Victorian Contagion: Risk and Social Control in the Victorian Literary Imagination

333 Pages·2019·11.351 MB·English

by  Chung-jen Chen

Victorian Contagion
Victorian Contagion: Risk and Social Control in the Victorian Literary
Imagination examines the literary and cultural imaginary of contagion
in the Victorian era and the way that imaginary participated in the pro-
duction of a moral economy of surveillance and control. In this book, I
attempt to make sense of how the discursive practice of contagion gov-
erned the interactions between medical science, literary creation, and
the public imagination. Victorians dealt with the menace of contagion
by equating cleanliness with goodness—even godliness—in scientific
theory, cultural production, and even everyday practice. The Victorian
discourse around cleanliness and contagion, including all its treatments
and preventions, developed into a culture of medicalization and surveil-
lance, a politics of health, and an economy of morality. This book is an
attempt to understand the literary and cultural elements which contrib-
uted to this discourse of contagion, and to explain why and how this
discourse still matters to us today.
Chung-jen Chen is an associate professor in the Department of Foreign
Languages and Literatures at National Taiwan University (NTU), Taiwan.
He holds a PhD in English Language and Literature from National Taiwan
Normal University (2009). He was the recipient of the Award for Innova-
tive Research for Young Scholars from the F oundation for the Advance-
ment of Outstanding Scholarship (2015) and the Golden Tripod Award of
Taiwan (2014) for his book Empire, Medicine and 19th- Century English
Literature [in Chinese]. He was a visiting scholar in the Department of
East Asian Languages and Civilizations (EALC) at Harvard University
(2017–2018). His research interests include nineteenth-century British
novels, contemporary British fiction, and medical humanities.
Routledge Studies in Nineteenth Century Literature
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War as Action, 1775–1860
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48 Neglected American Women Writers of the Long Nineteenth
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49 W.S. Gilbert and the History of Comedy
The Progress of Fun
Richard Moore
50 The Nineteenth-Century French Short Story
Masterpieces in Miniature
Allan H. Pasco
51 Incorporation, Authorship, and Anglo-American Literature
(1815–1918)
Jasper Schelstraete
52 Nineteenth-Century Southern Women Writers
Grace King and Modernism
Edited by Melissa Walker Heidari and Brigitte Zaugg
53 Decadent Aesthetics and the Acrobat in the French Fin de siècle
Jennifer Forrest
54 Victorian Contagion
Risk and Social Control in the Victorian Literary Imagination
Chung-jen Chen
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com
Victorian Contagion
Risk and Social Control in the Victorian
Literary Imagination
Chung-jen Chen
First published 2020
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an
informa business
© 2020 Taylor & Francis
The right of Chung-jen Chen to be identified as author of this
work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections
77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
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ISBN: 978-0-429-34364-3 (ebk)
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Contents
List of Figures vii
Acknowledgments ix
Victorian Contagion: Risk and Social Control in the
Victorian Literary Imagination 1
1 Theorizing Contagion: The Uses of Contagion in
Victorian England 17
2 Verbalizing Contagion: Edwin Chadwick’s
Narratives and the Rise of Public Health Governance 52
3 “All Smell is Disease”: Medical Realism in Charles
Dickens’s Narratives of Sanitation 88
4 Serial Outbreaks: Florence Nightingale and the
Narrative Practice of Nursing 119
5 From Imagined Community to Imagined Immunity:
Medical Realism in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Novels 152
6 “On the Mode of Communication”: John Snow,
Cholera, and Victorian Visualization of Contagions 184
7 Aesthetics of Sanitation and Social Practice in
Dickens’s Novels: Prostitution and Moral Politics of
Contagions 226
8 “A Clean City is a Healthy City”: Normativity and
Contagions in Victorian Slum Narratives 256
vi Contents
9 Victorian Materials and Rubbish Theory: Charles
Dickens and the Recycling of Society in Our Mutual
Friend 282
10 Conclusion 308
Index 313
List of Figures
0.1 The Barbarians and the Deadly Cholera Arrive in Europe 4
1.1 “Cholera Morbus” Broadside 18
1.2 A Proclamation for a General Fast [on Account of the
Cholera, 6 February 1832] 21
1.3 Cholera Preventive Costume 22
3.1 Max von Pettenkofer’s experimental device: the
blowing tube filled with mortar 89
3.2 Pettenkofer’s canary tube 89
3.3 Pettenkofer’s set of blowing tubes 90
4.1 Florence Nightingale, Woodcut 120
4.2 Florence Nightingale, Coloured Wood Engraving 121
4.3 Crimean War: Florence Nightingale Accessing a
Ward at the Military Hospital in Scutari 141
6.1 King George I and George Frideric Handel at the
First Performance of his Water Music 185
6.2 Queen Victoria, the Prince Consort and Family 185
6.3 A Woman Dropping Her Porcelain Tea-cup in Horror
upon Discovering the Monstrous Contents of a
Magnified Drop of Thames Water 196
6.4 A Horrified Old Woman Observing the Monstrous
Contents of a Drop of Water through a Microscope 197
6.5 Punch, “A Drop of London Water.” 198
6.6 Arthur Hill Hassall, A Microscopic Examination 199
6.7 The “Silent Highway”-Man, “Your Money or Your Life.” 202
6.8 Caricature: Faraday Giving His Card to Father Thames 203
6.9 Dirty Father Thames: 1848 204
6.10 Father Thames, Introducing His Offspring to the
Fair City of London: 1858 205
6.11 Songsheet Cover for “The Lamentation of Old
Father Thames.” 206
9.1 King’s Cross, London: The Great Dust-Heap, Next to
Battle Bridge and the Smallpox Hospital 291
9.2 The Dust Heap, Somers Town, 1836 292

