1. Themes, Anxieties and Aesthetics of Fin-de-Siècle Culture in W. T.
Stead’s The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon
By Alexander Woolley
(Student ID: 33308786)
April 2013
Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements
for the degree of
BA (Hons.) English and History
School of Cultural Studies and Humanities
Faculty of Arts, Environment and Technology
Leeds Metropolitan University

2. CONTENTS
ABSTRACT 01
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 02
INTRODUCTION 03
CHAPTER 1: DEGENERATION AND DUALITY 06
CHAPTER 2: MIDDLE-CLASS ANXIETIES OVER THE
SEXUALIZED FEMALE 18
CONCLUSION 26
BIBLIOGRAPHY 28

3. 1
Alexander Woolley
Themes, Anxieties and Aesthetics of Fin-de-Siècle Culture in W. T. Stead’s The
Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon
April 2013
ABSTRACT
An investigation of sexuality in W. T. Stead’s The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon
(1885) that links the text (in relation to class and gender) to degeneration theories of the
second-half of the nineteenth century. This study registers sexual degeneration as a
paramount fear in these theories, and embraces a notion, shared by scholars Stephen Arata,
Julia Reid, and William Greenslade, that exploration of the precarious nature of civilization
was rooted in fears surrounding deviations from middle-class defined norms. I will argue
that Stead’s normative judgement on sexual morality manifests the same middle-class
pieties that were implicit in the widespread anxieties over degeneration, coming to the fore
of fin-de-siècle culture in the 1880s and 1890s. This argument is structured according to
Stead’s gender division of the decadent male as the perpetrator of sex crimes and the
prostitute as the victim of these crimes. Firstly, in order to engage with nuances in the
perception of sexual piety and aberration, the themes of degeneration and duality in The
Maiden Tribute will be critiqued by the exploration of these same themes in Robert Louis
Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) and Oscar Wilde’s The
Picture of Dorian Gray (1891). These novels undermine the reductive binary division of
good and evil and the concept of sin, offering a fitting framework with which to challenge
Stead’s views. Following this, the focus shifts to an analysis of Stead’s view of the
sexualized female, contextualized by contemporary feminist and social purity movements.
By charting the politics behind contemporary movements for a raised age of consent, the
progressive narrative can be eschewed with an emphasis on its immediate cultural
consequences. I then conclude that, in legally constructing the sexualized female as a
degenerate, the Criminal Law Amendment Act (1885) codified a gender binary that
repressed the female prostitute and constituted them in bodily terms.
WORD COUNT: 10,171

4. 2
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank my supervisor Dr. Robert Burroughs for his continued support of this
study and for providing an invaluable insight into contemporary issues of the fin-de-siècle
period. Other members of the Leeds Metropolitan Cultural Studies and Humanities
department are deserving of special acknowledgement for consistently sparking intellectual
stimulation over the last three years and for their unwavering dedication to their students.
Honourable mentions go to Alex Turner, Syd Barrett and Thom Yorke for providing the
soundtrack to my dissertation, and to my parents who stemmed my fears that this project’s
conclusion would never be reached.

5. 3
INTRODUCTION
In City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London
(1992), Judith Walkowitz uncovers the cultural consequences of William T. Stead’s The
Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon (1885) and heralds it ‘one of the most successful
pieces of scandal journalism of the nineteenth century’ (Walkowitz, 1992, p.81). This
defining episode in the battle over the passing of the Criminal Law Amendment (CLA) Act
is expertly expounded in Walkowitz’s cultural historical study, as she delineates the
melodramatic conventions of Stead’s narrative and its focus on ‘class exploitation’ (p.86)
and ‘sexual danger’ (p.98) to explain its repercussions and incitement of mass support.
Published in four editions on July 6th, 7th, 8th and 10th respectively, The Maiden Tribute’s
plea for greater regulations on the ‘market of vice’ (Stead, 1885, p.11) aimed to restrict the
trade in unwilling maidens and provides a fitting discourse on some of the themes that
continue to fascinate scholars in discussions on the fin de siècle. The fin de siècle, as a
perceived set of cultural phenomena, has traditionally been dated from the period 1880 to
1900, with historians observing it as the epoch of ‘a new mood in areas as diverse as the
study of literature, imperial policy and the study of the history of sexuality’ (Stott, 1992,
p.1). However, the aim of this study is to maintain the tendencies of current academics, led
by Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher’s earlier works on imperialism, who ‘search for
continuity between periods previously considered distinct’ (p.1). Whilst regarding The
Maiden Tribute as an embodiment of the anxieties that have come to be attributed to fin-
de-siècle culture, it is vital that the primary focus on ‘degeneration’ be related back to its
origins rather than being confined within this period of two decades. This caters to the
ultimate objective of ascertaining a relation between Stead and degeneration theories,
which will provide an insight into contemporary issues surrounding sexuality, class, and
gender.
In The New Historicism Reader (1994) H. Aram Veeser reiterates what he had, in
1989, seen as five assumptions underpinning works of New Historicism. Of the five, the
third point that ‘literary and non-literary “texts” circulate inseparably’ is most pertinent to
this study (Veeser, 1994, p.2). The ‘inexhaustible’ nature of New Historicism, he feels, is

6. 4
resultant of the ‘unresolved tension between arbitrary and conditional contingency’ (p.4)
that is forged between these texts. This states the belief that texts offer an interpretation of
an unrecoverable historical moment in and of themselves; they are affected by
contemporary surroundings and document events through a contemporary semiotic value
that is ascribed to language (Barry, 1995). By analysing The Maiden Tribute alongside
Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) and Oscar
Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), these texts will be weighted equally and can
form a framework in which to critique ideas of moral and physical degeneration. The
findings of this will only ever be provisional and the study’s ‘empirical foundation[s] [are]
openly available for scrutiny’ (Barry, 1995, p.177) but reading it in these terms can
primarily help to unpack Stead’s views on sexuality and his legacy in social structures.
Another influence that can be taken from New Historicism is the binding feature of its
refusal ‘to surrender the power to read from individual lives to macro-social structures, and
vice-versa’ (Veeser, 1994, p.10-11). The analysis of the literary and non-literary in this
study reads fears of degeneration as a distinct class fear, but it will also involve unmasking
the texts’ narrative styles and their authors’ subjective accounts. In a Foucauldian sense,
this method of analysis will provide nuances in understanding what was deemed sexually
aberrant and what was upheld to be virtuous, before the second chapter undertakes the
legislation of this sexual code.
If such a deluge of literature on the topic of fin-de-siècle anxieties could ever be
convincingly reduced to a watchword, ‘degeneration’ would doubtless be most fitting.
Disparate theories loosely defined it as ‘the possibility of inverse progress’ (Stott, 1992,
p.19), a dubious footing which allowed for its usage whenever various concerns over
‘imperial, racial and moral decline in Britain’ were in need of diagnosis (p. 18). In
Chapter One (‘Degeneration and Duality’), an explicit link will be established between
The Maiden Tribute and the theories that were published on degeneration in the second
half of the nineteenth century. The focus will be on the inextricable bond between
degeneration and sexuality, requiring an acknowledgement of degeneration theories
(predominantly those of Edwin Ray Lankester and Max Nordau) as middle-class discourse
that register ‘the existence of a norm from which degeneration has occurred’ (Greenslade,
1985, p.29). The centrepiece of this chapter though, will be the comparison of the themes
of degeneration and duality in The Maiden Tribute to the exploration of these same themes
in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray.

