Postal Pleasures: Sex, Scandal, and Victorian LettersOxford University Press, 15 feb 2011 - 264 pagine In 1889 uniformed post-boys were discovered moonlighting in a West End brothel frequented by men of the upper classes. "The Cleveland Street Scandal" erupted and Victorian Britain faced the possibility that the Post Office-a bureaucratic backbone of nation and empire-was inspiring and servicing subversive sexual behavior. However, the unlikely alliance between sex and the postal service was not exactly the news the sensational press made it out to be. Postal Pleasures explores the relationship between illicit sex and the Royal Mail from reforms initiated in 1840 up to the imperial end of the nineteenth century. With a combination of historical details and literary analyses, Kate Thomas illustrates how the postal network, its uniformed employees, and its material trappings-envelopes, postmarks, stamps-were used to signal and circulate sexual intrigue. For many, the idea of an envelope promiscuously jostling its neighbors in a post boy's bag, or the notion that secrets passed through the eyes and fingers of telegraph girls, was more stimulating than the actual contents of correspondence. Writers like Anthony Trollope, Eliza Lynn Lynton, Henry James, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Conan Doyle, and others, invoked the postal system as both an instrument and a metaphor for sexual relations that crossed and double-crossed lines of class, marriage, and heterosexuality. Postal Pleasures adds a new dimension to studies of the era as it uncovers the unlikely linkage between the Victorian Post Office and the queer networks it inspired. |
Sommario
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Mail and Sexual Scandal | 39 |
Trollopes Postal Infidelities | 70 |
The Communicative Touch in Trollope Hardy and Lynn Linton | 99 |
Blood Brotherhood and the Post in Doyle Kipling and Stoker | 148 |
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American Anglo-American Anglo-Saxon Anthony Trollope argues Autobiography Bagwax blood Britain British brotherhood Caldigate’s called Carpenter chapter Charlotte circulation civil Cleveland Street Affair colonial communication network correspondence describes desire Doyle Dracula duty Edward Carpenter Eliza Lynn Linton empire England envelope epistolary erotic exchange fiction figure gender Hardy Henry Henry James heterosexual Holmes homoerotic homosexual homosocial imagine imperial James James’s John Caldigate Jonathan Laodicean lesbian letter London Lucy Lynn Linton male marriage messages metaphor narrative nineteenth century novel Oscar Wilde passion Paula Penny Post Perdita pleasure plot Post Office post-letter postal reform postal system postal workers postman Queen’s queer Quincey Quincey Morris Quincey’s race racial relation relationship reunion Rowland Hill scandal servants sexual social Somerset stamp Stancy Stoker story Study in Scarlet telegrams telegraph boys telegraph girl telegraphist tion Trollope’s vampiric Victorian Whitman Wilde Wilde’s wires woman women words writes wrote