Watching Hannah: Sex, Horror and Bodily De-Formation in Victorian England

by Barry Reay

Arthur Munby (1828–1910) was a Victorian gentleman from a respected family of Yorkshire lawyers. He left behind diaries that record his life-long obsession with working-class Victorian women, whom he interviewed, photographed and wrote about. This obsession led to his relationship with, and eventual secret marriage to, his maidservant Hannah Cullwick.

Working women fascinated Munby because they disrupted his Victorian ideal of their bodies were altered by physical exertion and dirt, and they were also often deformed by disease. Drawing not only on the diaries but also on a vast, untapped archive of documents, photographs, poems and sketches, Watching Hannah is far more than an account of a compulsive observer of working women and a fetishist of hard-working female hands, however. The author analyzes Munby's obsessions in relation to changing definitions of gender, sexual identity and class to reveal wider male preoccupations with femininity, the body, deformity, masculinity and – most of all – sexuality, at a pivotal point in European history.

Genres: History, Victorian, Nonfiction, 19th Century, Sexuality

224 pages, Hardcover

First published May 2, 2004

Reviews

[C. B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredible insight into Victorian gender, class, and sexuality, all through the lens of one of the most bizarre and enduring relationships I've ever heard about (between Hannah Cullwick and Arthur Munby). It's straight out of a Paul Thomas Anderson film!

[marz · Rating 5 out of 5]

oh my god my brain is growing…

[Karen]

Munby waas a civil servant, writer and ‘connoisseur of working class women. #sexuality #horror