7. 5
Other themes such as: the precarious nature of ‘civilization’, the vilification of decadent
aristocrats, and the idea of the secret life, can be engaged with from the perspective that
Stead’s normative judgement (involving his ideas on sexual morality) is grounded in
middle-class pieties. The legacy of the sexually-aberrant Minotaur that Stead portrays can
be seen in the representations of Jack the Ripper in 1888, an example of the widespread
fear that ideas of the divided self, as a component of degeneration, posed to the notion of
an outward show of middle-class respectability.
Whereas Chapter One largely focusses on the decadent male as the perpetrator of
sex crimes, Chapter Two (‘Middle-Class Anxieties over the Sexualized Female’) tackles
the female ‘victim’ of Stead’s narrative in relation to class and contemporary feminist and
social purity movements. Fin-de-siècle anxieties over the sexualized female remain less
explored than the broader topic of degeneration, yet the need to chart the politics behind
contemporary movements for a raised age of consent cannot be understated. The CLA Act
codified a gender binary and by documenting the arguments for a raised age of consent, the
narrative of progress can be eschewed. It legally constructed the sexualized female as a
degenerate, and its manifestation of hostility towards this subject was later mirrored by the
satirical responses that greeted the ‘New Woman’ of late-Victorian literature. Issues of
sexuality and class will complement this diligent analysis of Stead’s views on gender roles,
culminating in an analysis of The Maiden Tribute’s greatest legacy: the CLA Act.

8. 6
CHAPTER ONE:
DEGENERATION AND DUALITY
One epoch of history is unmistakably in its decline, and another is announcing its
approach. There is a sound of rending in every tradition, and it is as though the morrow
would not link with to-day. (Nordau, 1892; trans 1895, p.13)
Although Max Nordau’s hyperbolized pessimism was largely greeted with ridicule from
his contemporaries, the work on degeneration in the second half of the nineteenth century
that preceded his ‘wielded considerable cultural influence’ (Ledger and Luckhurst, 2000,
p.2). Discourse on degeneration was nascent even in 1857 with Benedict Morel’s research
in France, but the 1880s and 1890s witnessed the bourgeoning of these eclectic works,
positing a palpable threat to self-proclaimed ‘civilized’ nations. Degeneration was at the
heart of concerns of fin-de-siècle concerns and permeates The Maiden Tribute (1885)
through the characters of the narrative and in the ‘sexual criminality’ that W. T. Stead
seeks to vanquish from society (Stead, 1885, p.11). The text’s allusions to degeneration
and duality draws interesting parallels and contrasts with the exploration of these same
themes in Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)
and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891). Analysing the nuances in
Stevenson and Wilde’s engagement with these themes alongside that of Stead’s will help
to establish the cultural significance of The Maiden Tribute and will suggest the extent to
which it pertained to contemporary anxieties. The most significant issues that arise about
degeneration and duality in conjunction with these texts are: the precarious nature of
‘civilization’; the vilification of decadent aristocrats; the innate sin that is suggested by the
concept of the secret life; Stead’s own duality in his fall from grace; and the legacy of
Stead’s Minotaur in the speculative representations of Jack the Ripper in 1888.
Theories of degeneration held that humans ‘are subject to the general laws of
evolution, and are as likely to degenerate as progress’ (Lankester, 1880, p.4). This thesis
painted a harrowing portrait of future societies and was rooted in ‘the Darwinian
mechanism of natural selection’, which equated to ‘a reassessment of progressive
narratives of evolution, and a recognition that life did not always advance from the simple
to the complex’ (Reid, 2006, p.56). As Sander Gilman notes, the concepts of degeneration

9. 7
and sexuality ‘are inseparable in nineteenth-century thought’, and it is this connection that
was most prominently explored by Stead (Gilman, 1985, p.191). Stead began The Maiden
Tribute by drawing an analogy between the child-prostitution trade of London and the
ancient Athenian tribute of ‘seven youths and seven maidens’ that was made once every
nine years to Crete (Stead, 1885, p.7). After being sent to the ‘famous Labyrinth of
Dædalus’ the offering would then be ‘devoured by the Minotaur, a frightful monster, half
man, half bull, the foul product of an unnatural lust’ (p.7). In this presentation of ‘a
frightful monster’, Stead may be alluding to the ‘visible stigmata’ that was focussed on by
‘criminologists, sexologists, and psychiatrists’ in order to ‘identify and pathologize
behaviour and identities which disturbed dominant middle-class norms’ (Reid, 2006, p.57).
It is important to note that, as ‘the foul product of an unnatural lust’, the Minotaur’s
deformities and his ‘[a]berrant sexuality’ (Hurley, 1996, p.73) are said to be inherited as a
result of repugnant intercourse, which manifests the tension between heredity and
environment as influences for degeneration. The fear is raised by Stead that the ‘maw of
the London Minotaur is insatiable’ and that future generations will be liable to inherit his
aberrant proclivities and thus degenerate (Stead, 1885, p.9). The abhorrence that Stead
feels for the Minotaur is characterized as natural as opposed to a social product and is
mirrored by Mr Enfield’s feelings upon seeing Mr Hyde in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: ‘There
is something wrong with his appearance;…something downright detestable. I never saw a
man I so disliked, and yet I scarce know why’ (Stevenson, 1886, p.10). For Stead though,
the modern ‘London Minotaur’ is a much more frightful prospect as he is ‘in semblance as
other men, while within there is only the heart of a beast’ (Stead, 1885, p.13). He is able to
assimilate in society and his threat to civilization cannot be gauged on aesthetics alone,
whereas Stevenson’s Hyde possesses outward signs of degeneration. Hyde is ‘pale and
dwarfish’ and is seen as more threatening because his ‘malformation’ cannot be qualified,
the mystery of which supposedly confirms his Otherness (p.16). Similarly the mystery
surrounding Stead’s Minotaur is his lack of qualification, yet he is eager to stress that its
‘[s]exual immorality’ (Stead, 1885, p.10) is innate and in doing so he subscribes to the
notion that ‘degeneration was rapid and fatal’ (Hurley, 1996, p.66) as future generations
could become the products of further instances of consummated ‘unnatural lust’.
As a basic concept, the premise of degeneration ‘entails the existence of a norm
from which degeneration has occurred’ (Greenslade, 1985, p.29). The literature that
proliferated fears of degeneracy frequently labelled anything that deviated ‘from a middle-

10. 8
class-defined “normalcy”’ (i.e. ‘the Decadent artist [or] the sexually active woman…’) as
‘degenerate’ (Ledger and Luckhurst, 2000, p.xxii). Stead’s engagement with this discourse
embraces this definition of ‘normalcy’ and manifests the tension that exists in The Maiden
Tribute (and within prominent theories of degeneration) between environment and
heredity. Despite casting the Minotaur as the offspring of sexual immorality, Stead
acknowledges that ‘aberrant sexual practices could also be learned’ (Hurley, 1996, p.73).
This reflects the wider dependence that degeneration theorists had on ‘the notion of
environmental influence’ in spite of their ‘vehement insistence on heredity’ (Reid, 2006,
p.56). In the section entitled ‘The Responsibility of the Mothers’, Stead asserts:
It is one of the greatest scandals of Protestant training that parents are allowed to keep
their children in total ignorance of the simplest truths of physiology, without even a
rudimentary conception of the nature of sexual morality. (Stead, 1885, p.40)
Stead’s notion of ‘sexual morality’ is reflective of a middle-class ideal and when stating
that ‘Catholic children are much better trained’ (p.40) he defines ‘better’ as something that
mirrors his own beliefs. Bound up with degeneration is the idea that traditions will fall and
be replaced by immoral anarchy, echoed later with Nordau’s fear that ‘degenerates
lack…[a] sense of morality and of right and wrong’ (Nordau, 1892; trans 1895, p.16). In
the middle-class discourse of degeneration there is a sense that as enlightened beings who
had ‘been given the power to know the causes of things’, it was therefore ‘possible for
[them] to control [their] destinies’ (Lankester, 1880, p.5). This overwrought and debased
self-consciousness made the very prospect of degeneration more harrowing and made
contemporary commentators, like Stead, more perceptive of this perceived shift. Stead is
no doubt influenced by and contributes to this notion and it is implicit in the infamous
chapter titled ‘A Child of Thirteen Bought for £5’ that Stead is bemoaning the dismantling
of familial bonds when he writes: ‘The mother was so drunk she hardly recognized her
daughter. The father was hardly less indifferent’ (Stead, 1885, p.33). In a sense, Stead is a
conduit for reinforcing this middle-class discourse of degeneration as he attests (via the
public medium of the Pall Mall Gazette) to what he sees as justification for the veracity of
these theories and in turn presents it as a legitimate fear. In Dorian Gray, Lord Henry
Wotton is portrayed as a figure who is ‘very dangerous’ (Wilde, 1891, p.111), principally
because he undermines institutions like marriage: ‘Men marry because they are tired;
women, because they are curious: both are disappointed’ (p.47). The novel itself subverts
the traditions that Stead and degenerationist theorists were stridently aiming to uphold by

