Seth Koven. Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. xvii + 399 pp. $19.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-691-12800-9.
Reviewed by Ginger Frost (Department of History, Samford University)
Published on H-Histsex (April, 2007)
Notes on Some Scandals
In this sociocultural study, Seth Koven analyzes the motives and circumstances of selected elite men and women who visited, exploited, "saved," and reached out to the Victorian London poor. The author is determined not to present these "slummers" as either saintly heroes or as clueless bumblers, but instead as "human beings who confronted ethical dilemmas and made difficult choices" (p. 3).
To do this, Koven analyzes three different episodes of "slumming" and two types of cross-class fellowships from the mid- and especially late Victorian period. (Except for background discussions, the book primarily covers the 1860s to the 1890s.) The first section of the book, which is biographical, looks at those who disguised themselves to infiltrate the "hidden" lives of the poor. The second half studies various attempts to build relationships across the class divide, focusing on a wider range participants. Despite common themes, the five chapters read more as separate essays than as a seamless whole. In fact, the conclusion argues for the importance of Koven's subjects in the history of twentieth-century social welfare in Britain rather than bringing the book's threads together. All the same, the separate chapters make fascinating reading.
In January 1866, James Greenwood published "A Night in a Workhouse" for his brother Frederick's publication, the Pall Mall Gazette. Greenwood's adventures in the casual wards, disguised as one of the poor, became a sensation. Koven analyzes each installment of the serialized story, seeing the articles as "a series of overlapping and parallel tropes of dressing and undressing the body, hiding and exposing social evils, and saying and censoring the full truth" (p. 38). Greenwood pioneered many of the common tropes of future slummers--their barely adequate disguises, disgust with the dirt, and assumption that sexual disorder automatically went with poverty and filth. However, Koven argues that the main reason for the articles' notoriety was not Greenwood's "uncovering" of the disgusting treatment of inmates, but his revelation of the frequent acts of sodomy in the crowded wards. And while the middle class expressed horror, the working class disputed the representation: one inmate insisted that men slept close together for warmth, not sex. The ultimate results of Greenwood's expose were mixed; it did result in improvement in workhouse infirmaries, but it also led to the 1898 Vagrancy Act, which criminalized "sodomites" who publicly solicited other men. Koven analyzes both printed texts and drawings to illustrate Greenwood's continuing influence in representations of the very poor, both in agreement and in resistance.
In 1877, Dr. Thomas Barnardo faced numerous criticisms over his management of his famous rescue operations among slum children, including accusations of fraud, cruelty to the children, and falsely representing the "street arabs" in the charity's fund-raising illustrations. The latter accusation, in particular, showed the different types of "truth" available to reformers. Barnardo argued that his posed pictures were essentially truthful by showing the overall conditions for children; in contrast, those upholders of "scientific" methods of poor relief, the Charity Organization Society, demanded a more literal definition of truth. Koven argues that the controversy was also about masculinity and sex; Barnardo's appearance as a dandy left him open to accusations of sodomy and child molestation. Though he was exonerated from most charges, he did get censure for his "artistic fictions," in part because pictures of children in torn clothing could be erotic, depending on the viewer and the context, thus bringing together the two main criticisms of Barnardo in one. The Victorians' uneasiness with the potential falseness of photography, and with the sexuality of children (especially racialized poor children) comes through Koven's analysis clearly.
Koven then turns to a less well-known example, American journalist Elizabeth Banks. Banks masqueraded as a working-class woman, most famously as a domestic servant, but her articles did little to investigate the problems of women workers, instead focusing on Banks herself as the main subject. Banks forged a career in a heavily male profession; yet, in part because of her potential lack of respectability, she at first opposed suffrage and resolutely ignored all sexual issues in her articles. Interestingly, she frankly acknowledged that she wrote for money, not for philanthropy. In this she differed from many women writers of the late Victorian period, who used their pieces to agitate for better working conditions. Though she seemed "typically" American in her regard for money, Banks's bluntness exposed the hypocrisy of some lady "slummers," who covered their more selfish motives in the veil of philanthropy. Koven's analysis shows the ambiguity of national identities, since Banks was an expert on America in Britain, but also an expert on Britain in America. Because she is hard to categorize, and also because of her conservatism, Koven argues she has not received adequate attention from historians.
