Synopses & Reviews
Clementina, Viscountess Hawarden (1822andndash;1865) produced over eight hundred photographs during her all-too-brief life. Most of these were portraits of her adolescent daughters. By whisking away the furniture and bric-a-brac common in scenes of upper-class homes of the Victorian period, Lady Hawarden transformed the sitting room of her London residence into a photographic studioandmdash;a private space for taking surprising photos of her daughters in fancy dress. In Carol Mavorandrsquo;s hands, these pictures become windows into Victorian culture, eroticism, mother-daughter relationships, and intimacy.
and#9;With drama, wit, and verve, Lady Hawardenandrsquo;s girls, becoming women, entwine each other, their mirrored reflections and select feminine objects (an Indian traveling cabinet, a Gothic-style desk, a shell-covered box) as homoerotic partners. The resulting mise-en-scandegrave;ne is secretive, private, delicious, and arguably queerandmdash;a girltopia ripe with maternality and adolescent flirtation, as touching as it is erotic. Luxuriating in the photographsandrsquo; interpretive possibilities, Mavor makes illuminating connections between Hawarden and other artists and writers, including Vermeer, Christina Rossetti, George Eliot, Lewis Carroll, and twentieth-century photographers Sally Mann and Francesca Woodman. Weaving psychoanalytic theory and other photographic analyses into her work, Mavor contemplates the experience of the photograph and considers the relationship of Hawardenandrsquo;s works to the concept of the female fetish, to voyeurism, mirrors and lenses, and twins and doubling. Under the spell of Roland Barthes, Mavorandrsquo;s voice unveils the peculiarities of the erotic in Lady Hawardenandrsquo;s images through a writerly approach that remembers and rewrites adolescence as sustained desire.
and#9;In turn autobiographical, theoretical, historical, and analytical, Mavorandrsquo;s study caresses these mysteriously ripped and scissored images into fables of sapphic love and the real magic of photography.
and#9;
Review
andldquo;The authorandrsquo;s perspectives on Victorian and contemporary issues of intimacy, exhibition, maternity, sexuality, just to name a few of the themes in play here, open up new perspectives for the reader, who thus feels inspired to stop and dream for a while, hoping to do so as acutely and as inventively as Mavor does.andrdquo;andmdash;Joseph Litvak, author of Strange Gourmets: Theory, Sophistication, and the Novel
Review
andldquo;Handsomely written and carefully researched, this book will have large appeal. It is a real treasureandmdash;indeed, unforgettable.andrdquo;andmdash;Richard Howard
Synopsis
A writerly study of Lady Hawarden’s photographs and other visual representations of the complex erotics of adolescent girlhood.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. [203]-209) and index.
About the Author
Carol Mavor is Associate Professor of Art at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the author of Pleasures Taken: Sexuality and Loss in Victorian Photographs, also published by Duke University Press.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface: andldquo;Only, my secretandrsquo;s mine, and I wonandrsquo;t tellandrdquo;
An Erotic Note
A Queer Note
Introduction: Adolescent Reverie
Reduplicative Desires
andldquo;In Which the Story Pauses a Littleandrdquo;
Sapphic Narcissa
Collecting Loss
Postscript
List of Illustrationsand#9;
Notesand#9;
Works Cited
Index 211