THE SECRET VICE MASTURBATION IN VICTORIAN FICTION AND MEDICAL CULTURE DIANE ELIZABETH MASON A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of the West of England, Bristol for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Bath Spa University College School of English and Creative Studies Bath Spa University College November 2003 For my Father, George Selwood (1919-1961) Contents Acknowledgements iv Abstract v Previous Publications vi Introduction 1 Chapter One 'It is more than blackguardly, it is deadly': Masturbation in the Male 27 Chapter Two 'A beauty treatment that leaves us glowing'?: 68 Female Masturbation and its Consequences Chapter Three "The languor which I had long felt began to display itseh0 116 in my countenance": Vampires, Lesbians and Masturbators Chapter Four ' That mighty love which maddens one to crime': 171 Masturbation and Same-Sex Desire in Teleny Chapter Five 'His behaviour betrays the actual state of things': 212 Onanism and Obsessive Behaviour in Our Mutual Friend Chapter Six 'Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's face': 259 Conflicting Signifiers of Vice in The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Mystery of Edwin Drood Conclusion 327 Afterword 334 Bibliography 346 IV Acknowledgements I would like to begin by particularly thanking those individuals whose practical help, support and belief in this project allowed it to develop and come to fruition. I am especially grateful to Dr William Hughes and Dr Tracy Brain of Bath Spa University College and Professor Victor Sage at the University of East Anglia, my internal and external supervisory team, as well as to my examiners, Professor Roger Sales of the University of East Anglia and Richard Kerridge and Dr Colin Edwards at Bath Spa University College. Special thanks are also due to Iris Selwood (Mum), Aaron Mason and Kelly Armstrong, Andrew Selwood (Turner Prize winner in waiting) and family, Annabel Johnson and Paul Withers (Patron of the Arts) for services too numerous to mention. I would also offer my thanks to Dr Tim Middleton, Dr Neil Sammells, Dr Tracey Hill, Dr Paul Davies and Alison Dagger at Bath Spa University College, to Pam Golding and her colleagues in the English Department at New College, Swindon and to Dave Lamb at Swindon College. For their individual assistance and encouragement throughout this prpject I would also like to thank Dr Lesley Hall (Wellcome Institute), Dr Colin Buckle (Leeds Metropolitan University), Dr Ivan Crozier (Berlin), Dr Terry Hale (University of Hull), Dr Nick Freeman (UWE), Dr Marie Mulvey-Roberts (UWE), Dr Andrew Smith (University of Glamorgan), Dr Barry Milligan (Wright State University), Dr Chris White (Bolton Institute), Professor Angus McClaren (University of Victoria) and Dr Rictor Norton. I have also enjoyed the support of a multitude of friends and family as the adventure of this dissertation has unfolded. These include Dr Piers Stephens (University of Manchester), Karen, Nick and Jenny Baxter, Dani Hilary, Judith Richards, Jane Colenso, Dr Roberta Anderson (BSUC), Dr Steve Hunt (UWE), Dr Stephen 'Kit' Carver (Fukui University), Dr Linda Jones (University of Reading), Tina New, Bill and Peggy Burns, Carol, Brian and Brian Killey Jr, the late and much missed Dr Nicole Demerin and many others near and far: you know who you are and I think of you all with the utmost affection and gratitude. I also acknowledge the assistance of Maggie Collins and all in the library at Bath Spa University College and the librarians of the Bodleian Library and Radcliffe Science Libraries (Oxford) and of Cambridge University Library. The research for my PhD dissertation was funded through a three-year studentship granted by the Arts and Humanities Research Board, which was supplemented with practical help from the Faculty of Humanities and its successor, the School of English and Creative Studies, at Bath Spa University college. The assistance of all three bodies is greatly acknowledged. Diane Mason March 2003 Abstract This dissertation considers the representation of masturbation in medical and fictional texts between the mid-Nineteenth Century and the first decade of the Twentieth. Discussion of masturbation in this period has been dominated by the writings of medical historians such as Paula Bennett and Vernon A. Rosario II, and Jean Stengers and Anne van Neck, who make but passing reference to the wider cultural manifestations of the practice. This dissertation goes beyond the pioneering work of these writers in order to address how the symptomatologies and prognoses associated with the medicalised practice of masturbation are manifested in the fiction of the period. The dissertation addresses both clinical and popular medical writings on the subject, and makes reference to ephemeral as well as canonical