11. 9
characterizing them as contrived. It will be explored later how Dorian deteriorates because
he cannot repudiate his adherence to middle-class pieties.
The two ranks of society that degeneration theories prevalently located problems in
were the ‘exhausted aristocracy and certain sections of a depraved working class’ (Arata,
1996, p.32). Indeed, both Lombroso and Nordau claimed that ‘degeneration was as
endemic to a decadent aristocracy as to a troglodytic proletariat’ (p.35). An explanation for
this vilification of aristocratic members of society is provided by Lankester when he
writes: ‘an active healthy man sometimes degenerates when he suddenly becomes
possessed of a fortune’ (Lankester, 1880, p.3). This idea characterizes wealth as both a
degenerating force and a source of apathy. In a similar vein, Stead raises alarm over the
apathy of ‘the cultured man of the world, the heir of all the ages, the ultimate product of a
long series of civilizations and religions’ who ‘scorn[s] at the folly’ of publications (such
as The Maiden Tribute) which ‘protest against [the] horror’ of the child-prostitution trade
(Stead, 1885, p.9). Here Stead ascribes the ‘cultured man’ with the decadent trait of apathy
regarding those who have been exploited and, in portraying this same ‘man’ as the
exploiter, he is also shown to be shameless. The pertinence of this can be seen when
understanding that ‘for Morel, as indeed [Heinrich] Kaan (1844), the presence of shame is
the proof of adult and therefore civilized behaviour’ (Gilman, 1985, p.193). Stead’s
Minotaur not only delights in his shame but he lacks the ‘human’ capacity to lament his
illicit deeds. As his lust has been inherited (as a degenerative attribute) it cannot, according
to contemporary concerns over degeneration, be reversed; Stead’s rhetoric prevents the
possibility of sympathy for the beast. This was a definite allusion to the perceived
precarious nature of ‘civilization’ and reflects the general fear over the corrupting
influence of decadence that would later be fully extolled by Nordau. He claimed that the
‘small minority who honestly [found] pleasure in the new tendencies’ were mainly ‘rich
educated people’ (Nordau, 1892; trans 1895, p.14). This general attack on decadence
prominently focussed on the ‘”decadent” artist’ who was ostracized as both ‘unhealthy
“other”’ and the ‘carrier of a prevailing cultural sickness’ (Greenslade, 1994, p.21).
Wilde’s decadent society (mainly featuring Dorian Gray, Basil Hallward and Henry
Wotton) of so-called ‘cultured aesthetes’ (Arata, 1996, p. 35) is overtly undermined by his
narration of their frivolity. Dorian’s rumoured vice is not enough to deter those who
complete his social circle as ‘[s]ociety, civilized society at least, is never very ready to
believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating’ (Wilde, 1891,

12. 10
p.136). Those who are captivated by Dorian’s ‘good looks’ allow him to engage in his
clandestine affairs, untrammelled by their judgement (p.11). This reflects the poisonous
apathy that degenerationist theorists believed had developed out of the excesses of the
aristocratic elements of society and which threatened the ‘”fragile surface” of civilization’
(Siegel, 1985, p.201).
Contemporary class antagonisms permeate The Maiden Tribute as Stead sets out to
expose ‘the secrets of the rich and incit[e] sympathy for the plight of the poor’ (Walkowitz,
1992, p84). His remit, at his own admission, is to focus on ‘the vices of the rich upon the
necessities of the poor’ and among these vices he includes any opposition to the passing of
the Criminal Law Amendment (CLA) Act (Stead, 1885, p.9). He believes that ‘the law
offers the child over thirteen next to no protection’ (Stead, 1885, p.31) and, in turn, makes
‘human chattel’ (p.33) of these girls. In the chapter titled ‘How the Law Facilitates
Abduction’ Stead details how the need for ‘Habeas Corpus’ to be obtained means that a
property of ill-repute cannot be searched for twenty-four hours, coming at an extortionate
sum of £30 to £50 (p.83). This is more than enough time, Stead asserts, for ‘The labyrinth
of London’ to envelope innocent maids, as the ‘the clue that leads to the entrance is easily
broken’ (p.90). By invoking ‘the sturdy innate chivalry and right thinking of our common
people’ (p.9) Stead characterized the exploited girls as ‘daughters of the people’ (Gorham,
1978, p.353). This would have been relevant to the ‘major crisis in class relations’ in
England and Western Europe of the late-1870s and 1880s as economic depression
unforgivingly hit with mass unemployment (Showalter, 1990, p.5). Class relations were
further polarized with the trial of the infamous brothel-keeper Mrs Jeffries who had been
supplying ‘young girls to an upper-class clientele and catered to their sadomasochistic
tendencies’ (Gorham, 1978, p.360). Of course, this was a sensation that helped to convince
reformers Josephine Butler and Bramwell Booth that Stead was needed to tackle the
serious issue of child prostitution and it no doubt contributed to his belief that ‘[t]he law at
present almost specially marks out such children as the fair game of dissolute men’ (Stead,
1885, p.39). His understanding that corruption was perpetuating the child-prostitution trade
centred on the themes of decadence and wealth as a means of permitting vice. In Dr Jekyll
and Mr Hyde, Stevenson early on documents how Mr Hyde is able to evade the
incrimination of his name because of his wealth: ‘I am naturally helpless. No gentleman
but wishes to avoid a scene,… name your figure’ (Stevenson, 1886, p.8). He is initially
tempted by the ‘power’ (p.59) that wealth invests him with and it is with wealth that he can