Acknowledgments
It is with great pleasure that I acknowledge the people, communities,
and organizations that have enabled me to write this book. I have been
extremely fortunate in finding so many generous and passionate inter-
locutors who have challenged me to think ever more deeply about the
questions that intrigued me and to push past my own assumptions to see
those questions in new ways. I have learned more from them than I can
put into words and could not have gotten this far without them. I regret
that I do not have space to acknowledge everyone to whom I owe thanks,
but please know how grateful I am to all of you.
I would like to thank National Taiwan University (NTU), Harvard
University, and the Taiwan- United States Sister Relations Alliance
(TUSA) for the fellowship support that gave me time and resources to
work on this project as well as a wonderful community to do so. I am truly
grateful to the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations
(EALC) and Fairbank Center at Harvard University for the generous
resources and enlightening atmosphere. I am obliged to the D epartment
of Foreign Languages and Literatures at NTU for the support of re-
search leave. Special thanks to Michael A. Szonyi, Dan Murphy, Julia
Cai, Nick Drake, Alison G. Howe, Susan Kashiwa, and Gustavo Espada
of Harvard University, and Hsin-Ying Li, Li-ling Tseng, Wolfgang
Odendahl, Wen-lin Hsueh, Shu Chuan Peng, and Chun-ju Hsiao of
NTU for the administrative assistance and support.
I have been especially lucky to have most encouraging support and en-
lightening guidance from David Der-wei Wang and Karen L. Thornber
during my year at Harvard and beyond. I wish to thank Arthur Klein-
man, Charles E. Rosenberg, Anne E. Becker, David S. Jones, Shigehisa
Kuriyama, Salmaan Keshavjee, Gabriela Soto Laveaga, and Wai-yee Li
for their warm and generous treat in intellectuality. Every bit of this
book is better because of their inspiring lectures, thoughtful comments,
uplifting encouragements, and helpful insights. Thanks as well to the
History of Medicine Working Group at the Department of History
of Science, Harvard University, and its coordinating members, Alyssa
Botelho, Michelle LaBonte, and Kiran Kumbhar.