- Paperback: 368 pages
- Publisher: University of Chicago Press; New e. edition (1 Aug 1992)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0226871460
- ISBN-13: 978-0226871462
- Product Dimensions: 22.6 x 15.2 x 2.5 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 57,883 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Review
'This remarkably polished, lucidly argued work is innovative cultural history at its best. It is one of the most sophisticated and thorough historical treatments of issues that are of widespread interest, among them sexual conflict and violence against women' Martha Vicinus
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Description
Late-Victorian London, city of dreadful delight with the new pleasures of the music hall, West End shopping, and the mingling of high and low life where women of every class challenged the traditional privileges of a male elite. It was a city also of sexual repression and the policing of women, of sexual scandal and danger. In this brilliantly illuminating study, Walkowitz shows how these narratives played out complex dramas of power, politics and sexuality, and how they influenced the writing of journalism and fiction and the language of politics. The author persuasively argues that women were not simply figures in the imaginary landscape of male spectators, but also central actors in the stories of metropolitan life that reverberated in courtrooms, learned journals, drawing rooms, street corners and in the letters' columns of the daily press.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A necessity for anyone interested in the era.,
By A Customer
This review is from: City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late Victorian London (Women in Culture and Society) (Paperback)
This book was critical for me as I wrote a term paper. A wide range of subjects is covered, and each numerous topics of interest are addressed. The text is easy to read- not trivial of negligible, but accessable to almost everyone.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.0 out of 5 stars (10 customer reviews) 15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Sexual Danger,
By J. Seth Witmer - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: City of Dreadful Delight (Cloth) (Women in Culture and Society) (Hardcover)
This is primarily a history of gender. And armed with the theme of sexual danger, Walkowitz is able to explore not just late-Victorian women, but late-Victorian relationships between men and women.Walkowitz begins with the urban strollers of the 1880's, the flaneurs. Prior to this period, the primary urban female found in London is the prostitute. Following commercial development in late-Victorian London there is an influx of "shopping ladies" and the "working women" who serve them in "the new feminized world of department stores." (p.24) Next, Walkowitz discusses the findings of Charles Booth's study of London poverty. Significant is the area of London known as Whitechapel where gender roles were somewhat reversed. In chapter 2, Walkowitz further explores the characters inhabiting the urban terrain of London. There are "gents" or "swells", women in music halls(both performing and in the audience), shopping ladies, charity workers, and the Glorified Spinsters. These "actors" were constantly exploring new boundaries while re-inventing their roles. In the chapter "Science and Seance", Walkowitz gives us the tale of Mrs. Weldon who makes the great leap from being nearly committed(falsely) to a lunatic asylum, to becoming a fixure on Pears Soap advertisements. Certainly, Mrs. Weldon's role reversal was socially significant, and due to her "succesful negotiation of urban spaces and cultural styles" and "her willingnes to make a spectacle of herself and to allow her image to be refashioned, circulated, and ultimately discarded by a fickle marketplace." (p.189) The significance of Jack the Ripper is the effect the murders had on men as well as women, including boys and girls. The Ripper's legacy is the crystallization of "sexual fears and hostilities" and the creation of a "common vocabulary of male violence against women." (pp.227-228) These gender roles all represent the theme of sexual danger because they are changing. Roles are being reversed or re-invented. Barriers, whether physical or social, are being probed. 9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Unusual but excellent history of gender and violence,
By "hillkidne" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late Victorian London (Women in Culture and Society) (Paperback)
Judith Walkowitz delivers a very engaging history of gender violence, prostitution, and good old Jack the Ripper. Her style is more reminiscent of a novel or short story collection than an academic history, and that works in the narrative's favor. One finds it very easy to go along with her argument, even though it does have some holes in it. The style she adopts makes it easy for her to squeeze events into her hypothesis, and it sometimes feels forced, especially in her repeated attempts to relate everything to "melodrama." The book is well researched, which is most obvious in her discussion of the men and women's club and Georgina Weldon's struggle against the male establishment. Overall, a feminist history that never becomes militant, and a piece of academic work that is accessible to a wider audience than merely women's studies faculty members across the U.S.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fun! for Victorian culture discussion ...,
By A. L. Scott - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late Victorian London (Women in Culture and Society) (Paperback)
This source is a wonderful discussion on the dark side of Victorian culture. It is easy to read, stays on topic, and makes the stark differences and similarities between our cultures clearly apparent.
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