13. 11
afford the price of vice. This returns to the point that wealth encourages apathy, but it more
explicitly engages with the idea of the secret life and duality.
The subject of duality (as a component of fears of degeneration) is embedded in
The Maiden Tribute largely in the form of the denunciation of corruption. The corruption
of a clergyman, who would reportedly go to a brothel-keepers ‘professedly to distribute
tracts’, but then endeavoured ‘to start afresh as an honest man’, documents Stead’s desire
to alert his readership to the dual nature of even the most ostensibly respectable men
(Stead, 1885, p.20). He then extends this caveat to address issues surrounding corrupt
policemen: ‘the majority of policemen, being only mortal, are no more to be trusted with
arbitrary power than any other human beings’ (p.98). In his subsequent trial at the Old
Bailey for the Eliza Armstrong case he reiterated his distrust of the police force: ‘a great
number of the police are in guilty conspiracy with brothel-keepers, bribed by the persons
carrying on the infamous traffic’ (Anon., November 4 1885). In warning of the frailty of
the conscience of the mere ‘mortal’, Stead echoes fears about the divided self, which came
to represent an element of the umbrella term ‘degeneration’. In this context, vice becomes
something that could, as an expression of the divided self, be a part of everyone. Stead
overtly alludes to the concept of the secret life when he berates deniers of the child
prostitution trade: ‘Don’t believe them; if these people spoke the truth, it might be found
that they had done it themselves’ (Stead, 1885, p.24). This implicitly refers to the
exploitative aristocrat and forms a strong parallel with the ‘theme of a double life of
outward respectability,…while secretly transgressing society’s moral codes’ (Mighall,
2000, p.xi). In Dorian Gray the protagonist informs Basil, ‘Each of us has Heaven and
Hell in him, Basil’ (Wilde, 1891, p.150), which reinforces the idea of an innate disposition
to sin. Dorian feels ‘keenly the terrible pleasure of a double life’ (p.167) and throughout
the novel it is inferred that so-called ‘norms’ (such as the institution of marriage) are
repressive to the extent that they encourage ‘vice’. The novel thoroughly explores this
concept through Basil’s love of ‘secrecy’ (Wilde, 1891, p.7), Henry’s insistence that ‘more
than one life’ is necessary in marriage (p.72), and Dorian’s ‘sense of delight’ in his life of
vice (p.48). It was considered a ‘degenerate’ text by contemporary critics because it
professed the notion that ‘[c]onscience makes egotists of us all’ (p.99). It implies that
conscience is as contrived as the concept of sin and that there is forever the temptation to
uphold this persona in public whilst transgressing it in secret. Robert Mighall believes that
the book suggests that ‘duplicity is an essential part of existence in late-Victorian society,

14. 12
and that Dorian is an extreme version of an unacknowledged norm’ (Mighall, 2000, p.xiii).
Stead, in previously tackling the subject, had cast the ‘London Minotaur’ as the ‘absolute
incarnation of brutal lust’ who worryingly navigated the streets incognito:
clad as respectably in broad cloth and fine linen as any bishop, with no foul shape or
semblance of brute lust to mark him off from the rest of his fellows. (Stead, 1885, p.93)
Stead displays signs that he is more than aware of both duality and the secret life but his
writing is reductive in the sense that he cannot understand that the concept is created out of
middle-class fears. With regard to this, the literary texts of Stevenson and Wilde engage
with the concept of the secret life in a much more developed manner.
In the realm of the secret life and degeneration, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Dorian
Gray implicitly critique the ‘determinist methodology’ of degeneration theories (Pick,
1989, p.163). Stephen Arata’s Fictions of Loss in the Victorian Fin de Siècle (1996)
diligently explores all things considered ‘degenerate’ and concludes that ‘though
degeneration theory is overtly concerned with the Other, it covertly expresses the anxieties
of a middle class worried about its own present status and future prospects’ (Arata, 1996,
p.32). In consideration of this idea it is important to note that scientists of degeneration
based the foundations of their study on what they considered to be ‘commonsense orders of
truth’ and ‘discourses of morality, politics, class and gender’ (Greenslade, 1994, p.27).
These middle-class pieties governed their research and were manifested in their
publications, yet the frail foundation of such pieties was epitomized by the way in which
the sexually acceptable came to be defined by its opposing model: that which was deviant
(Gilman, 1985). Arata cites the 1533 statute, which defined sodomy as ‘all sexual acts that
did not have procreation as their aim’, as vital in normalizing the ‘sexual persona’ of the
‘married and monogamous middle-class male’ (Arata, 1996, p.56). Arata perceives
Stevenson’s Mr Hyde as an invention of this middle-class panic, who acts as proof that ‘the
self is not unique and inviolable’ (p.51). Jekyll’s battle with the separation of the binary
that supposedly exists between good and evil reflects the fallible nature of the middle-class
pieties which define the Other. It is Utterson’s rational mind that prevents him from ever
unfolding the mystery surrounding Hyde’s character as he refuses to believe anything that
does not ‘commend itself to reason’ (Stevenson, 1886, p.40). He cannot begin to entertain
the notion that Jekyll, a man who apparently does ‘what they call good’ (p.9), could be
implicated in Hyde’s crimes. It so transpires that Jekyll had ‘concealed [his] pleasures’
(p.55) even before creating his concoction and this, as with Dorian Gray, offers the

15. 13
suggestion that those with social responsibility and ‘bonds of obligation’ (p.57) are likely
to operate in a dual life of repression. This is a point that convinces Julia Reid that
‘descriptions of [Hyde’s] supposed atavism in fact represent his observers’ own
degeneracy’ (Reid, 2006, p.101). She asserts that Utterson, Lanyon and Poole’s ‘atavistic
responses…spring not from heredity but from cultural beliefs about the importance of
denying savagery’ (p.102). Utterson’s fascination certainly springs from this and from the
fear that he himself could eventually be corrupted to such an extent that his own
‘civilized/respectable’ exterior could be threatened.
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Dorian Gray are bound in their inherent critique of
‘middle-class mores’ (Arata, 1996, p.47). It is interesting to note that as Stevenson’s tale
transpires ‘the atavist’ in question (Hyde) ‘learns to pass as a gentleman’ whose
assimilation into society provides a harrowing prospect for those who know Jekyll (p.39).
Hyde becomes the outward expression (in terms of both morality and appearance) of all
that Jekyll represses, and this transgression of (loosely-termed) middle-class codes results
in Utterson’s portrayal of him as ‘a self-destroyer’ (Stevenson, 1886, p.45). Likewise,
Wilde critiques the ‘bourgeois common sense’ that was deeply imbedded in degeneration
theories and came to be uncritically assumed as fact (Arata, 1996, p.16). Wilde locates his
principal characters in the society of the dominant classes and from inside he is able to
loosen their ‘rhetoric from its accustomed ideological moorings’ (p.59). He openly
ridicules the concept of sin: ‘For all sins, as theologians weary not of reminding us, are sins
of disobedience’ (Wilde, 1886, p.181). The reiteration of the precarious nature of sin
climaxes during Dorian’s decision to destroy Basil’s painting of him. Arata interprets this
moment as Wilde asserting that his protagonist is not punished ‘for his transgressions
against bourgeois morality but because he comes to accept its standards’ (Arata, 1996,
p.63). This can be also be seen as a critique of the traditional pieties that permeated
scientific texts on degeneration. Arata refers to the Foucauldian power/knowledge nexus in
stating that ‘Dorian is disciplined to an ideology that teaches him to read himself as a
criminal’ (p.64). This is relatable to Stead’s prosecution and the manner in which he, as a
beacon of middle-class morality, felt he was entitled to reveal the secrets of London’s child
prostitution trade as he was upholding his own knowledge of conventions and alerting his
readers to a trade of sin. The result though was one of outrage, as Stead was cast in the role
of the Minotaur for both the dubious circumstances of the abduction of Eliza Armstrong
(‘Lily’ in The Maiden Tribute) and his discourse on the typically silent topic of sex.

