journal of Dora Damage (2008) is a neo-Victorian Gothic novel which discusses women’s position in the pornography business with the possible prospects for liberation or sexploitation. Dora becomes a bookbinder of pornographic materials out of economic necessity to discover that pornography is an underworld where women become the victims of men’s power and hidden desires. Also, she realises that exploitation goes beyond sexuality reaching the realms of race and ethnicity. In this context, Judith Butler’s notions of precariousness and vulnerability become very useful for the analysis of issues like agency and resilience in the novel. However, as this paper will demonstrate, sexual exploitation and commodification of women persist in our contemporary cultures as they did in the Victorian past
espanolLa novela neo-victoriana de Sarah Waters Tipping the Velvet (1998) esta situada en las ult... more espanolLa novela neo-victoriana de Sarah Waters Tipping the Velvet (1998) esta situada en las ultimas decadas del siglo xix y sus dos protagonistas lesbianas reciben voz como marginadas y «las otras». La nocion de performatividad de genero de Judith Butler es llevada hasta los extremos en una historia donde la prostitucion masculina es ejercida por una mujer lesbiana que se comporta y se viste como un hombre. Por tanto, utilizando las teorias de Butler sobre la performatividad del genero y la idea de Elisabeth Grosz sobre inscripciones corporeas, este articulo tratara de acercarse a discursos victorianos y contemporaneos relacionados con las nociones de identidad y agencialidad como resultado de la violencia sexual y el abuso de genero. EnglishSarah Waters’s Neo-Victorian novel Tipping the Velvet (1998) is set in the last decades of the nineteenth century and its two lesbian protagonists are given voice as the marginalised and “the other.” Judith Butler’s notion of gender performanc...
According to Butler, we are all engaged in constant power relations as political individuals, but... more According to Butler, we are all engaged in constant power relations as political individuals, but minority groups are more exposed to violence; their lives are worth less and their recognition in the public sphere is negated (Butler, Precarious Life 20, 34). In Ireland, those dissenting voices were children who did not conform to the Catholic moral code of behaviour, being banished from the public sphere, and confined in Industrial Schools during the twentieth century. After their release from these institutions, where they suffered physical, psychological, and sexual abuse, these victims were silenced and concealed in the public sphere. Using Butler’s theory of power and Trauma Studies (Kaplan, Herman, Laub), our intention in this article is twofold: firstly, to see how the digital press challenged normative power by giving visibility to displaced subjects and secondly, to see how the digital press asked both society and perpetrators for ethical responses to heal the wounds of vict...
ES Review. Spanish Journal of English Studies, 2021
Katy Darby’s neo-Victorian novel The Whores’ Asylum (2012) is set in Oxford in the 1880s. The Got... more Katy Darby’s neo-Victorian novel The Whores’ Asylum (2012) is set in Oxford in the 1880s. The Gothic plays an important role in the process of re-writing the Victorian period as a mirror of our contemporary societies where depravity and lack of humanity co-exist with modernity and civilisation. The protagonists—Stephen, Edward and Diana—are involved in the process of showing sympathy for the lives and deaths of the destitute and the dispossessed. Under the stance of Judith Butler’s theories of mourning and violence, my analysis has a two-fold aim: to discuss issues of the Victorian past such as venereal disease, prostitution and gender violence in the text, and to question to what extent the novel can be an attempt to hear the voices of the victims of sexual exploitation, giving them restoration and agency. However, my conclusion is that the text does not grant the victims of sexual exploitation real voice or agency.
The London Lock Hospital was a charitable institution founded in the eighteenth century for the c... more The London Lock Hospital was a charitable institution founded in the eighteenth century for the cure of venereal disease both in men and women. However, the London Lock Asylum was added with the aim of reforming prostitutes and fallen women who had been previously released from the Hospital. They were religiously and morally instructed and trained for a working-class job. The Lock Asylum Committee minutes for 1836-1842 included certain entries for patients for 1824; the Asylum Regulations for 1840 are part of a manuscript containing the Laws of the London Lock Hospital and Asylum. These regulations are particularly relevant to an understanding of the way an institution like this works, the official mechanisms established for admittance and refusal, as well as for release and provision for the future of these women. Therefore, this paper seeks to examine the role of institutional policy at the beginning of the Victorian era in the cure and reform of women who were considered sexually...
Consideradas "marginadas", las madres solteras fueron recluidas en hogares de madres y ... more Consideradas "marginadas", las madres solteras fueron recluidas en hogares de madres y bebés y lavanderías de Magdalena durante el siglo XX, donde fueron privadas de sus hijos (Luddy 2011: 109-126). My Secret Mother (2015) y A Song for Bridget (2018) de Phyllis Whitsell exploran el régimen de poder en los hogares para madres y bebés, que dejó a miles de mujeres en Irlanda en una posición vulnerable, y el negocio de adopción que tenían las monjas, lo que privó a miles de mujeres de su derecho a ser madres (Garrett 2010: 330-343). En este artículo, nuestra intención es explorar el trauma causado tanto en las madres solteras como en los niños ilegítimos por el sistema de corrección católico irlandés y qué fuentes de resistencia se les ofrecen para restaurar sus identidades después de su liberación. Para ese fin, emplearemos Estudios de Trauma.
