The Actress in Victorian Pornography PDF

The Actress in Victorian Pornography
Author(s): Tracy C. Davis

Source: Theatre Journal, Vol. 41, No. 3, Performance in Context (Oct., 1989), pp. 294-315
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3208182
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The Actress in Victorian Pornography
Tracy C. Davis
Oh! it is absurd to have a hard-and-fast rule about what

one should read and what one shouldn't. More than half of
modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read.
(The Importance of Being Earnest, Act I)
Decades before the theories of conditioned reflexes and behavior modification were
expounded in England, moral reformers recognized that to control passions in the
Skinnerian boxes of Victorian theatres passionate stimuli must be checked. The need
to control passionate stimuli was a concern limited to a few, for only a few who
understood the stimulants and the nature of the passions were willing to eradicate
a socially sanctioned source of so much erotic pleasure. If the vast majority of play-
goers were indifferent to the sensual marketplace inside the variety theatres' prom-
enades and outside the legitimate theatres' colonnades, they wholeheartedly de-
fended the sensual content of performance and patronized it faithfully.
In burlesque, opera bouffe, pantomime, music hall, musical comedy, ballet, and
extravaganza, conventions of costume, gesture, and theatrical mise-en-scene ensured
that the most banal material was infused with sensuality- this sensuality was delib-
erately manipulated to result in the erotic arousal of male spectators. Theatrical
conventions, deeply encoded in the sexual language of society, participated in and
reinforced a view of the theatre and particularly of actresses, for the objects as well
as the subjects of arousal were gendered. The encodings, which almost certainly
were invisible and unintelligible to many spectators, were explicitly explained in
Victorian erotic books, periodicals, and illustrations that were widely available to
men. Thus, while erotical included images of the theatre and its practitioners, the
Tracy C. Davis has published on Victorian and contemporary cultural history in Theatre Notebook,
New Theatre Quarterly, Theatre Research International, American Journal of Semiotics,
Modern Drama, and Journal of Popular Culture. She is completing a book on the social history
of women's employment in the nineteenth-century British theatre.
'Because of its convenience and lucidity and in order to avoid the issue of differentiation of
pornography from erotica on the grounds of explicitness, violence, or erotic "quality," I have adopted
the definition of erotica developed by the cataloguers of the Kinsey Institute: "a type of pictorial or
written material which is intended to produce sexual arousal in readers and viewers. Excludes
discussion of artistic value-is always dealt with in a social, moral, or legal context."
294
THE ACTRESS IN VICTORIAN PORNOGRAPHY / 295
theatre persistently contained elements of the erotic, to the consternation (or more
often the delight) of knowing spectators.
The erotic components of performance catalogued in 1839 by Dr. Michael Ryan

were constant features in almost every theatrical genre throughout the nineteenth
century:
Who has not seen actresses appear in . . . dresses as white as marble, and fitting so
tightly that the shape of their bodies could not be more apparent, had they come forward
on the stage in a state of nature? Again, the opera dancers appear nightly before crowded
moral audiences, in dresses made for the express purpose of exposing their ... figure,
while the style of dancing is such as to excite the most wanton thoughts and lascivious
desires. The attitudes and personal exposure of these females are most disgusting to
every really modest mind, and more suited to an improper house than to a public ex-
hibition .... were the scenes and figures depicted in prints and drawings [instead of on
the stage], and offered for sale, they would be considered outrages on public morals.2
Ryan exclusively identifies actresses (not actors) as the sexually evocative components
of performance and explicitly compares them to illustrated erotica. Women were the
bait, and men the appointed victims, as argued in a series of articles on "Tempted
London" in 1888:
The youth . . . becomes more or less enamoured of a "singing chambermaid" or the

"leading lady," both of whom display their personal attractions with more regard to them
being fully comprehended than to any old-fashioned ideas of modesty; and when the
latter appears in some thrilling scene clad in a white robe, her hair flowing loosely in
extravagant luxuriance down her back, her white arms bared to the shoulder, her neck
and bosom by no means jealously guarded from the vulgar gaze, he loses his head in
the enchantment of her presence, and carries away a mental impression of her which can
do him no good and may do him much harm.3
The harm in this "temptation" began with a vigil at the stage door and was followed
by the pursuit of the elusive actress down the thoroughfare of vice-the Strand-
which, as "almost every Londoner knows," is the precinct of the trade in nocturnal
prostitution, terminating at its eastern end in Holywell Street, the British Empire's
infamous marketplace for "loose reading."4 The Reverend S. M. Vernon warned that
the theatre's moral influence, imparted through "the half-dress, the indecent attitudes
and postures, the lascivious looks and embraces, and the unfolding of a plot for the
corruption and overthrow of the pure and innocent," infected men like a contagion
which "may carry death to the most healthy, robust natures." This allusion to venereal
diseases (at worst) or masturbation (at best) is a delicate caution against putting
opportunity in the way of arousal and explains how an American minister could
assert that the damage, even from a single visit to the theatre, could be lifelong.5
While Vernon's euphemistic moralizing leaves the critical junctures of corruption

unspecified, his fellow clergyman Dr. Ryan was less circumspect. Even if one puts
2Michael Ryan, Prostitution in London (London: H. Bailliere, 1839), 5.

3The British Weekly, 10 February 1888, 278.
4The British Weekly, 6 March 1888, 365.
5Rev. S. M. Vernon, Amusements in the Light of Reason, History, and Revelation (Cincinnati: Walden
and Stowe; New York: Phillips and Hunt, 1882), 73, 76-78.
296 / Tracy C. Davis
aside the question of how Ryan came to know enough about "dirty pictures" to
recognize the living versions, it is extraordinary that he stopped short of noticing
that the stage was indeed "depicted in prints and drawings, and offered for sale" in
the most objectionable of formats and places. The author of "Tempted London" did
observe the coincidence: "The ordinary spectator will notice in the window [of a
Holywell Street shop] pamphlets with long titles, promising entertainment of a certain
kind, bad photographs of dancers, and a few books."6
Research in the Private Case as well as nonrestricted materials in the British Library
and in the collections of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Re-
production revealed that the theatre in general and actresses in particular appear
frequently in Victorian erotica-so frequently that acting was the most often partic-
ularized occupational type of women.7 It seems that the content of Victorian erotica
verifies in a fictive (and, therefore, for readers, a real) sense that the actress was
inseparable from the whore and synonymous with sex and that she (not any other
woman) is the signified partner. Examples in various media are abundant throughout
the Victorian years, and although various factors caused one type of material to be
preserved in a particular decade and not another, the evidence is extensive enough
to reveal the traditions of publishing, writing, and illustrating in this highly ephemeral
genre and to allow generalizations about the output throughout the era. Extant
examples have been found from every decade, including the 1890s, when the knight-
ing of male actor-managers was considered due recognition of the theatre's service
to British society and art and of performers' elevation above their historical position
as rogues and vagabonds. This demonstrates that the stigmatization of the actress
was a product of widespread and enduring fantasies about her, and not contingent
upon the debased (or elevated) stature of the theatre or performing as a whole.
Until the last years of the century, "actress" remained scatologically synonymous
with "scandal." Irrespective of changes in the socioeconomic/educational/moral back-
ground of recruits and in spite of the theatre's increasingly sympathetic reception,
the popular culture continued to ascribe immorality and sexual indiscretion to ac-
tresses. It is difficult to justify the translation of colorful rumors and spectacular trial
proceedings relished by the cheap press into a universal principle upheld in society,
for an attitudinal and empirical link is missing: the stigma existed on the level of
6The British Weekly, 16 March 1888, 365.

