1150
Godeau’ s view, such images do not represent an exten-
sion of an existing tradition of erotic and pornographic
images, but rather constitute a whole new genre, one
made possible only with the invention of photography
and the new status of the photograph as trace of the real
(Godeau 1991, 229). As such, previous ways of reading
images are no longer suffi cient, and the demand arises
for novel approaches to supply interpretation for this
new genre. Some have tried to study these images in
the light of feminist fi lm theory, focusing on the key
role of the spectator in the whole operation and produc-
tion of pornography. This is not only because much of
pornography’s arousing effect is achieved in the eyes of
the viewer—which explains in part why the separation
of erotic pictures from dirty ones is often a controver-
sial issue—but also because the spectator is regarded
as directly exercising his active power over the female
object as the result of photographic technology, which
seemingly provides the real presence of the woman’s
fl esh. When it comes to stereoscopic porn, the secretive
voyeurism and the sensational tactile illusion offered by
the apparatus enhance the visual pleasure even further,
and the objectifi cation of the woman’s body becomes
inevitable.
There are yet other ways of viewing nineteenth-cen-
tury pornography where the spectatorship is concerned.
Some theorists are not satisfi ed with the fact that the
viewer is homogenised as an active and masculine
master in male-gaze theory, recognising that there are
impasses in the theory which would handicap the study
of other important audiences of pornography, such as
the female viewer. Although women were unlikely to
be the targeted audience of pornography, wide dissemi-
nation made it impossible for them to avoid the sight
of pornographic images. Upper-middle-class women
seem to have had ready access to pornography, and
with the emergence of pornographic postcards from
the 1880s, even working-class women could afford a
sexual spectacle if they so wished. Such an ‘unnatural,’
outrageous scene of woman looking at pornography,
and even sharing the male attraction to pornography,
has proved especially disturbing. According to Walter
Kendrick, this historically new phenomenon of woman
as porn observer may well have been the real cause of the
alarm felt by moral defenders, which triggered a series
of trials and regulations on obscene materials, both in
France and Britain. In the contemporary study of nine-
teenth-century pornography, however, the signifi cance
of the female spectator and her relationship to these
images is surprisingly ignored. Williams suggests that
the omission may be ascribable to the dominance of the
“male gaze” model, which fails to consider “a plurality
of differently disciplined spectator-observers seduced
in different ways by a range of erotic-pornographic
images” (Williams 1995, 22). Such an omission is
observed to have also happened in the case of gay porn
and gay viewers. The male gaze model of interpreting
pornography, however, does provide a way of seeing
how these marginalised images might have helped to
consolidate the social order, be it of gender or class, by
showing the stereotypical relationship between man
and woman. On the other hand, the challenge to such
an approach not only proposes to interpret these im-
ages from multiple viewpoints, but also suggests how
pornography might actually be the focus of a subversive
spectatorship. No matter what kind of approaches are
taken to understand these images, nineteenth-century
pornography has claimed an important role in the study
of contemporary history, reminding researchers, through
its controversial nature, of the possibility of a more
fl uctuating social relationship.
Kuei-ying HuangSee also: Erotic Photography; Nudes; Moulin, Félix-
Jacques-Antoine; Caneva, Giacomo; Durieu, Jean-
Louis-Marie-Eugène; Vallou de Villeneuve, Julien;
and Duboscq, Louis Jules.Further Reading
Crary, Jonathan, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and
Modernity in the Nineteenth Century, Cambridge: MIT
Press, 1990.
Foucault, Michel, The History of Sexuality, Vol I: An Introduction,
trans. Robert Hurley, New York: Pantheon, 1978.
Hyde, H. Montgomer, A History of Pornography, London:
Heinemann, 1964.
Kendrick, Walter, The Secret Museum: Pornography in Modern
Culture, New York: Viking, 1987.
Marcus, Stephen, The Other Victorians, New York: Basic,
1966.
McCauley, Elizabeth Anne, Industrial Madness: Commercial
Photography in Paris 1848–1871, New Haven and London:
Yale University Press, 1994,
Mulvey, Laura, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen
16.3 (1975): 6–18.
Myrone, Martin, “Prudery, Pornography and the Victorian Nude
(Or, What do We Think the Butler Saw?).” In Exposed: the Vic-
torian Nude, edited by Alison Smith, London: Tate, 2001.
Peckham, Morse, Art and Pornography: An Experiment in Ex-
planation, New York, Harper & Row, 1971.
Richter, Stefan, The Art of the Daguerreotype, London: Viking,
1989, 23–35.
Sigel, Lisa Z, “Filth in the Wrong People’s Hands: Postcards and
the Expansion of Pornography in Britain and the Atlantic
World, 1880–1914.” Journal of Social History 33.4, (Summer
2000): 859–885.
——, Governing Pleasures: Pornography and Social Change
in England, 1815–1914, London: Rutgers University Press,
2002.
Soloman-Godeau, Abigail. “The Legs of the Countess,” October,
39 Winter, 1986, pp.65–108.
——, “Reconsidering Erotic Photography: Notes from a Project
of Historical Salvage.” In Photography at the Dock: Essays on
Photographic History, Institute and Practices, Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1991, 220–237.