Book of the Week

Victorians Undone by Kathryn Hughes 
Recommended by Miss McLaren 

When we think of the Victorians, argues biographer Kathryn Hughes, we tend to think of them only from the neck up, like the US presidents on Mount Rushmore: their bodies, and the rest of their physicality (including how they smelled) don’t seem to exist, let alone matter.

But Hughes believes that Victorian bodies are important, and in Victorians Undone, she explains why.
Each chapter takes a physical feature as its starting point, and uses it as a prism through which to view Victorian culture and history from an unexpected angle. There’s the mysteriously swollen belly of Queen Victoria’s lady in waiting, Lady Flora Hastings; the rebarbative bristles of Charles Darwin’s beard; George Eliot’s reputedly over-large right hand; the luscious lips of Pre-Raphaelite muse Fanny Cornforth; and the savagely scattered bodily bits of eight year old murder victim Fanny Adams (as name-checked by one of the Victorians on Mars in last Saturday’s episode of Doctor Who).

Each of these body parts proves individually interesting enough, but the most intriguing chapter by far is the one on Darwin’s facial fungus. Hughes’s analysis of the beard as cultural signifier takes in Chartism, the voyage of the Beagle, Naval tradition, muscular Christianity, intelligent design, the Crimean war, barbershop hygiene, patriarchy, polar exploration and parakeets. 21st century hipsters might have reached ‘peak beard’ four years ago, but compared to the Victorians, they haven’t even begun.

An award-winning biographer, Hughes is clearly fascinated by the textual bones beneath the flesh, and perhaps her painstaking accounts of the primary and secondary sources underpinning each story are more interesting for the specialist than the general reader. Nevertheless, while none of the remaining chapters achieves quite the same critical mass as her account of Darwin’s whiskers, each tells us something strange and compellingly carnal. The gossip about George Eliot’s rustic right hand reflects the dairy-maid’s fall in status from pastoral innocent to symbol of sexual knowingness. The sad story of murdered, mutilated Fanny Adams chasteningly notes that had the eight year old survived, she might have found herself held partially responsible for her own violation. Lady Flora’s bloated belly sheds light on the persistence of Regency values and behaviour at the court of the new virgin queen (definitely not as winsome as Jenna Coleman) and Fanny Cornforth’s sensually pouting mouth speaks not of Pre-Raphaelite sexual obsession but of dentistry and domesticity.

This is a hugely enjoyable book. While it might occasionally feel a little over-stuffed – even padded out – with biographical offcuts, it is also studded with insights and quirky details that make the Victorians seem both alien and familiar. Especially from the chin down.