16. 14
The tension in the portrayal of Stead as both sensationalist and social reformer was
made more convoluted by his fall from grace in the wake of his prosecution at the Old
Bailey in October and November of 1885. Henry Yates Thompson was fully aware that
Stead would provide the Pall Mall Gazette with a radical edge when he offered him a role
with the newspaper in 1880, and it was through Stead’s continued ‘sensational political
crusades’ that the paper became so influential in London (Mulpetre, 2012). When
Josephine Butler and Benjamin Scott, the City Chamberlain, approached Stead and
beseeched that he rouse public opinion into securing the passing of the CLA Act, he
instantly assumed the position of heroic social reformer in this uncovering of corruption
(Stead, posthumously published 1913). In his own narrative he implicitly assumed the role
of the abnegating ‘hero Theseus’ whose ‘self-sacrifice,…victory, and…triumphant return’
had relieved the Athenians of further dreaded offerings to the Cretan labyrinth (Stead,
1885, p.7). However, as Judith Walkowitz writes, Stead’s exploration of ‘London’s
inferno’ led to his ‘actual impersonation of a Minotaur’ (Walkowitz, 1992, p.101). The
section titled ‘A Child of Thirteen Bought for £5’ (published in part one of The Maiden
Tribute on July 6th, 1885) documents this ‘impersonation’ as Stead purchases Eliza
Armstrong for a sum of £5 and proceeds to have her certified as ‘virgo intacta’. In a third-
person narrative, Stead eerily describes how he enters the room containing Lily and locks
the door before ‘there rose a wild and piteous cry – not a loud shriek, but a helpless,
startled scream like the bleat of a frightened lamb’ (Stead, 1885, p.35). Endowed with first-
hand experience, he then confirms that he had ‘been able to verify the facts’ (p.35) and that
his exploration of the London underworld has demonstrated the frequency of such
violations. It was not long before the newspapers transformed ‘Stead from a campaigning
hero to a denigrated criminal faced with a prison sentence’ (Walkowitz, 1992, p.82). The
inversion of his portrayal invokes suggestions of Stead’s own duality, as the prosecution
interrogated both his ‘mental state’ and ‘his motives for abducting Eliza’ (p.107). Justice
Henry Charles Lopes, in response to Stead’s opening statement on the 28th October,
reasoned: ‘assuming your motives to have been honest, high-minded, and pure, still you
over-stepped the law in what you did’ (Anon., October 28 1885). As with the case of
Utterson in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Stead is characterized as someone who, in order to
‘humanize’ himself, has ‘dehumaniz[ed]…the degenerate[s]’ (i.e. the subjects of his
investigation) (Hurley, 1996, p.79). To compound the duality that came to be associated
with his character in the wake of his prosecution, Stead was further stigmatized for

17. 15
provoking contradictions at ‘the heart of bourgeois sexuality’, causing outrage (Walkowitz,
1992, p.95).
Stead painted sexuality ‘as an important core identity and private experience’ but
The Maiden Tribute was said to produce the same fantasies that it had sought to quell
(Walkowitz, 1992, p.95). In The History of Sexuality (1976; trans 1978) Michel Foucault
discusses the conventions of bourgeois sexuality and deduces that ‘on the subject of sex,
silence became the rule’ (Foucault, 1976; trans 1978, p.3). Judith Walkowitz interprets
Foucault’s as arguing that ‘far from repressing sexuality,…Victorian culture actually
produced, multiplied, and dispersed it’, prohibiting aberrant forms of sexuality
(Walkowitz, 1992, p.8). However, when monitoring Stead’s work through this model it is
clear that he sacrificed ‘The speakers’ benefit’ (that of ‘[a] person who…places himself to
a certain extent outside the reach of power’) when his intentions became questionable
(Foucault, 1976; trans 1978, p.6). The Maiden Tribute was published ‘during a brief hiatus
in the prosecution of obscene texts and photographs’ (Walkowitz, 1992, p.123) and during
the week of its publication the circulation figures for the Pall Mall Gazette rocketed from
between 20,000 and 30,000 to 100,000 (Brake, 1994). This worrying figure catalyzed
suggestions that he had ‘democratized pornography’ and encouraged perpetrations of the
sort that he had vilified (Walkowitz, 1992, p.124). In Justice Lopes’ summing-up on
November 7th, 1885 he implored the jury to forget their prejudice against Stead in spite of
the PMG’s:
disgusting and filthy articles – articles so filthy and so disgusting that one cannot help
fearing that they may have suggested to innocent women and children the existence of vice
and wickedness which had never occurred to their minds before. (Anon., November 7
1885)
Stead was prosecuted in part because he breached the silence that governed middle-class
codes on sexuality and proliferated a piece that was considered poisonous. His unreliable
narration reflects this wider fear of duality in fin-de-siècle culture and it also highlighted
the way in which texts could be considered ‘degenerate’ on the reader, a fear that reached
its pinnacle during the Whitechapel murders of 1888.
The speculation that surrounded Jack the Ripper resulted in various suggestions as
to his identity and appearance. The murders of five prostitutes between the 31st August and
the 9th November 1888 uncannily resembled the ‘literature of the fantastic’ and bore the
‘motifs of modern fantasy’, namely that of ‘social inversion, morbid psychological states,

18. 16
[and] acts of violation and transgression’ (Walkowitz, 1992, p.196). The murders helped to
crystallize the fears of those who had already warned of the corruptive nature of literature.
As seen in the case of Stead’s trial at the Old Bailey, discourse on the degenerative
influence of both fictional and non-fictional works represented a considerable anxiety in
fin-de-siècle culture. The prominent works of Walter Bagehot (1871) and later Nordau
shared the view that ‘literary language is central to the formation of collective identities’
(Arata, 1996, p.23). For Nordau, the archetypal ‘degenerate text’ was ‘at once
symptomatic, infectious, and disturbingly mimetic’, made more threatening by its subtle
and implicit scandal (p.14). He articulated fears that had long preceded the publication of
Degeneration, but the text nonetheless represents the culmination of these ideas, albeit
hysterically voiced. Stead’s articles in the Pall Mall Gazette added to the furore of the
Whitechapel murders by proposing various identities of the Ripper, ranging from ‘decadent
English Milord’ (Frayling, 2007, p.13) to ‘anarchist, socialist or philanthropist’ (p.19). Yet,
it was the Ripper as ‘Gothic sex beast’ that evoked the image of Stead’s London Minotaur
(Walkowitz, 1992, p.197). It was Stead who, in an article titled ‘Murder and More to
Follow’, first discussed the ‘”sexual origins” of the crime’ and who ‘invoke[d] Dr. Jekyll
and Mr. Hyde as a psychological model of the murderer’ (p.206). His influence at the Pall
Mall Gazette helped to perpetuate the fear of duality (of outward respectability and
clandestine vice) of which he had, three years previously, so passionately warned his
readership. In The Maiden Tribute Stead had documented the fears of an experienced
police officer on the topic of the exploitation of a young girl: ‘she does not know her
assailant’s name. She might not even be able to recognize him if she met him outside’
(Stead, 1885, p.16). This fear of the anonymous fiend, who could assimilate as a
consequence of his wealth, was fervently reiterated during the Whitechapel murders and
suggests how culturally significant The Maiden Tribute was at the fin de siècle. It tackled
the subject of duality and through its lurid detailing of events it became a ‘degenerate’ text.
Stead’s contribution to the fears of the divided self sought to alert society to transgressions
of middle-class codes but, in sensationalizing a topic on which silence reigned, he became
a victim of the contradictory nature of these codes.
The Maiden Tribute was published at a time when the proliferation of theories on
degeneration was reaching its height. It has been convincingly argued that the theorists’
fears were grounded in their anxieties over the precarious nature of civilization, suggested
by threatening deviations from middle-class defined norms. The determinism in these texts

19. 17
is perhaps most notable in the paradoxical tension that they manifest between environment
and heredity, a characteristic that is found in the sexual Minotaur that Stead constructs. The
Minotaur is said to have a predisposition to sexual immorality yet Stead unwittingly
highlights the conflict, both in his own text and in degeneration theories in a wider sense,
by insisting that sexual morality can be taught by upholding middle-class morality as a
beacon for socialization. By analysing The Maiden Tribute alongside Stevenson’s The
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Stead’s
acceptance of middle-class pieties as monoliths can be critiqued by two pieces of
contemporary literature that expressly tackle the themes of degeneration and duality.
Jekyll’s fallible self asks greater questions of the binary between good and evil, and
Stevenson suggests that codes of middle-class conduct, namely the need for an outward
show of respectability, are repressive and induce clandestine transgressions of these codes.
Similarly, Oscar Wilde questions the constructed concept of sin by having the protagonist
of his novel destroy the painting out of adherence to middle-class ideals of respectability.
Stead does not recognize the frail foundations of these pieties, particularly in relation to
sexual degeneration, and he himself becomes the victim of the repressive nature of the
codes. This leads onto the next chapter, towards the working-class sexualized female as a
lesser focus of degeneration and away from the sexual immorality of the decadent male.