7A few titles remain elusive: Rose Pompon, the Dancing Girl Millionaire, a piquant Paris painted to the
Life by the lively Lady herself [advertised in H. S. Nichols, A Catalogue of Old Books in Various Departments
of Literature, no. 8, March 1888]; Memoirs of Cora Pearl, The English Beauty of the French Empire [Nichols];
"The Rehearsal," in Memoirs of Private Flagellation and Luxurious Living [publ. Charles Carrington;
H. K. Browne, artist]; The Pretty Girls of London: Their Lithe Love Affairs, Playful Doings, etc. [praised
by Bloch for its excellent pictures, "freely, though not obscenely treated," including a lady in her
loge and a ballet-girl onstage; Ivan Bloch, Sex Life in England Illustrated, trans. and ed. Richard
Deniston, New York: Falstaff, 1934, 358]; Queens of the Stage. A Record of Carnal Intimacies with some
of the Greatest Actresses, French, English and German Now Living, London: Biblioteca Arcana, 1882.
[Alfred Rose, comp., Register of Erotic Books, 2 vol., New York: Jack Brussel, 1965]; George Thompson,
Amorous Adventures of Lola Montez [Rose, and H. S. Ashbee, Catena Librorum Tacendorun]; The Lady
in Flesh Colored Tights [Rose]; Cerisette, or the Amours of an Actress [Rose]; Little Thomas of the Opera
Colonnade [Rose]; and Anon., L'actrice chaste et le capitaine amoreux, n.d. [formerly in the Kinsey
Library].
"common knowledge" or the folkloric. An examination of Victorian erotica, however,

forges the link. Most importantly, it demonstrates how the constant reiteration of
the concept of the lascivious actress in pictures and print affected living actresses,
bearing out Andrea Dworkin's view that "the definition of women articulated sys-
tematically and consistently in pornography is objective and real in that real women
exist within and must live with constant reference to the boundaries of this defini-
tion."8 It may not have had reality beyond the minds of the consumers, but it did
have consequences. Because work was supposed to be sober, serious, and rational,
it was no doubt difficult to believe that acting was a serious vocation for anyone, let
alone for women. Furthermore, actresses were precluded from showing the laborious
side of their work, and a light, frivolous, amusing, and fun-loving image of the
theatre was projected instead. This helps to explain why it was so difficult for the
Victorian public to believe in the integrity and sexual purity of actresses; it also hints
at why a complex sexual fantasy about them enjoyed such commerce and longevity.
An actress's public profession implied "impurity" even when her costumes, roles,
and gestural idiosyncracies did not, and, as Beatrice Headlam noted, men, like
Muslims, have no respect for women unless they are closely veiled: "For such as
these no dress is modest."' The prevalence of the eroticization of actresses in per-
formance and print probably discouraged performers from objecting, which would
call more attention to the phenomenon and spread the ability to decode performance
to an even wider segment of the population.
Serials
Undoubtedly the oldest and most influential format for English erotica depending
heavily on theatrical motifs and personages is the illustrated weekly serial. Judging
by the price (as low as id. for a copy of Paul Pry in 1848 or Photo Bits in 1898) and
circulation of this mass-produced material (400,000 copies a week by 1902),1o the
erotica that were richest in theatrical imagery were accessible to a broad socioeconomic
range and can be regarded as a consistently cheap complement or competitor of the
stage itself. The title of the earliest relevant serial, the Crim. Con. Gazette (1838-40,
4d.), is a euphemism for adultery; the contents are risque, vicious, and racy, featuring
(in a falsely moralizing tone) biographical sketches of actresses with a particular
preference for specialists in breeches roles and those involved in affairs with notable
men.
The Exquisite (1842-44, 4d.) has copious prose and pictorial theatrical content in
addition to hints about venereal diseases, features on saloon singers, erotic fiction,
translations from Du Chatelet and Montaigne, and reports of famous sex trials. The
succession of the cover illustrations is interesting and clearly demonstrates the in-
terchangeability of clothed female performers with other erotic stimuli. The series
begins with Madame Vestris as Venus, dressed in a light gown gathered at the front
'Andrea Dworkin, Pornography: Men Possessing Women (London: Women's Press, 1981), 201.
9Mrs. Stewart [Beatrice R.] Headlam, The Ballet: a paper read before the Church and Stage Guild (London:
William Poole, 1880), 11.
10Edward J. Bristow, Vice and Vigilance: Purity movements in Britain since 1700 (Dublin: Gill and
Macmillan; Towata, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1977), 218.
to reveal her lower leg and knee, and numbers 2-7 each feature a well-known dancer
in short skirts."1 Two allegorical scenes follow-"L'Amour Corrige" (Love Corrects)
and "LAmour Vainquer" (Love the Victor). Mrs. Honey is featured in knee-length
skirts in number 10 and above-the-knee skirts in number 14.12 Fifteen of the next
nineteen plates depict famous ballerinas pas seul and in pas de deux with men, while
Rachel (in exotic Oriental harem trousers), Mrs. Nisbet (in a man's fencing costume),13
and Celeste (in breeches) are featured in the intermittent numbers. The last theatrical
portrait occurs in number 36 (Taglioni), and the remaining twenty-four issues have
titles such as "Do You Like it This Way? Eh!" and "I hope nobody's coming," which
accompany depictions of sentimentally "classical" nudes, coy bedroom scenes, les-
bian scenes, and women in partial undress suggestive of birching. The costume of
Mrs. Nisbet recurs in "How do you like me now?" (number 41), which depicts an
anonymous woman in long skin-tight trousers, an unbuttoned blouse falling over
her shoulder, and a top hat, and in the composition and decoration of "Stay, Oh
Stay" (number 51), which is also related to number 8, in which a nude woman flogs
a naked cupid, using a bunch of flowers. Number 45, entitled "What are you thinking
of," reiterates Titian's Venus of Urbino, anticipates (by twenty years) Manet's Olympia,
and is a variant pose used frequently in actresses' publicity shots--in which they are
clothed, of course, as in the case of Pauline Markham, Miss Moore, Miss Fowler,
and Finette.
If it is true that the clothed female performer was interchangeable with other erotic
stimuli, particularly nudes, how did the eroticism of the actress's clothes function?
The Exquisite relied on costume fetishism-borrowed wholesale from the theatre-
to attract men. Theatrical costume flagrantly violated the dress codes of the street
and drawing room, flaunting the ankles, calves, legs, thighs, crotch, and upper torso.
Cross-dressing as males was sometimes the pretense, but even as animals or inan-
imate objects female performers were costumed as gendered objects of display. In
the Victorian theatre, adult female performers were never sexless: sex was always
apparent in gendered costume, whether through tights, breeches, skirts, corsetted
silhouettes, hairstyles, or headgear. Cross-dressing highlighted sexual difference, it
did not disguise it. Femininity was intractable, and the point was to reveal, not
disguise it.
Like the American National Police Gazette, The Days' Doings (1870-72, 3d.) empha-
sized murder, suicide, vengeance, and incredible feats by daring and unusual persons,
"Variations between the British Library and Kinsey Institute sets occur in early numbers. Instead
of Vestris, the Kinsey Institute's first issue is "Compare all Things" (three women lift their skirts to
show their lower legs), and number 4 is definitely labeled Taglioni in the Kinsey Institute set, whereas
in the British Library set the dancer is unidentified.
'2The significance of featuring Mrs. Honey twice is made clear by a quip in the contemporary
erotic weekly Gems for Gentlemen: " 'What is good for stiffness in one's lower extremities?' inquired
the Duke of Wellington of somebody at the Queen's Ball. 'Why,' observed Chesterfield, who stood
near, 'I have found the application of honey to the parts remove it in a very few minutes.' " ([ca.
1850] 1.3:23)
"3Nisbet also appears in breeches on the first page of the Crim. Con. Gazette, 26 January 1839.
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A stationers's shop in the neighborhood of the Old Vic, across Waterloo Bridge from the
Holywell Street area. Newspapers and theatre prints are displayed in the window; trusted
customers could view more explicitly erotic material inside. (February 17, 1872, The Days' Doings,
the inexpensive mid-Victorian erotic and scandalous magazine published in London, from which
the following four illustrations are also taken).
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The Days' Doings (December 23, 1871) featured this illustration because of its piquant sexuality,
not because it was a human interest story. Note that the revelation of the legs, not the bust,
provided erotic titillation for Victorian readers and spectators.
much as the News of the World and National Enquirer do today. Frequent references
to the theatre and a regular column on "Dramatic Doings" served to reinforce ster-
eotypes and to keep the theatre within the realm of the bizarre and sensational
sexualized world. The innocence of the "Gallery of Public Favourites," which includes
cover illustrations of the actresses Nellie Farren, Nelly Power, Teresa Rutado, and
Mrs. John Wood, is counteracted by the copies of "classical" paintings and sculptures
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Whether suggested by illicit visits backstage or through windows, this voyeuristic fantasy is a
classic (December 23, 1871).
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This is a mild version of a perennial theme; intrusion on a private moment of self-inspection in a

