Abstract
In this penultimate chapter, Maier analyzes the flame-haired Bridie as a New Woman, pipe-smoking detective who uses her abilities to solve crimes in Things in Jars (2019) by Jess Kidd. Also examined is Iris in The Doll Factory (2019) by Elizabeth Macneal as a young artist who becomes the Pre-Raphaelite obsession of a criminal whose perversity and taxidermy skills seek to objectify her as art. The chapter will consider how the red-haired nature(s) of these neo-Victorian women seek to save the women from Victorian stereotypes and give voice to the skilled but silenced women of the Victorian past.
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Notes
- 1.
An extensive discussion of the film by Sue Sorensen includes mention of how Neil LaBute gets the uncoiling of Maud’s blonde hair wrong (2004, 74), but completely misses the major change of silvery to red hair in Christabel’s portrayal in the film.
- 2.
For the implications and costs of women’s hair arrangement and appearance in the Victorian era, see Ayres’ Chap. 7.
- 3.
See Helen Davies (2015) who discusses the question of excessive femininity of the giantess.
- 4.
On Siddall’s illness brought about by this situation, see Ayres’ Chap. 4.
- 5.
See Brenda Ayres’ chapter on Pre-Raphaelite obsession with red hair in this volume.
- 6.
Although not relevant to the discussion here, the young girl is the character Albie’s sister; Albie acts as the go-between of Silas, Frost, and Iris, but it is not until it is too late he realizes Silas is going to kidnap her; he is killed by a carriage on his way to warn Frost. Anna Carey makes the excellent point in her review of The Doll Factory that Albie “could have been a sub-Dickensian stereotype instead becomes a deeply moving portrayal of life at the bottom of Victorian London” (2019, n.p.).
- 7.
Linton’s “The Girl of the Period” first appeared in the Saturday Review, 25 (March 14, 1868).
- 8.
The works of the Romantic poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, particularly The Ancient Mariner (1798) have a great deal of suggestive connection with Kidd’s novel.
- 9.
Bridie’s male costume is contrasted strikingly by Kidd with the visage of the criminal Mrs. Peach who, from afar, appears a young woman but up close, Bridie sees her “freshness has been retained—the years rewound, even—by sheer artifice” and “cosmetic artistry” full of wigs, and false teeth (236).
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Maier, S.E. (2021). Neo-Victorian Freakery: Flaming-Haired Women, Dolls, Art, and Detection. In: A Vindication of the Redhead. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83515-6_11
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