20. 18
CHAPTER TWO:
‘THE MODESTY THAT IS SO NATURAL
TO A WOMAN THEY NEVER ATTAIN’:
MIDDLE-CLASS ANXIETIES OVER THE SEXUALIZED FEMALE
On August 14th 1885, a majority vote of 179 to 71 in the House of Commons confirmed
that the campaign for the passing of the Criminal Law Amendment (CLA) Act had finally
come to fruition. The furore in the wake of The Maiden Tribute’s publication forced its
passing in the Commons at the third time of asking, but the campaign’s triumph was also
due largely to W. T. Stead’s attachment to the philosophy of moral reform as he ostensibly
documented the shifting perception of ‘holding prostitutes responsible for prostitution to
thinking of them as the victims of masculine sexual profligacy and social injustice’
(Bartley, 2000, p.5). Yet, as a seminal text for the social purity campaign of 1870-1918,
The Maiden Tribute espouses ideas about female sexuality that draw comparisons to those
of contemporary ‘repressive moralists’ (Walkowitz, 1980, p.124). As has been mentioned,
sexuality was a prominent component of degeneration theories and the sexualized female
(frequently represented by the prostitute) threatened a Victorian middle-class ideal of ‘true
womanhood’. It is therefore vital that when relating The Maiden Tribute to wider fin-de-
siècle anxieties, Stead’s views on female sexuality be interrogated for the same middle-
class pieties that are implicit in his connection to fears of degeneration. Issues in need of
further exploration are: Stead’s views on unrepentant prostitutes; anxieties over the loss of
‘the sanctity of childhood’ (Bland, 1992, p.47); the feminist campaign and its maintenance
of gender binaries; and the legacy of the CLA Act particularly in relation to the ‘New
Woman’ of late-Victorian literature.
As Stead pontificates on the causes of female descent into prostitution, he registers
economic necessity as a primary factor. His recognition that many ‘adopt it occasionally
as a means of supplementing scanty wages’ (Stead, 1885, p.42) very much coheres with
the ideas of fellow-campaigner Josephine Butler who blamed ‘a larger system of economic
and social exploitation of women’ for the coercion of vulnerable women onto the streets
(Gorham, 1978, p.358). These circumstantial views were the foundations for moral reform

21. 19
philosophy which portrayed the prostitute as the tragic victim of industrialization and the
stagnated female labour market (Bartley, 2000). However, Stead’s insistence on upholding
the idea of the female prostitute as ‘fallen’ clearly demarcates who he is intending to
rescue and who he feels is irredeemable. He warns of the immediacy of a fall by asserting
that in the course of just one day a London maiden can be ‘ruin[ed]’ and subsequently led
into to the inescapable ‘portals of the maze of London brotheldom’ (Stead, 1885, p.8). He
suggests that prostitution is unacceptable as a sole means of income, but empathises with
those who are seeking redemption and desire an exit from the trade. It is interesting to note
that he strives for legislation to protect maidens who are ‘unwitting or unwilling’ (p.9), yet
in the case of a child-prostitute Emily (aged 11) he agrees that she is “the Demon Child” as
she ‘liked to talk’ about her trade (p.81). This reformist mentality stems from the belief
that prostitutes are fallen and are in need of redemption that can be granted only by more
‘virtuous’ women. This view that ‘a woman’s “fall”…herald[ed] her total transformation’
was shared by a number of feminists as an aspect of the more repressive movements that
were made by them in the 1880s and 1890s (Bland, 1992, p.48). On this transition Lucy
Bland adds: ‘The distinction between the reclaimable and the unreclaimable prostitute was
akin to philanthropy’s distinction between deserving and undeserving poor’ (p.49). This
observation strikes a chord with Stead’s supposed outlook and there is a sense that his
deep-seated views of womanhood prevents a true critique of the factors that lead to
prostitution.
As in the case of fears surrounding degeneration, Stead seems unaware that
anxieties over the sexualized female were middle-class generated and that the concept of
the fallen woman acts only to reinforce the power of the male party. Paula Bartley
eulogizes Judith Walkowitz’s argument when she states that ‘[u]nrepentant
prostitutes…were the casualties of the gendered and middle-class ideology of the social
purists’ (Bartley, 2000, p.168). The origins of ‘more Christian feelings of grief,
compassion, and desire to soothe and save [the prostitute]’ (Poovey, 1990, p.31) can be
found in W. R. Greg’s 1850 essay which sought to substitute the image of the ‘innately
moral’ (p.33) woman, when considering prostitutes, for the previous responses of ‘disgust
and contempt’ (p.31). This painted the prostitute as an asexual and unwilling victim of a
ruthless society in much the same way that later reform movements tackled the issue with
‘a fervent Evangelical enthusiasm’ (Gorham, 1978, p.354). However, this view of the
female reduces them to a type, a type that perpetuates male hegemony and that grants men

22. 20
the theoretical power to ruin young girls. Stead speaks more generally about the violated
young girl: ‘when she wakes she discovers her ruin has been accomplished. Her character
is gone’ (Stead, 1885, p.42). The idea of ruination here derives both from the image of the
‘innately moral’ woman being polluted by a rapacious male and from the paramount value
that is ascribed to virginity. There is a sense of sanctimony in Stead recognizing the
economic need of some of the young girls whilst alerting his readership to the potential
value of maidenhood. He describes it as ‘a realizable asset’ (p.17) that women ‘ought to
value more than life’ (p.15) but does not empathise with the young girls who, in the depths
of austerity, ‘might as well sell that one [precious] possession to the highest bidder’
(Gorham, 1978, p.376). Although Stead recognizes that economic necessity plays a huge
role in the turn to prostitution, his glorification of the constructed ‘innately moral’ woman
(the image shared also by the social purity movement) renders any unrepentant prostitute
as aberrant and undeserving of sympathy.
Much has been made of the endeavours of Stead and other members of the
campaign to raise the age of consent to sixteen, with its relation to contemporary ideas
surrounding childhood providing much for discussion. Stead professes incredulity that
upon completing her thirteenth year, a girl ‘is perfectly free to dispose of her person to the
first purchaser’ (Stead, 1885, p.78). A continued emphasis is placed on child suffering,
never more profound than in this epigram: ‘the child’s sob in the darkness curseth deeper,
[t]han the strong man in his wrath’ (p.35). He feels in some way responsible for the fate of
young maidens and wants others to share in his shame, an accentuated theme of the white
slavery campaign being ‘the innocence of prostitutes at the expense of morally guilty men’
(Bartley, 2000, p.4). Yet as observed by Deborah Gorham, Edward Bristow and Judith
Walkowitz, ‘the evidence of widespread involuntary prostitution of British girls in London
and abroad is slim’ (Walkowitz, 1980, p.126). In light of compounding evidence justifying
this claim, it could be argued that the CLA Act and the 1861 Offences Act which preceded
it (establishing the age of consent as twelve) primarily ‘constructed young women as
incapable of sexual responsibility’ (Smart, 1992, p.25). The very concept of an age of
consent clearly brackets the age at which a woman is deemed responsible for her sexual
encounters; above it she is culpable for both parties and below it she is removed from a
position of responsibility (Hooper, 1992). Its protective mantra seemingly paints female
sexuality as an aberration that becomes depleted with the onset of loosely-termed
‘maturity’. Stead embraces this concept, believing that degeneration of the female can be