dressing room is a motif recurrent for decades.
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This catty hair-pulling session is a version of "lesbian sexuality" as imagined in primarily

heterosexual pornography.
similar to those found in the Exquisite (minus the captions) as well as illustrations
inspired by the theatre itself (such as an Astley's production with Amy Sheridan as
Lady Godiva, dressed in an apparent but minimal costume).14 The theatre was rarely
depicted without invoking sexual connotations. The "Strange Presentation to a
Judge," for example, depicts at least eight chorus girls in tights, diaphanous skirts,
and bloomers, presenting a gift of an inkstand to a short, stout, dignified judge; one
girl exchanges looks with two of the barristers seated near her, confirming the im-
plication of sexual complicity and conspiracy.15 The Christmas number for 1871 is
entirely devoted to "Behind the Scenes" and reiterates in several illustrations the
theme of the sexually evocative actress observed by men: men in the street watch
the silhouettes of women in their dressing room; a man bursts into a room full of
chorus girls and claims his scantily clad wife; a row of pretty legs is observed through
the grid as they rise to stage level; and a leading lady's dress is caught in the curtain
roller, pulling the fabric backward and between her legs.'6 In the direct successor of
The Days' Doings, entitled Here and There, a curious tale of Sassi's snake dance is
described as "the nastiest thing . . yet heard of":
To a slimy, creeping tune she glides up to an urn of flowers, and drags therefrom a
hideous, cussed snake. She shakes the torpid wretch until he slowly unfolds himself,
runs his forky tongue out, and wags his scaly tail in long-metre fashion. Then she dances
and winds the clammy worm about her neck, and if there's a man in the audience wants
to make her acquaintance after [this] exhibition it's some man that owns an anaconda
and wants to have it educated.17
Interpreters do not require the assistance of the psychoanalytic theory of displacement

to appreciate the Days' Doings; it was anything but subtle.
The infamous limited-circulation monthlies of 1879-83, called the Pearl, Cremorne,
and Boudoir (priced from 2s. to 15s.), were not as attentive to the actress as three
mass-produced weeklies emanating from one publisher in the 1890s: the Mascot (3d.),
the London Illustrated Standard (3d.), and Photo Bits (id.). These magazines were packed
with posed photos of living pictures (a common music-hall entertainment); portraits
of burlesque and music-hall artistes in tights; and acrobats, equestriennes, and ac-
tresses in dextrous contortions, sometimes but not always "candid." What do these
swinging, kicking, posing, reclining, and bending performers suggest to prospective
theatre audiences? And what does the inclusion of short paragraphs of theatrical
news and illustrated interviews with legitimate performers like Ellaline Terriss18 sug-
gest about actresses in general and the interviewees in particular? As the National
Vigilance Association reported, these are "illustrated journals of a very objectionable
kind":
'4The Days' Doings. An Illustrated Journal of Romantic Events, Sports, Sporting & Theatrical News at
Home & Abroad, 10 February 1872, 1.
'5The Days' Doings, 2 September 1871, 87-88.
'6The Days' Doings, 23 December 1871.
"Here and There, 30 March 1872: 92, 93.
"1London Illustrated Standard, 21 December 1895, 5.
Many of the pictures are vulgar in the extreme, and obviously printed in order to pander
to a vicious and depraved taste. They are not what would be termed legally indecent,
and cannot therefore in the present state of the Courts and of public opinion to which
they respond, be stopped. Such publications are most demoralising, and tend to deprave
the mind by their unwholesome and lewd suggestions.19
Because the sexualized context relies on references to more overtly pornographic

