Book Reviews

determiners of sex only in theory. In practice, umbrella term for a wide array of divergence, cases of ambiguous sex were settled in the old variation and disorders that shared one symptom way: by external anatomy and social and only—sexual ambiguity. One behavioural cues. Reis also shows that societal misses—especially in the twentieth-century expectations of gender performance, thought to chapters—a structured and critical engagement be an item of mid-twentieth-century intersex with what the physicians’ conceptualization of treatment protocols, were already part of their patients’ pathology and physiology beyond nineteenth-century treatments. Finally, she their ambiguous sexuality was. Nevertheless, argues that a diverse and seemingly random Bodies in doubt is a thoughtful contribution to approach was typical for medical interventions the historical analysis of intersex in the US and on intersexed persons from the seventeenth provides valuable insights for contemporary century onward. Doctors chose a person’s sex debates on the ethics of modern medical on a case-to-case basis, weighing ethics, management of intersex. This linkage patients’ wishes, biological markers and social makes it an important read for gender scholars, indicators of sex. When in the early 1950s, John medical historians and health professionals Money, and Joan and John Hampson argued that alike. sex of rearing was the determining factor in the development of a person’s gender role, they Sandra Eder, were building, as Reis shows, on a sense of the Johns Hopkins University importance of psychological sex that had been rising since the 1920s. With all the idiosyncrasies in the conception and treatment of intersexed persons, there are Ivan Crozier (ed.), Sexual inversion: a also constants. Reis argues convincingly that, critical edition: Havelock Ellis and John right up to the present, most medical Addington Symonds (1897), Basingstoke, interventions have been framed by norms of Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, pp. vii, 351, £60.00 heterosexuality; that is, the desired outcome (hardback 978-0-230-00803-8). would be clearly sexed and gendered heterosexual men and women. Treatment Ivan Crozier’s carefully researched and success was measured by fulfilment of social meticulously produced new critical edition of goals such as a heterosexual marriage, a desired Sexual inversion (1897) will be welcomed not happy ending that at times led physicians even only by researchers in the histories of medicine, before the mid-twentieth century to ignore what psychiatry, sexology and homosexuality, but they perceived as biological evidence of sex. also by those who teach courses touching on Reis dates interventionist surgery on genitals to changing attitudes to sexuality in the nineteenth the late nineteenth century and reveals how these and early twentieth centuries. corrections were already based on heterosexual The original text of Sexual inversion (1897) norms: promote marriage, heterosexual started as a collaboration between the classicist, intercourse and avoid homosexual acts. poet, travel writer and literary critic John Reis’s long-term approach allows for Addington Symonds and the medical writer and historical comparison as she excavates sexologist Henry Havelock Ellis. When it was consistencies and changes in the conception, published, Sexual inversion became not only the perception and medical management of intersex. first medical textbook in English on the topic of At times, however, it also makes “intersex” a same-sex sexuality, but also one of the first seemingly stable category, rather than an publications (along with works by

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Edward Carpenter) to champion a more collected by Ellis, Symonds, and Edward dispassionate and sympathetic approach to the Carpenter through networks of correspondence. legal, social and ethical aspects of the topic in These cases of sexual inversion among sane, late Victorian Britain. In the immediate law-abiding and productive members of society aftermath of the trial and imprisonment of Oscar were a crucial part not only of the sexological Wilde for acts of “gross indecency” in 1895, this project, but also of the broader attempt to make was not an easy task. By the time Sexual a case against the severe legal penalties then in inversion was published, Symonds had died. His place in Britain for homosexual acts (which literary executor, acting on the wishes of the remained in place until 1967). Symonds family, bought up and destroyed all The fact that Symonds died before the text the unsold copies. A new edition with another was published, and that his involvement was publisher fared no better, being banned as an subsequently suppressed in line with the wishes obscene publication in 1898, despite of his family, has led some historians to blame protestations by Ellis and others that it was a Havelock Ellis for taking undue credit for purely medical work. The text now published in Sexual inversion, and others to accuse him of this modern edition, therefore, with Symonds having produced a medicalized and illiberal named on the title-page, had very few work which went against Symonds’ original nineteenth-century readers. The book finally intentions. Some of these criticisms have been became more widely available, first in German, unfair, but Crozier is excessively defensive on and then in twentieth-century American and Ellis’s behalf, and sometimes veers too far in the British editions, as part of Havelock opposite direction in portraying Ellis as a Ellis’s multi-volume Studies in the psychology liberationist who thought homosexuality was as of sex, with Ellis credited as sole normal and natural as any other expression of author. sexual impulse. In a wide-ranging, 86-page introduction, It is true that Ellis thought sexual inversion Crozier uses Sexual inversion as a case study in was generally inborn, but that is not quite the the social production of scientific knowledge. same as suggesting he thought it either normal Havelock Ellis is given more prominence than or healthy. Ellis referred to homosexuality as a Symonds, and their text is situated primarily in “psychic abnormality”, a “sexual perversion”, relationship to continental sexological writings, and “an aberration from the usual course of and somewhat less so to literary and nature” (p. 222). In the conclusion of the book philosophical works. Crozier makes especially Ellis explained how he thought homosexuality effective use of the correspondence between should be prevented in schools, how it might be Ellis and Symonds (who never met in person), treated or even removed by medical means in which reveals how an ambitious medical man adults, and the extent to which the invert must and an aesthetic, philosophical Hellenist tried to be prevented from becoming a “cause of negotiate their way towards an agreed line on acquired perversity in others” (p. 213). On the controversial issues. These included questions subject of using marriage as a possible “cure” about the relevance of ancient Greece to the for inversion, and the offspring that might thus modern debate; about whether sexual inversion be produced, Ellis wrote: “Often, no doubt, the was generally congenital or acquired; and the children turn out fairly well, but for the most extent to which it should be treated as a morbid part they bear witness that they belong to a condition in itself or as one indirectly associated neurotic and failing stock. Sometimes, indeed, with pathological symptoms. The introduction the tendency to sexual inversion in eccentric and also explains how individual case histories were neurotic families seems merely to be Nature’s

