Chen argues that Victorian fear of contagion, particularly surrounding the London cholera outbreaks in the first half of Victoria's reign, inspired dual processes: infrastructural efforts to clean up the city, and social practices of stigmatisation, surveillance, and control In its introduction and first chapter, Victorian Contagion establishes its wide parameters and central claim, arguing that over the course of the nineteenth century, discourses of public health medicalised and pathologised a binary set of concepts: illness, poverty, immorality, and filth on the one hand, and health, wealth, morality, and cleanliness on the other Three of these treat Charles Dickens: a chapter on Bleak House discusses the association of smell with contagion (Chapter 3);a chapter on Oliver Twist treats Victorian fears surrounding prostitution, syphilis, and female sexuality (Chapter 7);and another uses Our Mutual Friend to show how rubbish never disappears and is in fact recycled and resurrected, challenging the very notion of filth it signifies (Chapter 9) [ ]Dickens's own social experiment' - his management of Urania Cottage, a project which 'resocializ[ed] prostitutes, teaching them daily routines, table manners and other forms of etiquette, and to wear proper attire', 'control[ling] even the most insignificant details' of their lives, including what the 'inmates' could say and to whom (p 235) - is treated as 'a remarkable achievement' (p 237) that evinces Dickens's charity and dedication
Victorian Contagion: Risk and Social Control in the Victorian Literary Imagination