23. 21
avoided if ‘sexual immorality’ is conscientiously taught by the ‘teacher’ and mothers
(Stead, 1885, p.10). It is suggested that if ‘the close time’ is ‘extended until they have at
least attained physical maturity’ (at the age of sixteen) then the girls will realize the value
of their maidenhood (the same value that Stead attributes it) and will be more reluctant to
forfeit it for monetary value (p.78). In this sense Stead expects that girls of sixteen would
prohibit all thoughts of turning to prostitution, which renders those who continue in the
trade, in spite of their ‘maturity’, aberrant.
The entire movement for a raised age of consent stresses the ‘great symbolic
importance’ of childhood in its wider relation to society, reflecting a component of
‘middle-class Victorian ideology’ (Gorham, 1978, p.355). The CLA Act complemented
other legislation of the nineteenth century that defined children as separate from adults and
that upheld ‘the sanctity of childhood’ for preservation and reinforcement (Bland, 1992,
p.47). Along with social purists, Stead rejected the findings of the House of Lords’ Select
Committee (1882) report which suggested that raising the age of consent from thirteen to
sixteen may not have been applicable for girls of the ‘humbler ranks’ who ‘develop[ed] at
an earlier age, morally if not physically’ (Bartley, 2000, p.87). Indeed, Deborah Gorham
has noted that the majority of men who sought to maintain the age of consent at twelve or
thirteen perceived lower-working-class girls as ‘human beings of less value than middle or
upper-class men’ (Gorham, 1978, p.365). The position of Stead, feminists and social
purists offer a flip side to this, yet their position of egalitarian reform can be criticized,
alongside The Maiden Tribute, for its imposition of middle-class pieties on working-class
culture. Contemporary fears were intertwined with anxieties around working-class
degeneration, with sensationalized accounts of national decline disseminating the
corrupting image of ‘the “excessive sexuality” of the lower-class children’ (Mahood, 1995,
p.106). In refashioning working-class culture at the level of ‘children’s sexual and social
behaviour’ (Bland, 1992, p.47), philanthropy has been accused of creating a relationship of
dependency between the privileged and the destitute (Mahood, 1995). Activities of the
social purity movement and The Maiden Tribute which sought to have the CLA Act passed
can be cynically viewed as endeavours to overcome fears of working-class moral laxity by
rendering them ‘self-disciplining and self-regulating’ through legislation (Mahood, 1995,
p.6). As an aspect of a wider fin-de-siècle anxiety over working-class degeneration, Stead’s
discourse on the young working-class prostitute maintains middle-class ideological
moorings and in suggesting that ‘physical maturity’ (Stead, 1885, p.78) nullifies the sexual

24. 22
inhibitions of women, he paints prostitutes whose involvement in the trade stretches
beyond this time (for economic reasons) in an indecorous light.
Stead attached himself to a feminist campaign that upheld gender binaries by
adhering to ‘a “separate sphere” ideology that stess[ed] women’s purity, moral supremacy,
and domestic virtues’ (Walkowitz, 1980, p.135). As has been briefly explored, prostitution
is a transgression of a middle-class ideal of femininity, but in establishing the significance
of gender roles in The Maiden Tribute it is vital that the role of the ‘degenerate’ male (see
Chapter One) be documented alongside that of the female. Stead recognizes that a society
‘peopled solely by Sir Galahads and vestal virgins’ (Stead, 1885, p.9) is utopic but
impractical, yet he proceeds to uphold these two ideals in his discussions of gender roles.
He echoes the indictment of the Report of the Rescue Society (1883) by declaring that if a
young girl becomes inculcated in vice ‘the modesty that is so natural to a woman they
never attain’ (p.81). Although this reiterates the earlier engagement with his view of the
fallen woman, it is important to re-emphasize it as one of the foundations for feminists and
the women’s liberation movement (Pearson, 1972). He lambasted any support for the
system of white slavery, which was reinforced by his frequent allusions to ‘bestial male
sexuality’ (Stott, 1992, p.12). The belief in male culpability and degeneration contrasted by
the ideal ‘vestal virgin’ as the passive female victim of male aggression, maintains a
gender binary and forces Stead’s unflinching feminist attack on ‘male centers of power’ in
the police and parliament (Walkowitz, 1980, p.125).
The condemnation of male power and these two particular institutions through
which this power is exercised, acts to circumscribe females and maintains the theme of an
inconceivable female sexuality. Stead’s misgivings about the police force are grounded in
their ‘arbitrary’ (Stead, 1885, p.98) and ‘absolute power over women who are even weaker
and less protected than the rest of their sex’ (p.104). In Stead’s eyes the male, even in an
official position of power, cannot help but be overwhelmed by his aggressive tendencies to
exploit the marginalized figure of the prostitute and is ‘virtually encouraged by [masculine]
law’ (p.74). The police and parliament are painted as powerful enough to ruin women to an
irrevocable extent, but this power is also contingent on Stead’s view of the prostitute as the
‘weak and inexperienced’ (p.17) victim of these binary roles. It should be noted that
legislators’ stock argument for the continuation of the prostitution trade focussed on the
overwhelming sexual impulses of men and how prostitutes were more fitting outlets for
this than ‘”modest” women’ (Pearson, 1972, p.18). Yet, the response to this that was posed

25. 23
by Stead and feminists alike, did not question the sexually zealous male but rather sought
to uphold the image of the ‘innately moral’ woman that had been polluted by the former
and who needed legislative protection. It can be said that ‘the feminist attack on state
regulation [which] reinforced women’s self-conscious participation in a distinct female
subculture’ operated in a masculine framework as it sought the defence of an idea of
women that repressed and outlawed their sexual impulses (Walkowitz, 1980, p.125). It
recreates W. R. Greg’s (1850) ideal of the subsumption of ‘class inequality’ into ‘gender
similarity’ and attempts to create a unity of repression that those who were economically
challenged would not necessarily have subscribed to (Poovey, 1990, p.34). As opposed to
recognizing the need for ‘a much more radical transformation of the structure of society’
(Gorham, 1978, p.355), the movement towards social purity (of which Stead was a vital
influence) aimed for ‘symbolic rather than fundamental social change’ (p.378) and
succeeded in codifying the subjugation of female sexual impulses.
The CLA Act gained the legacy of being one of the most significant pieces of
legislation in the period 1860-1890 for its orientation ‘towards social engineering’ (Smart,
1992, p.11). Measures implemented during this span of three decades included: Offences
Against the Person Act (1861); Contagious Diseases Acts (1866 and 1869); Infant Life
Preservation Act (1872); and the CLA Act (1885). These acts explicitly tackled concerns
over ‘reproduction, mothering and sexuality’ (p.13) and The Maiden Tribute had a
profound influence on the intricacies of the legislation that was passed following its
publication. In Stead’s challenge to the ‘double standard…which licensed male freedom
and female suppression’ (Levine, 1987, p.130), he aimed to penalize ‘the man who
habitually and persistently annoy[ed] women by solicitation’ (Stead, 1885, p.106). As a
consequence, the binary of male aggressor/female victim was upheld in that underage boys
who engaged in sexual intercourse with girls were liable to be thrashed even in the case of
them being their female partner’s junior (Pearson, 1972). The act also repressed the
prostitution trade by gifting greater powers to the police ‘to prosecute streetwalkers and
brothel-keepers’ (Bartley, 2000, p.84). Subsequently young working-class girls came to be
increasingly pursued by enforcers of the law and the pious National Vigilance Association
(NVA), the legacy being the diversion of ‘attention from the economic reasons why many
engaged in prostitution’ (Hooper, 1992, p.57). The NVA, a group of social purists that was
established in 1885 to enforce the act, overlooked the fact that closing brothels would
precipitate an increase in street soliciting, a consequence of their focus on public morals