literature (particularly fetishistic literature) and a long pictorial tradition of inferred
sexuality in the subject, the knowing reader of these illustrated weeklies sees more
than appears to be represented. Thus, any candid or posed photograph that gives
an excuse for a posterior view or lifted skirt alludes to rape or invites sodomy; dancers'
high kicking in the aftermath of "Ta-ra-ra-BOOM-deay" is a contest for male attention
and a metaphor of male arousal and fantastic potency; "sisters" acts and catty hair-
pulling episodes stand in for lesbian sex scenes; the innocent or debutante is a virgin
ripe for defilement; and allusions to an actress's or dancer's tights refer more to the
contents of the tights than to the tights themselves (which, unlike stockings, encase
the pelvis). The message comes across again and again that these performers are
sexy, willing, frivolous, and interchangeable.
Photo Bits recalls actresses' constant violation of public decorum and the similarity
of their particular traditions regarding attire to those of prostitutes. As in The Days'
Doings, actresses are satirized for wearing cosmetics: in one Archie Gunn cartoon a
ballet girl bends at the waist and says to a man, "Come dear, kiss my cheek and
make it up," to which the gent replies, "I'll kiss it, but I don't think it wants any
more making up."20 Actresses' costumes reminded more than one country cousin of
the Garden of Eden,21 and the erotic value is caught by a caption beneath a picture
of a pretty woman clad in tights: "It makes you shiver to see a girl without a flannel
petticoat in this cold, damp weather."22 In a spoof on the vogue for disrobing acts
in 1898, one cover of Photo Bits demonstrates that if scenery was done away with,
nothing would impede the audience's view of the tiers of dressing rooms that rim
the stage.23
These periodicals were definitely entertainment for men. One cartoon series depicts
Farmer Haystack in raptures of delight during the ballet, while his wife covers her
eyes.24 Direct juxtapositions of illustrations of actresses and pictures of streetwalkers
are common. Advertisements offer everything for the fully-equipped roue, including
"1National Vigilance Association, Eleventh Annual Report, 1896, 10-11.

20Photo Bits, 9 July 1989, 5.
21"At An Empire Ballet" (Photo Bits, 9 July 1898, 11):
Londoner - How are you enjoying yourself?
Country Cousin-- It is like Paradise.
Londoner - You must be having a good time, then?
Country Cousin - Not altogether, but the costumes remind me so much of the Garden of Eden.
'Photo Bits, 18 February 1899, 2.
23Photo Bits, 17 December 1898.
24Photo Bits, 9 July 1898, 26.
pornographic playing cards, books, and photographs, rubber appliances, stereoscopic

slides, spy glasses with a thousand times magnification, false mustaches, cures for
red noses, hair restorers, "Rose's Famous Female Mixture" (presumably an aborti-
facient), and birth control literature. Amid such props, women were idealized erotic
objects for the use and enjoyment of men.
Although the minor genre of the theatrical novel verifies that the social stigma
surrounding actresses outlasted the nineteenth century, erotic serials portray the
stigma being acted upon again and again and are as forthright and unwavering in
the depiction of sexuality as novels are circumspect. Male spectators must have
observed performance and performers in the light of the erotic jokes, cartoons, and
short stories that "documented" social judgments about real and imaginary actresses,
particularly because the erotic props that were recognizable to the pornographically
literate were flaunted in the presence of (and often by) actresses. Unlike the gen-
eralized and anonymous "schoolgirls," "wives," "maids," "prostitutes," and "ladies
of fashion" that also populate erotica, the actress could be particularized. Her reality
verified the existence of the fantasized underworld of perpetually loose chemises,
easily spread thighs, double entendre, and militarily erect penises. Even when the
actresses in erotica were not real, they were a type that could be observed for a
modest fee in hundreds of theatres and music halls without any censure befalling
the libertine manque. Because, in periodicals and performance, actresses excited lust,
they were obliged en masse to take the credit.
Printed Books
None of the full-length theatrical erotica were very "good," but literary excellence
was not a criterion of authors or buyers. Unlike most of the serials, the elegantly
bound editions of illegal erotic books were accessible only to Holywell Street's most
prosperous customers-the frequenters of theatres' stalls, boxes, and dress circles
rather than their pits, upper circles, and galleries. This material made use of privileged
playgoers' stereotypes about women performers, particularly their costumes (or lack
thereof) and exhibitionism, their relationships with agents (and other means of
professional advancement), supposed sexual promiscuity, stage-door liaisons, and
late-night debauches, but none of the themes were entirely unique to printed books.
Ballet girls (who appeared not only in ballet but also in pantomime, burlesque,
extravaganza, and musical comedy) were often featured in erotica, though any formal
occupational distinction between dancers and actresses was probably irrelevant to
readers and playgoers. The breast, leg, and buttocks fetishism associated with dancers
is related to the more general costume fetishes and to voyeur fantasies associated
with all types of female performers, but the printed book's principal reliance on prose
rather than pictures frequently led to a more blatant referencing. The sadomasochistic
themes so prevalent in English erotica of the period appeared with special force in
connection with female dancers (possibly through an erotic association between
balletic training and other forms of postural "correction") and were drawn out in
this format to their fullest extent. A few examples suffice to represent the common
themes and variations in printed books.
An interesting example is Crissie (1899), which purported to be based on the