fictions. Among the issues which are discussed during the six chapters of the dissertation are the distinctive issues of male and female masturbation, the association of masturbation with male homosexuality and lesbianism, the representation of masturbation in pornography and the symptomalogical congruence between masturbation and other pathological disorders. The latter has implications for the boundary between diagnosis and misdiagnosis, and the dissertation addresses this particular point through a reading of two fictional characters who have, effectively, been misdiagnosed by the assumptions of twentieth-century criticism. VI The Introduction reviews the critical issues raised by masturbation. Chapter One examines the symptoms and medical literature of male masturbation in the Victorian period, paying particular attention to the manner in which such writings play upon the anxieties of the male subject aspiring to a conventional, conjugal relationship, and to the symptoms associated with the habitual onanist. These symptoms, and their implications, are discussed with reference to Latimer, the debilitated narrator of George Eliot's The Lifted Veil (1859). Chapter Two complements the first chapter by way of an investigation of the largely overlooked discourse on female masturbation. Reference is made to a wide range of clinical and popular medical works, and the symptomatology of the female onanist is clarified with reference to Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) and an anonymous pornographic novella, 'Lady Pockingham', first published in 1879. Chapter Three expands on one of the issues raised in its immediate predecessor, namely the congruence between the symptoms of masturbation and those of other disorders. Making particular reference to the fictional representation of consumption, the chapter considers the erotic implications of IS. Le Fanu's novella 'Carmilla' (1871), and notes also the connections between masturbation, consumption and female same-sex desire. Chapter Four continues the theme of homosexual desire by considering the manner in which the discourse on masturbation impacts upon the representation of sodomy and male sexual inversion. This chapter makes extensive use of the anonymous homosexual novella Teleny (1893), and notes in particular how the work is influenced by clinical medicine. Chapter Five explores the connection between masturbation and obsessive behaviour, making particular reference to Dickens' Our Mutual Friend (1865). The central character of the novel, Bradley Headstone, is further analysed in order to consider the representation of epilepsy, and the symptomalogical connection between this disorder and masturbation. The final Yll chapter compares the pathology and symptoms of opium addiction and masturbation. Chapter Six examines the portrayal of Dorian Gray, alleged to be a masturbator by some modern critics, but whose condition may more accurately be seen to conform to that of the opium abuse he is also associated with in Wilde's 1890 novella. The chapter's revisionist response to this assumption is echoed by a subsequent analysis of John Jasper in Dickens' The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870). Nominally an opium smoker, Jasper is a character who also displays the stigmata of the onanist. The Conclusion recalls the issues examined in the Dissertation, before considering the persistence of the discourse on masturbation in the later Twentieth Century, with particular reference to Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint (1969) and Willy Russell's The Wrong Boy (1999). vm Material from this dissertation has appeared in a slightly different form in the following refereed academic journals and peer-reviewed publications. Chapter One 'Latimer's Complaint: Masturbation and Monomania in George Eliot's The Lifted Veil', Women's Writing 5/3 (1988) 393-403. Chapter Two "TJn-like a Virgin': Female Masturbation and Virginity in Fin-de-Siecle Popular Medical Advice Literature', in Nickianne Moody and Julia Hallam, eds, Medical Fictions (Liverpool: MCCA, 1998), pp. 213-225. Chapter Three '"A very devil with the men": The Pathology and Iconography of the Erotic Consumptive and the Attractive Masturbator', Gothic Studies 2/2 (2000) 205-17. Introduction For a long time, the story goes, we supported a Victorian regime, and we continue to be dominated by it even today. l Michel Foucault's introduction to the first volume of his History of Sexuality might serve as an emblem of the problematic relationship of medical thought - or medical history - to literary and cultural criticism. Proclaiming that the twentieth and twenty- first centuries have both the right and the ability to vocalise the hidden sexualities of the nineteenth century, criticism can never evade, because of the very evidence it