Thesis
Crime and disease in early victorian London --: contagion anxiety in Oliver Twist
Washington State University
Master of Arts (MA), Washington State University
2011
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/103598
Abstract
Disease, especially cholera epidemics, in the Victorian period in London prompted many inquiries into theories of contagion. Many European scientists and prominent figures in society believed that diseases were spread through "tropical" environments because of their encounters with disease in foreign lands. This group, which R.J. Morris explains are called anticontagionists, believed that diseases spread as a direct result of environmental factors, such as heat, humidity, and "miasmatic" fogs. Medical cartographers began mapping areas which had experienced disease crisis and found that slums and poor populations were usually greatly affected by disease, whereas more fortunate areas were not affected by disease as often. These maps began to create narratives about the slum and its inhabitants as diseased Others. My project explores the ways in which one of the most prominent Victorian writers, Charles Dickens, used his knowledge of medical mapping to create a narrative sanitary map in his second novel, Oliver Twist. I offer close readings of the novel as a sanitary map which warns its readers of the disease environment and diseased inhabitants within the slums of London. Dickens, in this novel, maps the slum areas of the city in relation to the ideal, middle to upperclass areas. Additionally, I explain the connections Dickens makes between disease and immorality in his detailed descriptions of the slum. Dickens, I argue, operates from an anticontagionist perspective and constructs the slum as a diseased environment which breeds disease and immorality, and he expresses a fear of the cross-contamination of the slums into the more fortunate areas of the city.
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Details
- Title
- Crime and disease in early victorian London --
- Creators
- Megan C. McGrath
- Contributors
- Anne Stiles (Degree Supervisor)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- English, Department of
- Theses and Dissertations
- Master of Arts (MA), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University; Pullman, Wash. :
- Identifiers
- 99900525002101842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Thesis