1st Edition
Gender, Crime, and Murder in Victorian England The ‘Black Ghost’ of Bermondsey
Gender, Crime, and Murder in Victorian England seeks to provide a comprehensive examination of the notorious Mannings' ‘Bermondsey murder’, and its wider implications in Victorian criminal narrative and popular culture. Exploring the ongoing textual afterlife of Maria Manning, including significant literary contributions by Charles Dickens through his characters Mademoiselle Hortense and Madame Defarge, this volume illuminates representations both echoed and challenged in mid-nineteenth-century conceptions of gender, sexuality, class, nationality, religion, and criminality. This volume also examines the five largely forgotten cases of female homicide from the same year and the imagined discourse perpetuated in fictional personifications. Utilising a wide breadth of literary and historical research, this volume provides readers with a thorough understanding of the various cultural implications of crime and gender in the Victorian period to be read, remembered, and reinterpreted today. Located simultaneously in the fields of feminist, historical, and literary criticism, this volume is invaluable to students of nineteenth-century literature and culture, and researchers with an interest in criminology and media culture.
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER ONE: The case of the Mannings
CHAPTER TWO: ‘The Bermondsey Murder’: Crime and Commerce
CHAPTER THREE: Popular representations of Maria Manning: Foreigner, Lady, Servant
CHAPTER FOUR: Frederick and Maria Manning: A comparative analysis
CHAPTER FIVE: Maria Manning’s textual afterlife
CONCLUSION
APPENDIX A
APPENDIX B
APPENDIX C
APPENDIX D
APPENDIX E
Biography
Anna Kay is a PhD graduate from the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne (MSt, University of Oxford). She is currently employed as a researcher at the University of Melbourne.
