Myths of Sexuality

Studying the depiction of women in Victorian popular art and literature, this book examines the role of women in 19th-century Britain and analyzes the regulation of their sexual behaviour. Special emphasis is given to the portrayal of prostitution, adultery and female philanthropy.

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This work covers feminist art history. It tells how the depiction of women in art defined and confined their role in Victorian Britain. It offers an analysis of the regulation of women's behaviour in the 19th century. Victorian notions of acceptable and unacceptable female behaviour pervade 19th-century culture and reveal themselves in this book in the popular art of the time. The author shows how paintings intended for public exhibitions in particular participated in the production of a distinctive bourgeois morality. She shows too how women were represented in medical, legal, religious and literary texts, focusing especially on the treatment of prostitution, adultery and female philanthropy. Her aim is to provide both an exploration of a complex and powerful process and a readable account of the framing of Victorian sexuality.