Victorian Voyeurs

When I signed on to take Victorian England, I had the same vision that many did about the era; in my mind, Victorian England was a time of prudishness, as we discussed in class, it was a time when a beautifully crafted table leg was considered too sordid for plain sight and had to be veiled by a lace table cloth. After a few weeks in the class, I soon came to understand that the table leg was an even larger metaphor for Victorian society—something scandalous covered by a prim and proper veil. I also came to understand that the Victorians had a need to pull back that veil and gaze upon something forbidden when they thought that no one was watching. The novels we read over the course of the semester only confirmed the veil over Victorian living and the need of for many to voyeuristically peek under that veil from time to time for a taste of scandal.

All novels are really just a peek under the veil into someone else's fictional though typically conflict-addled life, some novels with more layers of veils than others. Novels delve into the private sphere of their characters lives, and Victorian readers derived pleasure from looking in to these private spheres. For example, in this class, we started with The Jungle Book. In this novel, Kipling lets readers into a jungle setting that not many Victorians would get the chance to see in real life, though this is arguably the most public private sphere that we read about because almost the entire book takes place in the open jungle air. However, for Mowgli, the jungle is a private place, as other humans do not typically come into the jungle and bother him. Kipling lifts the mysterious curtain off of the jungle world and shows Mowgli's personal life and struggles, including Baloo's physical abuse, Mowgli's first tears, and his (thinly veiled) Imperialist attitudes.

Next, we read Water Babies, which took place away from closed doors, as well, but delved into the more private world of the water babies, which many people don't even know exists. Tom leads the reader through his new world and gives them an inside look at what it's like to be a water baby. We then moved on to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, which also took place away from closed doors but occurred in an even more alien world than the jungle or the water baby realm. Alice's Wonderland is more private even than the water baby world, though, as exists within the constructs of her mind. The fact that she is a stranger in this land and that many of the characters that she meets in Wonderland could characterize her as intrusive gives this novel an Imperialist feel. Alice not only lets readers get a look into her imagination but also leads the reader through Wonderland by forcing herself into the lives of every character she meets, for example, by inviting herself to the Mad Hatter's tea party.

When we read The Time Machine, we were not only taken into the time traveller's home by the narrator and allowed to look at his private invention, but we are also allowed into the futuristic world of the Elois and the Morlocks and led around by the time traveller who explores this world in a similarly intrusive way to Alice's exploration of Wonderland. A similar thing happens in The Coming Race, though this particular narrator is more easily controlled by the Vril, he still manages to shake up their way of life simply by existing with his human flaws. In this story, he reader plays voyeur to a mysterious underground race of people who attempt to live in perfection.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde took the class into a new level of voyeurism, as it was the first story that took place primarily behind closed doors. Readers are allowed into the world of Dr. Jekyll, a man with many secrets, and as the story goes on the reader gets full-view of the secrets Jekyll so desperately tries to keep and, in the end, his grisly fate.

The intrusive curiosity of characters like Alice shifts into Victorian suspicion as we move into Edgar Allen Poe's Dupin stories. These characters are no longer just out to explore and experience new worlds but instead are out to examine their worlds under a magnifying glass in order to detect sinister activity. Similar to Jekyll and Hyde, these storied take place largely behind closed doors: one in a house in a very private neighborhood and one in the extremely private bedroom of the Queen. (One story takes place in the outskirts of the city, but we get the least private information in this story, as the mystery is left unsolved.) Next we read the Sherlock Holmes stories, which are very similar to the Dupin stories, except in Sherlock Holmes we get more of the less savory features of the detective, for instance his drug use and his arrogance, which make the stories even more scandalous.

The last book we read, The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, was the ultimate Victorian voyeur novel. This book combines the elements of the scandal behind-closed-doors detective story with reality, which makes it even more appealing. This story is a full shift into suspicion over curiosity. ("Suspicion" is even in the title!) Kate Summerscale gives readers a look at a real Victorian detective case, which makes the case all the more appealing to readers. The case brings the private sphere of a well-to-do Victorian family with plenty of skeletons in the closet to public view with the murder of their son, Saville. If this book had been available to readers during the Victorian era, I'm sure that it would have been a bestseller. Perhaps because it is still a bestseller today, this proves that we've not completely grown out of this Victorian voyeurism. Though it's no longer forbidden to have a fancy table leg in plain sight, in some ways, this era has even taken voyeurism a step further with reality television. In our time, peeking into the lives of fictional characters simply isn't enough and we must film real people's lives in order to be satisfied.