The second part of Slumming moves away from biography and scandals, centering on elite women and men who tried to build relationships with the poor of London. First, Koven studies the "sisterhood of the slums," including women such as Mary Higgs and Alice Lucy Hodson. Koven highlights these women's fascination with dirt. Dirtiness was a cultural and social marker, determining a working women's status and her ability to get help from the rich. It also caused ambivalent reactions in elite women. The latter longed to clean up the slums, yet they could not escape the fact that much of their own cleanliness was the result of hard work by poor women, a fact some working women did not hesitate to point out. Some women saw socialism as the only way to bridge the gap, but whatever their politics, elite women found that their status as "ladies" did not stop them from being sexualized in return by the poor and others. Because some of them chose their work as an alternative to marriage, fears of "mannish" women came through in criticisms of women slummers and in novels about them. Koven centers his analysis on Vernon Lee's Miss Brown and Mrs. L.T. Meade's A Princess of the Gutter (1895), both coded with erotic love between women. Such close ties were vital to women's mission "to cleanse not just the streets but the private interior spaces of the London slums" (p. 222), but could not be openly expressed.
Koven's last chapter centers on men's brotherhoods in the slums, primarily Oxford House and Toynbee Hall. Both places set out to forge bonds between men of different classes, but they had to balance fraternity with the elite men's patronage, as well as avoiding accusations of homosexuality. They tried to forge a new masculinity--simple, tough, but also sensitive and devoted to public service. Koven argues that the two halls represented different values; Oxford House was ascetic, while Toynbee Hall was aesthetic. Both were possibilities for men in the fin-de-siecle, though problematized after the 1895 Oscar Wilde trial. In their different ways, the settlement houses tried to overcome class boundaries, but in neither place were working men truly equal. In addition, they both supported friendships between men, but not sexual acts. Indeed, precisely because such men were not traditionally masculine, they were all the more intolerant of homosexual behavior. However, Koven also stresses that the experiences of such men show that the Victorians accepted a wide range of masculinities by the 1890s.
As these subjects indicate, Koven is particularly successful in dealing with issues of gender and sexual orientation throughout the book, refusing to simplify obviously complex questions. Like his subjects, though, he is less successful in bridging the class divide. He makes strong efforts in each case to include working-class voices and acknowledges that the poor recipients of elite attention were not passive victims; indeed, they responded by using middle-class assumptions about the poor to their own advantage, or by vigorously protesting against simplistic representations of themselves. But because his main sources are printed ones (journals, newspapers, autobiographies) and institutional histories (as of Toynbee Hall or the COS), the middle and upper classes inevitably dominate the discussion. The few times working-class voices do intrude, they are fascinating, but they are a minority. Perhaps publications that appealed to the working classes (like socialist journals, or East End newspapers) would have helped, but this would be asking Koven to write an entirely different book, and no historian can look at everything. Still, readers should be aware of this limitation in coverage.
A second concern is Koven's tendency to follow tangents that, enjoyable as they are, draw the book off of its focus. One example is his defense of James Hinton in the introduction. Koven argues that Hinton influenced many of the elite reformers he studied, but then never mentions him again. Furthermore, Koven claims that Hinton's bad sexual reputation was based solely on rumor and his championing of women's sexual freedom. But surely the main reason Victorians assumed Hinton was a libertine was his support for polygyny. Furthermore, Emma Brooke, in letters both in the Havelock Ellis and the Karl Pearson papers, insists that Hinton tried to seduce her, telling her that she needed to learn to care for others' needs more than her own.[1] Of course, Brooke could have been mistaken, but she was making a first-hand accusation, not repeating a rumor. The Hinton section, then, is neither necessary nor as complex and careful as the main subjects of the book, and probably should have been omitted. Other examples include a section on John Merrick in the Barnardo chapter, and a long paragraph on Henry James in a section on Vernon Lee's works. Koven analyzes all of these topics very well, but deleting them would have made the arguments more focused and coherent.
In general, though, Slumming is a well-written and -researched book that will be of great use to scholars in history, literature, women's studies, and gay studies. Koven is a gifted writer and has used newspapers, novels, institutional records and newsletters, and several pictures and artworks to make his case. It is also a beautifully produced book, though the absence of a bibliography, particularly in such a thoroughly researched study, is frustrating. Still, Slumming will stimulate historical and literary work for many years; it asks important questions and gives fascinating answers.
Note
[1]. Emma Brooke to Havelock Ellis, 5 August 1885, ADD 70528, ff. 38040, Havelock Ellis Papers, British Library, London; Emma Brooke to Karl Pearson, 4 December 1885, 10/61/1, Karl Pearson Papers, University College, London. See also Edith Ellis, James Hinton: A Sketch (London: Stanley Paul & Co., 1918), 153, 178, 232, 252; and Phyllis Grosskuth, Havelock Ellis: A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980), 104.
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Citation:
Ginger Frost. Review of Koven, Seth, Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London.
H-Histsex, H-Net Reviews.
April, 2007.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=13050
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