experiences of a dramatic agent, Edward Piddlewick, who pandered to aristocrats'
taste for music hall beauties--after satisfying himself, of course. If a virgin responded
to his advances with compliant lustiness, Piddlewick concluded, "She'll make a
rattling good artist."25 There is, nevertheless, some question as to which art these
novices were being dedicated to, but it is resolved by the synonymity of the lusty
whore and the successful actress. Readers are told that after a single session, a novice
had now the gratification of knowing that she had not only the expert opinion of her
famous tutor and agent as to her suitability for the stage, but she had also the satisfaction
of having received his first great lesson in the art of becoming rich and distinguished in
the profession. .... she was not aware that she had so far received any professional
instruction from him whatsoever; but ... she afterwards learnt that these elementary
"facings" he had so energetically put her through, really constitute the alpha and omega
of most of our pretty girls' successes as popular footlights' favourites.26
The sexual compliance and erotic effect of Piddlewick's women is explicitly described
in an episode set at a dress rehearsal involving the corps de ballet of the Pandora
Palace of Varieties. The women attract attention to themselves by performing acrobatic
feats; the business of rehearsing is abandoned when they retire to all parts of the
theatre building to couple with admirers (including mashers, musicians, and the
chairman of the Theatres and Music-halls Committee - a London County Councillor).
The title character, Crissie Cazarotti (the "Pandora Prostitute"), combines her oc-
cupation as prima ballerina with her vocation as a nymphomaniac. During one
performance, Crissie's petulant refusal to go on stage has to be dealt with by five
men who endeavored to satisfy her voracious sexual appetite.
Piddlewick's and Crissie's operatic counterparts are found in Pauline the Prima
Donna (1898), in which a young singer is given advanced instruction in more than
vocal technique by her Viennese tutor, following a girlhood initiation into lesbian
and heterosexual love-making.27 Other actresses personify lust in The Confessions of
Nemesis Hunt, a popular work that appeared in various attenuated editions following
publication of the original three-volume set of 1902-06. At the age of sixteen or
seventeen, "Nemesis" is caught by her father in flagrante delicto, thrown out of the
house, and forced to find her own living. She considers becoming a typist,
But I had heard a typewriter's position in this great metropolis [of London] entailed a
good deal of sitting on the knees of elderly employers, what time the trousers of the said
25Crissie. A Music-Hall Sketch of To-Day (London: The Alhambra, 1899), 35. Carrington delighted
in denouncing this as "simply utterably filthy," and claimed that it was based on the adventures of
a real life Crissie, written by a man "most cruelly treated by her, ruined and driven to drink" (Charles
Carrington, Forbidden Books. Notes and Gossip Tabooed Literature by an Old Bibliophile [Paris: Carrington,
1902], 147).
26Crissie, 47-48.
27Pauline the Prima Donna: or, Memoirs of an Opera Singer (London and New York: Erotica Biblion
Society [Paris: Carrington] 1898). This is a loose adaptation of Aus den Memoiren einer Sangerin (1868-
75), the autobiography of Frau Schroder-Devrient.
employers were not at all in their proper decorum. If I was going to lead an immoral
career I judged it better to do it on the stage.28
Nemesis learns that success depends not only on complying with managers' sexual
requests but also on knowing how to use sex for professional and technical perfection.
A famous soprano, for example, always keeps two young fellatrix with her (to lubricate
the vocal mechanism and improve her singing), and Nemesis is advised to fellate
the comedian in a pantomime if he is getting the better of her on stage (her per-
formance will improve while his declines). The attraction of actresses like Nemesis
even in the least elevated products of the stage, such as burlesque, is explained by
a gentleman to his male companion:
You may think it trash, though I know you've been at least a dozen times, but the public
love it, and the public deserve to be catered to. Take the men in tonight's audience. They
had worked hard during the day, and they had dined heavily when their work was over.
They did not want to think, their tummies were much too full. They wanted to laugh
easily, and, above all, to see lots of pretty girls, and feel their old jocks stiffen .... cunt,
my dear Annesley, cunt, and lots of it, is what the greater part of this blessed nation
wants. There's a certain proportion of the stalls who can take the cunt they see on the
stage out to supper afterwards, and block it, and a much larger proportion who wish
they could, but who go home and block their wives or mistresses instead.29
Voyeuristic fantasies of venturing behind the scenes into the secret realm sup-
posedly forbidden to the public are common-no doubt this is the rationale for much
theatrical erotica. In Intrigues and Confessions of a Ballet Girl (1870) the reader/voyeur
is treated to an episode in which the novel's heroines, Emma and Maria, present
themselves before the ballet mistress of Drury Lane Theatre to have their legs scru-
tinized prior to acceptance into the dancing ranks. The eroticization of the situation
and costumes is obvious:
What a novel scene; here were girls of all ages, from ten to twenty; had all their practice,
each dressed as their fancy pleased them; some with short skirts barely reaching to the
knee, others with loose drawers, without skirt at all; most of them had light polka jackets
made either of cotton or silk, and all with fleshings that reached from the waist downwards.
By this style of dress their limbs were as free as when they appeared on the stage at
night.30
Costume is a crucial element in Maria's success, for her fuller and shorter skirts are
admired by male dancers, actors, and spectators:
28[George Reginald Bacchus?], The Confessions of Nemesis Hunt, 3 vol. (London: Privately printed,
1902-06), II:4.
29Ibid., II:91.
30Intrigues and Confession of a Ballet Girl: disclosing startling and voluptuous scenes before and behind the
curtain, enacted by well-known personages in the theatrical, military, medical and other professions; with kisses
at Vauxhall, Greenwich, &c., &c., and a full disclosure of the secret and amatory doings in the dressing room,
under and upon the stage, in the light and in the dark, by one who has had her share [London: Rozez and
Co., c. 1870] 8.
Her pirouettes were divine, and brought down thunders of applause, and what caused
no small portion of the enthusiasm she created, was her style of dress, which was far
more "a naturelle" than most dancers indulge in.31
Whether the forbidden zone was backstage or up a skirt, the theatre provided a
situational excuse and a plausible toilette for the voyeuristic journey. By facilitating
a private fantasy in the public (or semipublic) loci of the theatre, the voyeur meta-
phorically penetrated the most public yet most private site of womanhood. The
realization of his quest (in erotic fantasy) prostituted the characters and fictionalized
all female performers who reminded him of his fantasy. Their seeming willingness
to participate in the debasement (i.e. their continuing to perform) served to justify
his low opinion of actresses, instigate repeated imaginary defilements, and eroticize
all aspects of their realm including training, auditions, costume fittings, green rooms,
dressing rooms, and stage doors. Because, in erotica, anything is capable of carrying
sexual overtones and because sexual disinclination is never believed, prose was
restricted by neither plausibility nor truth.
The sadomasochistic Memoirs of a Russian Ballet Girl (1901) is a case in point.32 It

