When it Hurts to Look: Interpreting the interior of the Victorian Woman

摘要

The use of the vaginal speculum was as important to Victorian doctors who struggled to pro-fessionalise the fields of gynaecology and obstetrics as it was controversial, especially when such doctors were men attending to women of respectable class status. While the debate over the use of the speculum in Victorian Britain was certainly rooted in moral concernsovertheexposureof women's bodies, an examination of the arguments made by Victorian medical men concerning the use of the instrument reveals that there was more than just modesty at stake. This article will consider how the nineteenth-century texts that articulate different positions regarding the use of the speculum in gynaecological examinations also demonstrate important tensions relating to the privileging of the sense of sight versus touch in Victorian medicine, particularly when referring to the respective utility and purpose of a male doctor's visual or tactile knowledge of the inside of a woman's body.