Reviews

The Other Victorians: A Study of Sexuality and Pornography in Mid-Nineteenth-Century England by Steven Marcus

groceries's review against another edition

Steven. Babygirl. You are so stupid 😭

kiri_johnston's review against another edition

funny informative medium-paced

3.5

thecatwood's review

As a product of the sixties, The Other Victorians really was a groundbreaking study on the history of British pornography from the previous century. It is also incredibly dated in its view of homosexuality and women's sexual experiences.

itslorraining's review

2.0

It’s frankly remarkable that a seminal work in the study of Victorian porn, which goes to great lengths to critique the sexual blind spots of the authors it studies, should be so phenomenally locked into the sexual and artistic preconceptions of its author. Among these: there is a specific definition of “literature” to which porn does not belong. Porn is unilaterally written by and for men, and any representations of women, in any pornographic setting, are male fantasies that oppose actual womanhood. Marcus mentions the existence of female porn writers - only once, if favourably - in a footnote in the conclusion, but doesn’t do us the service of naming them, nor is he able to offer anything more than the not unreasonable but far from certain assumption that the anonymous authors in the texts he mainly analyzes are male. Women are inherently less sexual than men. Also, they don’t ejaculate in any way, shape, or form.

I strongly recommend this book to people interested in the sexual hangups and prejudices of the 1960s as well as the 1860s.