chronicles the life of Mariska, a serf born into a household of aristocrats that spank,
whip, and birch all the servants from a very young age. After being apprenticed into
a dressmaker's and witnessing the flagellations in the "House of Corrections" as-
sociated with that establishment, Mariska is sent to an orphan's asylum that functions
as a juvenile brothel. Finally, at the age of fifteen, she is sold into a Grand Duke's
dancing academy. The fitting of her costume (tights that will split at the rear when
she bends, a stiff skirt, and a bodice revealing three quarters of her large breasts)
takes an entire chapter. The academy's rehearsals are open to aristocratic spectators;
here the dancers wear bodices entirely revealing the bosom, very stiff short skirts,
and silk stockings arranged so the thighs and buttocks are mostly bare. Corporal
punishment is meted out by the ballet master during private lessons, while public
whippings always follow rehearsals and performances; the whipped girls then dis-
appear for a few hours or overnight in the company of the courtiers. During such
absences, Mariska acquires a reputation for being sexually responsive during foreplay
and penetration, so she is much in demand. At the age of twenty-one, Mariska's
contract expires and she is sold as a concubine to an old man who makes money by
letting out his regiment of ballet girls (including ten-to-twelve-year-olds, whom he
requires to fellate him before he sodomizes them) to theatres that cannot afford a
regular troupe. Mariska is finally bought by a Captain of the Guards, to whom she
is a willing sexual slave until her liberation. Throughout the narrative, the ballet
school and theatre are inseparable from sadomasochism and the supply of excitement
for rich spectators. The dancers are indentured serfs-a role which the "good" ones
31Ibid., 14.
32[Edmund Dumoulin], Memoirs of a Russian Ballet Girl, 2 vol. in 1 (Monte Carlo: [Carrington],
1901). The advertisement for this volume, included in the Biblioteca Carringtoniensis at the Kinsey
Institute, purports that Mariska "formerly in the ballet of the Imperial Theatres" was born in 1840;
her ballet training would consequently have occurred between 1855 and 1861.
revel in. Excellence is measured by the size of girls' buttocks and breasts (both
preferably large and very white) and their wrigglings under the birch. Male and
female spectators alike attend rehearsals and performances in order to view the girls'
bodies. Curiously, there is no mention of principal dancers in this book-the corps
de ballet seems to be everything.
If Pauline, Nemesis, Maria, and Mariska are too sensationalized to seem convincing,
it is worth mentioning that actual stage actresses were also the heroines in books of
this type. Two spurious memoirs of Eliza Vestris are similar in tone and episodes to
Intrigues and Confessions of a Ballet Girl but are based loosely (very loosely) on her
theatrical career. The misdating of the 1840 volume, Memoirs of the Life of Madame
Vestris, as 1830 suggests that there was an attempt to recall and exaggerate Vestris's
early notoriety after she had settled into matrimonial domesticity with Charles Mat-
thews.33 The publication of Confessions of Madame Vestris in 1891 suggests that the
attempt was long-lived.34
Maudie, a final example published in London in 1909, represents the most complex
achievement in the genre and the simplest paradigm of its characteristics. One of
the rooms in Maudie's country house is a photography studio hung with countless
pictures of erotic scenes. Theatre managers from London and Paris have equipped
the studio with the full stage apparatus in which the photos are taken and then
displayed, but under the auspices of a private club Maudie also exhibits real life on
her stage for the entertainment of her clients. One such play consists of a courtship,
rivalry, seduction, marriage, pregnancy, and birth, all of which are enacted before
the audience's eyes. Maudie explains:
"Of course we were lucky in having a girl who was not only a very good actress, but
happened to be like that, and was strong enough to play right through. It was Miss
------," naming a very well-known player ... "Yes, that's how she spent her time when
the papers said she was touring in Italy."35
Many playtexts of the sort of private erotic theatricals described in Maudie survive
from French, Dutch, and English presses and date back to 1782.36 The Victorian
33Memoirs of the Life of Madame Vestris of the Theatres Royal Drury Lane and Covent Garden. Illustrated
with Numerous Curious Anecdotes (Privately printed, 1830 [ca. 1840]).
34Confessions of Madame Vestris; in a series of letters to Handsome Jack (n.p.: New Villon Society, 1891).
Priced at 2 pounds.
35[George Reginald Bacchus?], Maudie. Revelations of Life in London and an unforeseen denouement
(London: The "Chatty" Club, 1909), 32.
3Examples include: Theatre Gaillard 2 vol. (Glascow [sic] 1782); [Lemercier de Neuville et al.], Le
Thedtre Erotique de la rue de la Sante (1864-66); Lady Bumtickler's Revels. A Comic Opera, in Two Acts, as
it was performed at lady Bumtickler's private theatre, in Birch-Grove, with unbounded applause (London:
Printed for George Peacock and sold at No. 66, Drury Lane [J. C. Hotten, 1872]); Theatre Royal
Olymprick. New and Gorgeous Pantomime Entitled Harlequin Prince Cherrytop and the Good Fairy Fairfuck
or the Frig the Fuck and the Fairy (Oxford: 1879); and E[dmund] D[umoulin], The'atre Naturaliste (London:
Collection des &rotiques frangais du XIXe siecle publi6e par la soci6t6 des bibliophiles cosmopolites,
[Amsterdam: August Brancart] 1889). Secondary studies include: G. Capon, Les Th6dtres Clandestins
counterpart to Heffner's mansion, Maudie's studio is the nexus of both production

