Freak Show Essay

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The Victorian freak show in Britain exhibited bearded ladies to dwarfs entertaining all classes of Victorian society. Furthermore, it encouraged the public to gaze at the ‘otherness ’ and to evaluate their meaning in relation to Victorian values and hierarchy. As Leslie Fielder argues the freak brings to life our most secret inner fears, ‘the freak challenges the conventional boundaries between man and female between human and animal’ . This essay will explore and analyze the treatment of racial freaks in nineteenth century British freaks shows, to demonstrate how they reflected a number of social, political and economical factors. Additionally, it will focus on women especially, because the foreign female promoted the idealization of the …show more content…

Hottentot Venus wearing tight provocative clothing . Similarly Marlene Tromp emphasizes freaks being placed in their social context ‘The body and its characteristics only come to mean something within a particular social and conceptual system’, for example foreign hirsute women being reflective of female gender anxieties at this time …show more content…

Additionally this is linked with De Groots’ argument on the representation of foreign females, stating that the oriental women were ‘socially marginal, sexually powerless and regarded by westerners as inferior and virtually prostitute’s’. Henceforth, any person who just falls out of the rigid column of normal such as Juilia Pastrana is subjected to discussions on defining the ‘normal and the

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