Miscelánea: A Journal of English and American Studies, 2021
The presence of Empire in the Victorian period and its aftermath has become a new trope in neo-Vi... more The presence of Empire in the Victorian period and its aftermath has become a new trope in neo-Victorian studies, introducing a postcolonial approach to the re-writing of the Victorian past. This, combined with the metaphor of the sea as a symbol of British colonial and postcolonial maritime power, makes of Joseph O’Connor’s novel Star of the Sea a story of love, vulnerability and identity. Set in the winter of 1847, it tells the story of the voyage of a group of Irish refugees travelling to New York trying to escape from the Famine. The colonial history of Ireland and its long tradition of English dominance becomes the setting of the characters’ fight for survival. Parallels with today’s refugees can be established after Ireland’s transformation into an immigration country. Following Judith Butler’s and Sarah Bracke’s notions of vulnerability and resistance together with ideas about ‘the other’ in postcolonial neo-Victorianism, this article aims to analyse the role of Empire in the...
Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Irish Catholic Church adopted and spread a... more Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Irish Catholic Church adopted and spread a gendered moral discourse to educate women in chastity, purity and passivity. In the twenty-first century, this religious discourse has been maintained and reinforced with the medicalisation of women’s bodies and the pressure put on female subjects to become mothers. Following feminist and resilience studies, we will analyse Martina Devlin’s short story “Alice through the Bathroom Mirror” (2003) to see how the female body is objectified, dehumanised and pathologized by men, and how gender expectations can be challenged by resisting subordination and objectification.
The Cambridge Female Refuge was an institution established in Cambridge Church Street in 1838 as ... more The Cambridge Female Refuge was an institution established in Cambridge Church Street in 1838 as a House of Mercy for the moral rescue of fallen women. Prostitution was a serious preoccupation at the time for both town and gown authorities. The University of Cambridge had its own regulations and female prison --the Spinning House -- to avoid promiscuity among students and the spread of venereal disease. The town authorities were also involved in the control of the trade in the areas under their jurisdiction. In this setting, this place was conceived as a refuge for women to return to the path of virtue and to be provided with proper employment at the beginning of the Victorian period . The aim was to instruct them religiously and morally to return them to their families and friends. In this sense, the aim of this paper is to demonstrate how the rules of the Cambridge Female Refuge reflect the ideology of containment and control of working-class women and the role of the local prominent classes and University authorities in philanthropy work that would mainly serve their interests. At the same time and following Judith Butler’s and Sarah Bracke’s theories, issues of vulnerability as well as of resilience and resistance concerning the inmates of the instituiton will be discussed in the light of archival sources.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech
Issues of sexploitation proliferate in social media and the news all over the planet. 1 Press art... more Issues of sexploitation proliferate in social media and the news all over the planet. 1 Press articles focus on the various angles of the sexual violence business: that of the victim and the perpetrator, and also the profitability of the sexual market as well as politics and policy related to the sex trade. Contemporary audiences are witness to the suffering and trauma of those traditionally labelled as 'the Other', when sexual and race identity come to the fore, rendering particular individuals or groups targets of sexual violence. The neo-Victorian texts discussed in this special issue try to write back to aspects of sexual exploitation that happened in the Victorian past, so as to create an arena for the debate and contestation of today's reality regarding same or similar matters. In Marie-Luise Kohlke's words, "[b]y projecting illicit and unmentionable desires onto the past, we conventionally reassert our own supposedly enlightened stance towards sexuality a...
Belinda Starling’s The Journal of Dora Damage (2008) is a neo-Victorian Gothic novel which discus... more Belinda Starling’s The Journal of Dora Damage (2008) is a neo-Victorian Gothic novel which discusses women’s position in the pornography business with the possible prospects for liberation or sexploitation. Dora becomes a bookbinder of pornographic materials out of economic necessity to discover that pornography is an underworld where women become the victims of men’s power and hidden desires. Also, she realises that exploitation goes beyond sexuality reaching the realms of race and ethnicity. In this context, Judith Butler’s notions of precariousness and vulnerability become very useful for the analysis of issues like agency and resilience in the novel. However, as this paper will demonstrate, sexual exploitation and commodification of women persist in our contemporary cultures as they did in the Victorian past
espanolLa novela neo-victoriana de Sarah Waters Tipping the Velvet (1998) esta situada en las ult... more espanolLa novela neo-victoriana de Sarah Waters Tipping the Velvet (1998) esta situada en las ultimas decadas del siglo xix y sus dos protagonistas lesbianas reciben voz como marginadas y «las otras». La nocion de performatividad de genero de Judith Butler es llevada hasta los extremos en una historia donde la prostitucion masculina es ejercida por una mujer lesbiana que se comporta y se viste como un hombre. Por tanto, utilizando las teorias de Butler sobre la performatividad del genero y la idea de Elisabeth Grosz sobre inscripciones corporeas, este articulo tratara de acercarse a discursos victorianos y contemporaneos relacionados con las nociones de identidad y agencialidad como resultado de la violencia sexual y el abuso de genero. EnglishSarah Waters’s Neo-Victorian novel Tipping the Velvet (1998) is set in the last decades of the nineteenth century and its two lesbian protagonists are given voice as the marginalised and “the other.” Judith Butler’s notion of gender performanc...
Uploads