and supply, image and action, and fantasy and experience. It functions as the con-
summate playground of the erotically theatrical, the complete gallery of relevant
photographic imagery, and the documentary arena for the actress at "work." It might
be argued that in this setting, as in the studios of early twentieth-century photog-
raphers of Arabic women,
The whole array of props, carefully disposed by the photographer around and upon the
model (trompe l'oeil, furnishings, backdrops, jewelry, assorted objects), is meant to sug-
gest the existence of a natural frame whose feigned "realism" is expected to provide a
supplementary, yet by no means superfluous, touch of authenticity.37
The erotic book set its own standards of truthfulness while flaunting the very notion
of truth. The theatrical apparati of Maudie's studio are authentic stage devices, but
the theatrical object is never the real thing, and in this setting the fakery that is the
actress's natural milieu is even further removed from its usual degree of inauthenticity.
The actress plays herself while standing in for all her compatriots, as well as harlotry;
in either guise she is a dissembler, yet in Maudie's play her passion and procreation
are as authentic as the reader's imagination can allow. Like pornography itself, the
actress displays what is cloaked (anatomically and experientially), supposedly re-
vealing truths about womanhood, role playing, sexuality, and morality, promulgating
a mystery as deep and as artificial as the colonial photographer's penetration into
the Oriental harem.
Photographs
When technology permitted, both illustrated serials and printed books utilized
photographs -literally in the case of Photo Bits and figuratively in Maudie. In erotic
prose, the theatre did not function as a blank backdrop but was a very particular
milieu wherein illusion enhanced attractiveness and provided a ready-made imagi-
native context for erotic fantasy. Erotic photographs, particularly cabinets and cheap
postcards, borrowed this semiotic whenever the theatre was invoked by models or
settings within otherwise "blank" photographic studios. The social environment for
sexual adventure was significant and crucial to enjoyment.
Two types of invocations were common. In the 1870s, 6d. could purchase a set of
The London Lounger's Album of cabinet photographs advertised as "The Pretty Girls
of London- Regent Street, Holborn Casino, Ballet Girls at Theatre Royal Drury Lane,
Bond Street, danseuses at Alhambra, and the Argyll Rooms." Additional series included
a set exclusively of the Alhambra Palace Theatre, with portraits of the lessee and
(Paris: Plessis [1905]); Henri d'Almeras and Paul D'Estr&e, Les Thidtres Libertins au XVIIIe siecle (Paris:
H. Daragan, 1905); and Henry L. Marchand, The French Pornographers: including a history of French
Erotic Literature (New York: Book Awards, 1965), 134-41.
37Malek Alloula, The Colonial Harem, trans. Myrna and Wlad Godzich (Minneapolis: University of
Minneapolis Press, 1986), 18.
orchestra conductor "surrounded by the ballet's stars, [along with] the glove stall
lounge, wine saloon, cigar bar lounge, supper room, [and] American Bar;" while a
second Alhambra set took the camera backstage. These little portfolios may have
been charming souvenirs or titillating tours-the evidence has vanished, and it is
impossible to be sure. "Polly, Adelina, and Belinda, the Pet, the Gem, and the Belle
of the Ballet" (6 1/2d. per photograph, or 2s. 6 1/2d. for a set of six) was almost
certainly a tour of fantasy. 38 These concoctions of "theatrical" photographs usually
emanated from Paris, but distinctly English subjects, such as the Alhambra dancers
and "the Original Mikado Maids," were not unknown.39
Perhaps it is not surprising that some time during the last years of the Victorian
period the tenor of naughty postcards featuring actresses and theatrical backdrops
changed as scenes of explicit sex became more readily and inexpensively available
in the marketplace. In the 1870s, 6d. could purchase a series of Alhambra Palace
photographs, a set of stereotyped scenes behind the curtain, or poses by the acrobat
Lulu; their competition consisted of dressed seaside postcards, windy weather shots,
and Girls of the Period.40 By the 1890s, postcard sets depicted a nude female gymnast
on the swing and trapeze (thirty-six poses, is. 6d. per cabinet photo, or 15s. a dozen)
and "Behind the scenes at the Ballet, startling revelations" with fifteen "highly erotical
scene[s] between a well known abonnentand [and] the first star of the ballet" (in
cabinet and carte-de-visite sizes); their competition consisted of scenes with naked
prepubescent girls, interracial sex, and intergenerational lesbianism.41 The theatre's
unconsummated dramatic narratives of Oriental exoticism, fairyland, melodramatic
threats of defloration, classical mythology, callypiges (a pornographic invention de-
noting women who were remarkable for their fleshy buttocks), shepherdesses, paint-
ers' models, and cocottes could not compete against consummated versions of the
same fictions attainable at a bookseller's or stationer's for roughly the same price as
admission to a West End playhouse. The gossamer Graces, chain mail Valkyries, and
cross-dressed swashbucklers on late-Victorian theatrical postcard sets filled in much
of the narrative continuity which, on stage, was the responsibility of the playgoer.
The pictorial eroticism may have become more enticing and more satisfying precisely
because it legitimized both partners in the voyeuristic erotic encounter. As the captions
on one French set entitled "La Loge de l'Actrice," depicting a woman's transformation
from "undress" in street skirt and unfastened corset to "dress" in breeches, waistcoat,
sword, eighteenth-century coat, and feathered hat, conclude: "Tonight I'm going to
put everything into my part! But not for you, the public, for him! for my lover! For
love commands through two lovely eyes-and man the slave must obey!"42
38From advertisements in the Days' Doings, rpt. Peter Fryer (comp.), The Man of Pleasure's Companion.
A Nineteenth Century Anthology of Amorous Entertainment (London: Arthur Baker, 1968), 57.
39From the Catalogue of Curiosa and Erotica (London: 1892) in the Private Case.
'Reproduced in Fryer, The Man of Pleasure's Companion, 57.
41Catalogue of Curiosa and Erotica. Typical examples of the cards are reproduced in Jean-Pierre
Bourgeron, ed., Nude 1900 (New York: Morgan and Morgan, 1980); and Webb.
"Reproduced in Paul Hammond, French Undressing: Naughty Postcards from 1900 to 1925 (New York:
Pyramid, 1975), 102.
The second type of invocation was the legitimate publicity photograph of real
performers. The vast majority of these photographs were as decorous as anything
from Julia Margaret Cameron's studio. Unlike Cameron's subjects, however, the
purchasable photograph of an actress carried a blight of erotic associations; this is
what Susan Griffin has called "the pornographic idea of a female, and of female
sexuality,"43 or what John Elsom has described as "the weight of their context":
Because this girl has appeared at the Gaiety or the Alhambra, her photograph was fair
game for our fantasies: and the significance of these photographs is that they subtly
controlled the fantasies, hinting at possibilities in one direction or another."4
As on stage, the photographed actress remains acutely aware of the spectator, for
without him she is not an actress. Easily identifiable through her nighttime work,
she was transformed by the publicity photograph into an icon-perhaps of glamor
and certainly of sex. Through the postcard, the tabooed icon could be collected and
displayed or grouped in an album as a household amusement or private harem. The
reduction to a regular format (the 8x13cm postcard) with a point of sale common to
similar postcards of politicians, royalty, authors, and artists suggests that the medium
eliminated the stigma of the actress's profession. But at the same time, erotic per-
iodicals printed actresses' images (probably unauthorized but nonetheless flagrant),
French postcards flowed into Britain, and erotic visual encodings became more widely
understood than ever.
In fin de siecle and new-century English and French postcards, costume jewelry,
see-through draperies, strings of beads, mirrors, flowers, ewers, vanity tables, paint-
ings, cushions, carpets, lutes, swords, and cups and saucers were common objects
carrying erotic weight. Fairies, flowers, Amazons, "men", bathers, living statuary
(sometimes realizations of paintings), and Oriental exotics were common guises. The
congruencies of conventional theatre sets and props with the erotic postcard "nar-
rative" and of character personnae in postcards with pantomime, ballet, tableaux
vivants, and drama are striking. The unnaturalness of these habitats was natural to
actresses. By association, all the models became actresses and all actresses models.
As on the stage, actual nudity was not a requirement for sexual titillation. Simulated
nudity (with tights or maillots) was just as powerful and, by Victorian aesthetics,
much more beautiful. Scandal arose by association--posing with a man, posturing
indecently (one foot on a chair, one leg highly elevated, an ankle crossed over a
knee, dorsal views, and contortions) or through activity (bicycling, climbing, and
arranging the toilette). Thus, momentary deferment of nudity was the message of
the photograph.
43Susan Griffin, Pornography and Silence: Culture's Revenge Against Nature (New York: Harper and
Row, 1981), 204.
"John Elsom, Erotic Theatre (London: Secker and Warburg, 1973), 26.
Conclusions
Feminist art and film theory argues that the male spectator possesses The Look;45
nineteenth-century erotica demonstrates that this privilege was also extended to the
Victorian male playgoer, not only through the directness of his gaze but also through
his power to ascribe meanings to the objects of his gaze. Two hypotheses follow
from this principle. Because they were public nocturnal women, actresses' and pros-
titutes' livelihoods depended on successfully suing for men's attention and on being
recognizable and therefore eligible for the gaze. Actresses and prostitutes routinely
violated conventions of dress, make-up, gesture, and association that distinguished
"respectable" women from the demi-monde. Their function as the senders of erotically
stimulating messages is confirmed and reinforced by the behavior, ideology, and
literature of the male receptors, but in the theatre event the skulking illicit voyeur
had no role; a man's attendance at the theatre was a public act, and his looking was
direct and legitimate reception of the sexual semiosis. His gender dictated that he
entered the theatre with a particular semiotic history that determined his ability to
perceive and appropriately understand the significant sexual messages. Without him,
the erotic transmission-or gest-of the actress was sexually meaningless.
For those who lacked the semiotic history of the contemporary masculine culture,
the performance had less than full meaning. While puritanical and female spectators
sometimes regarded the actress as a woman warranting concern and social ostracism,
their objections to the Empire promenade, for example, were misdirected because
they could not fully participate in the semiosis. The real problem in the Empire music
hall was not that men made assignations to prostitutes (because assignations were
made in all sorts of public places) but rather that the whole interior of the building
(auditorium and stage) housed a sexual system that was consistent within itself and
harmonious with the Leicester Square and West End neighborhoods. Both Dr. Ryan
in 1839 and Laura Ormiston Chant in 1894 recognized that they could neither close
the theatres nor eliminate the sexiness of performance; their only recourse was to
warn audiences away and prevent aroused spectators from having ready access to
the ladies of the promenade.
The second hypothesis concerns conventions of performance. Like nineteenth-

