Bibliographic details and abstracts are available to all. Downloads of full-text dissertations are restricted to University of Portsmouth members who must login. MPhils may be accessed by all.

Abstract

Domestic taxidermy (the art of stuffing dead pets), and post-mortem photography, (the practice of photographing deceased family members), were two distinct practices within Victorian death culture which depended on their respective trades’ ability to convincingly resemble the deceased in the artefacts they created. They invariably failed. The survival or these relics and the documented accounts of their afterlives is sparse and rarely makes a joint appearance in contemporary scholarship. By reconstructing their diverse afterlives and fleshing out seldom documented accounts of their intimate encounters, this research makes a notable contribution to these fields of study.
To achieve this, the project has incorporated a wide range of primary and archival sources from newspaper and trade press archives, employing literary studies to enhance ideas where appropriate. The methodology of foregrounding common reference points between these two distinct practices, has enabled a more sustained discussion on areas which are rarely addressed in scholarship. By contextualising both practices within wider Victorian anxieties surrounding a diminishing nature and industrialisation, the project reveals new ideas surrounding the attitudes and behaviour embedded within these memorialisation practices and questions contemporary assumptions over how these artefacts encountered their demise. Practices where women were central to these objects’ creation, which in turn adds a darker dimension to the imaginary ideal of ‘Angels of the Home.’
Through exploring the tension between sentiment and commodity, the research has revealed the impossible task of capturing likeness of the living in death, which resulted in falsely pleasing or grotesque representations. These relics’ failure to resemble the deceased prompted their imaginative repurposing into utilitarian objects and sartorial decoration. Or their disposal at the time by those who commissioned them, ideas which challenge contemporary assumptions that these artefacts encountered their demise at the hands of successive generations.

Course: Victorian Gothic - MA - P2927FTD

Date Deposited: 2024-01-31

URI/permalink: https://library.port.ac.uk/dissert/dis14342.html