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merciful method of winding up a concern nineteenth century’s preoccupation with which, from her point of view, has ceased to be autoeroticism. From the outset she endeavours profitable” (p. 213). to release masturbation from the dominance of Even if Ellis’s views were not quite as restrictive discursive frameworks centred upon liberated, nor as liberating as Crozier would the history and culture of medicine, and the have us believe, Ellis was certainly a strong privileging of material written for trained campaigner against severe social and legal medical audiences, which have dominated penalties. Homosexuality, for Ellis, was a discussions of sexuality. She examines the medical abnormality but not a crime. With masturbatory content of widely available home reference to the recent Wilde trials, Ellis wrote medical guides and cyclopaedias by physicians that in the modern era the predominant negative such asJHKellogg andEBFoote and from reaction to homosexuality was based not on these extrapolates a symptomatology of economics, theology, or even morality, but on an masturbation; languor, sunken eyes and pallor aesthetic reaction of disgust. Such a feeling are three of the highly visible signifiers of might be understandable, Ellis wrote, but “it self-abuse familiar to Victorian society. An scarcely lends itself to legal purposes”. To eat examination of the presentation of the excrement, Ellis noted, “is extremely disgusting, masturbator in works of popular fiction but it is not criminal” (p. 221). Crozier shows produced by Bram Stoker, Charles Dickens and how the reception of Ellis’s own writings on Oscar Wilde in light of such symptoms reveals homosexuality also bore out this point, with the extent to which contemporary theories of critics describing the subject matter as autoeroticism pervaded Victorian literature. “disgusting”, “nauseous” and “revolting”. Only by casting it as a symptomological vice We cannot know whether John Addington that could be “read” by those with an entry Symonds, if he had lived, would have approved to the discourse does its presence become of everything Havelock Ellis wrote in the apparent. This in turn begs a reconsideration published version of Sexual inversion, but Ivan of whether masturbation had a greater Crozier’s excellent edition gives us ample cultural significance than has yet been scholarly materials with which to engage with considered. this and many other questions about the What raises The secret vice above the recent interlocking histories of homosexuality, slough of works dealing with autoeroticism and medicine and science. sexuality is Diane Mason’s adept interdisciplinary approach. By acknowledging Thomas Dixon, the role of external signifiers in medical Queen Mary, University of London diagnosis and a reader’s initial assessment of a fiction character, she highlights the importance of understanding the fluidity of the boundaries that separate medical writing from fiction. The Diane Mason, The secret vice: masturbation format of the chapters makes the process of in Victorian fiction and medical culture, textual analysis explicit by outlining how Manchester University Press, 2008, pp. viii, medical texts constructed masturbation within 184, £50.00 (hardback 978-0-7190-7714-2). the framework of a particular social fear, such as male impotence, non-reproductive female Diane Mason’s exploration into Victorian sexual activity, or same-sex erotic encounters, masturbatory discourses is an intriguing which was then made visible in literary texts interpretation of the paranoia at the heart of the through bodily and linguistic signifiers, coded

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