century erotica, much nineteenth-century theatrical fare was repetitive in structure,
content, and presentational style. David Mayer has postulated that the pantomimic
formulas of sexual cross-dressing supplied "a mechanism for dealing with real and
immediate and acute anxieties in disguised form." His theory that male unemploy-
ment was the trauma behind the first adolescent pantomime boy in 1819 and the
first voluptuously proportioned pantomime boy in 1831 would benefit by more at-
tention to the expressed fantasies of pornography and less reliance on psychoanalytic
45See Annette Kuhn, The Power of the Image: Essays on Representation and Sexuality (London: Routledge
& Kegan Paul, 1985); Teresa De Lauretis, Alice Doesn't: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1984); and Griselda Pollock, Vision and Difference (London: Routledge,
1988).
generalities such as castration fear, the phallic mother, and the synonymity of material
success with sexual potency.46 The ability of pantomime, burlesque, extravaganza,
ballet, and melodrama to endure in fixed formats for decades is a testament to the
insatiability of the sexual appetite, the restricted gender access to the encodings, the
suitability of these genres of popular entertainment to the hegemonic public taste,
and their consistency with other sexualized contexts. It was not until the early years
of the present century that the audience began to satiate and the formulas pall. At
the same time, new photographic technologies were offering a different viewing
experience to the readers of erotic magazines and viewers of kinematic images. This
created an expanded occupational typology of sexually scandalous women. Access
to these images was more easily attained by both sexes, who were assured voyeuristic
anonymity. Social attitudes about sex relaxed; fashion permitted all women to employ
individualized and flamboyant dress and make-up, and greater numbers of middle-
class women joined actresses in training for and pursuing careers outside the domestic
sphere. The mystique and the sexual threat of the stage actress diminished as concern
about her legitimacy waned in the popular culture and belief in her scandalous life
lost its status in folklore.
William Simon and John Gagnon discovered that in mid-twentieth century pulp
erotica, the theatre and Hollywood were still the most common settings,47 and I have
observed that the largest selling publication of the late twentieth century, the National
Enquirer, trades almost exclusively on televised soap operas and their stars. The
public fantasy about the entertainment sphere continues, but with a reduced stigma
on actresses exclusively (it takes something more unusual than a heterosexual affair
to generate attention). Though "popular" and "art" entertainments still trade on sex,
they manage to deceive and under-inform no one about their pretext.
4David Mayer, "The Sexuality of Pantomime," Theatre Quarterly 4 (Feb.-April, 1974): 53-64.
47William Simon and John H. Gagnon, "Pornography: the Social Sources of Sexual Scripts," paper
presented at the seventeenth annual meeting of the Society for Study of Social Problems, San
Francisco, 1967.

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The Actress in Victorian Pornography

Author(s): Tracy C. Davis

Oh! it is absurd to have a hard-and-fast rule about what

The erotic components of performance catalogued in 1839 by Dr. Michael Ryan

The youth . . . becomes more or less enamoured of a "singing chambermaid" or the

While Vernon's euphemistic moralizing leaves the critical junctures of corruption

2Michael Ryan, Prostitution in London (London: H. Bailliere, 1839), 5.

6The British Weekly, 16 March 1888, 365.

"common knowledge" or the folkloric. An examination of Victorian erotica, however,

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This is a mild version of a perennial theme; intrusion on a private moment of self-inspection in a

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This catty hair-pulling session is a version of "lesbian sexuality" as imagined in primarily

Interpreters do not require the assistance of the psychoanalytic theory of displacement

Because the sexualized context relies on references to more overtly pornographic

"1National Vigilance Association, Eleventh Annual Report, 1896, 10-11.

pornographic playing cards, books, and photographs, rubber appliances, stereoscopic

An interesting example is Crissie (1899), which purported to be based on the

The sadomasochistic Memoirs of a Russian Ballet Girl (1901) is a case in point.32 It

counterpart to Heffner's mansion, Maudie's studio is the nexus of both production

The second hypothesis concerns conventions of performance. Like nineteenth-

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