26. 24
over the needs of the female subjects (Bland, 1992). The CLA Act was a piece of
legislation that alongside philanthropy, ‘encourage[d] the working class into a middle-class
“decency”’ (Bland, 1992, p.35). The fin-de-siècle anxieties that were centred on the
divisive figure of the ‘New Woman’ of late-Victorian literature are highly relatable to both
The Maiden Tribute and the foundations that were laid by the CLA Act for female
sexuality.
The New Woman as a ‘fictional archetype’ became a ubiquitous presence in the
1890s literature of ‘overtly feminist writers such as Sarah Grand, Mona Caird, Menie
Muriel Dowie, and Ella Hepworth Dixon’ (Ledger and Luckhurst, 2000, p.75). She was
reviled for the very reasons that she was feared and became a figurehead for ridicule in
Punch magazine throughout the mid-1890s (Ledger and Luckhurst, 2000). Interestingly, it
was her aversion to ‘ideal Victorian Womanhood’ (p.75) and the values that Stead presents
as innate to women that pressed opponents into presenting her as ‘a “mannish”,
overeducated bore…, [and] a bad mother’ (p.75). Refreshingly, M. Eastwood’s ‘The New
Woman in Fiction and in Fact’ (1894) defies this mood of misogyny and paints her as a
more dynamic, temperamental character: ‘Her moods are like sudden gleams of electric
fire, alternating with murky darkness’ (Eastwood, 1894, p.90). Unlike the female portrayed
in the campaign of Stead and the social purists, the New Woman does not inhibit natural
proclivities and is not bound up with the constructed traditions of femininity that are
located in the home with maternal responsibility. Eastwood also alludes to the New
Woman’s androgynous side: ‘if she assumes certain articles of masculine garb on occasion,
it is solely on account of their superior quality’ (p.91). Here, rationality and practicality
overcome constrictive gender binaries and aid her purpose in ‘the great work she has
before her’ (p.91). This image counteracts that of Stead’s passive female victim, and this
brief look at the New Woman suggests that The Maiden Tribute helped to perpetuate a
conditioned mind-set that encouraged hostility towards the New Woman and that
emphasized her threat to society and (in relation to degeneration) civilization.
Stead’s discourse on female sexuality manifests wider middle-class anxieties by
implicitly maintaining a repressive stance that can be heavily linked to the social purity
campaign of 1870-1918. By upholding the notion of the fallen/ruined woman, prostitutes
who were unrepentant and lacked the desire to be ‘rescued’ were painted as aberrant and
undeserving of sympathy despite their noted precarious economic position. It stems from
the recurring theme of Stead’s adherence to middle-class pieties and his connection of

27. 25
innate morality to a constructed sense of true womanhood. This construction is also
contingent upon male sexuality being antithetical, with its overwhelming impulse
contributing to the gender binary of aggressive male/passive female. The legacy of The
Maiden Tribute and the CLA Act (which satisfied many of Stead’s terms) was the
codification of this binary and the imposition of the middle-class tradition of childhood
through a raised age of consent. This overlooked the individual needs of prostitutes and in
not systematically attacking a social system that forced women into the trade, it rather
repressed prostitutes and rendered them ‘an outcast group’ of degenerates (Bartley, 2000,
p.168). The legislation also adds to the condition of fear that is supposedly posed by
sexualized women at the fin de siècle, and interestingly the points of condescension that
the New Woman was faced with near the end of the century can be linked to Stead’s
rhetoric on the need to protect the female victim.

28. 26
CONCLUSION
A focus on the inextricable link between degeneration theories and sexuality has remained
the basis for uncovering the connection between W. T. Stead and degeneration theories in
relation to contemporary issues surrounding sexuality, class and gender. The analysis of
The Maiden Tribute alongside Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
and Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray has provided a critique of the middle-class pieties
that permeated notions of physical and moral degeneration, and by documenting the
politics behind contemporary movements for a raised age of consent, the narrative of
progress has been eschewed for its legal construction of the sexualized female degenerate.
The division of the aggressive male and passive female victim into separate chapters has
allowed for a deeper engagement with pertinent contemporary themes such as fears over
the divided self and the relation of class to feminist and social purity movements.
When reflecting on Stead’s rhetoric on female sexuality it is important to refer to
this question posed by Sally Ledger and Roger Luckhurst in The Fin de Siècle: A Reader in
Cultural History, c.1880-1900: ‘Are Stead’s interests idiosyncratic or in some way
representative of the period?’ (Ledger and Luckhurst, 2000, p.xxii). This project has sought
to avoid strict periodization of the fin-de-siècle and so when addressing his representation
of wider contemporary interests regarding female sexuality, the link to the social purity
campaign of 1870-1918 is most tenable. Stead implicitly maintains a repressive stance in
The Maiden Tribute that is reflected in the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885. The
Act set about ‘transform[ing] the unruly body into the docile body’, continuing the theme
of legislation that preceded it in the period 1860-1890 (Smart, 1992, p.13). By imposing a
middle-class tradition of childhood through the raising of the age of consent to sixteen, the
Act ‘effectively construct[s] a specific category of “Woman” whilst seeking to contain the
problematic Woman thus created’ (Smart, 1992, p.7). The prostitute is cast as the
degenerate, one who from the age of sixteen is culpable for both her actions and the actions
of the male party involved.
The most unexpected finding of this investigation arose out of the method of
analysis involving a non-literary text (The Maiden Tribute) alongside the literary

29. 27
contributions of Stevenson and Wilde. This finding was grounded in Stevenson and
Wilde’s engagement with the consciously middle-class fear of the secret life. They help
provide a critique of the middle-class pieties involved in this concept and of the
determinism in degeneration theories, notably highlighted by the tension they manifest
between environment and heredity. In Jekyll and Hyde, Mr Utterson’s fears develop out of
the threat that Jekyll’s degeneration pose to his sense of self. Jekyll is fallible and the
repression (that results in the dual nature of his character, one that is opposed by Hyde) of
his sexual impulses helps to unpack the idea that sexual degeneration is based on frail
foundations, reinforced by that which is defined ‘deviant’. Similarly, in Dorian Gray the
protagonist can be seen to destroy his painting because he believes in a code of ‘bourgeois
morality’ that defines himself as degenerate and which influences him to commit this act
(Arata, 1996, p.63). The significance of these ideas is that Stead can be critiqued for being
influenced by this framework of ‘bourgeois morality’ when he defines that which is
sexually immoral. This applies to his demarcation of the sexually aggressive male and the
passive female, as he defines the unrepentant prostitute as somehow degenerate for
breaching a middle-class sense of true womanhood.
Another focus that could further this study would be an exploration of the tension
between the anti-feminist sentiments of decadent artists such as Huysmans and Baudelaire
and the endeavours of New Women writers to ‘represent female desire as a creative force
in artistic imagination as well as in biological reproduction’ (Showalter, 1993, p.xi). New
Women writers became a major literary presence in the 1880s and 1890s, drawing on the
rise of the short story and the ‘flexibility and freedom’ that it offered over the three-volume
novel (p.viii). A starting point could be Keynotes (1893) by George Egerton (the
pseudonym of Mary Chavelita Dunne), a writer often ‘seen as one of the most sexually-
charged of the New Women writers’ (p.xii). This subject is intriguing as it would explore a
divide between two countertypes who were often united by contemporary critics ‘as
members of an avant garde attacking marriage and reproduction’ (p.ix). New Women
writers sought to be constituted in more than just the bodily terms that legislation (like the
CLA Act) had codified them. As the degenerate decadent artist undermines the degenerate
New Woman writer, the power dynamic would alter from that which was present in The
Maiden Tribute and the CLA Act. Decadent artists could be accused of reducing New
Women writers to a constructed idea of womanhood in the same manner that Stead does
the prostitute.

30. 28
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