The Victorian Freak Show:  The Significance of Disability and Physical Differences in 19th-Century Fiction
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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

Abbreviations

xi

Introduction: Physical Difference and the Nineteenth Century

1

Theorizing Physical Difference

4

Traditions of Bodily Spectacle

25

Chapter 1: Littleness in the Novels of Charles Dickens

41

A Sentimental Social Critic

43

Showman, Collector, Author

47

Miniatures and Monsters

52

Exploiting the Dwarf-Child

59

The Authority of Small Size

68

Chapter 2: The Widest Lap: Fatness and Nurturance in Nineteenth-Century Fiction

87

Fat People and Fasting Girls

91

Dickens's Supplemental Nurturers

97

Why Fat? A Broader View

109

Fat Sexuality in Maupassant's “Boule de Suif”

115

Chapter 3: Female Masculinity in Sensational Fiction, 1860–1890

121

Sensationalism and the Gender Debate

125

Making a Place for the Masculine Woman: Marian Halcombe's Happy Ending

131