Table Of ContentAlexa Wright is Reader in Visual Culture at the University of
Westminster. She is also a practising visual artist who works with
video, sound and interactive digital media.
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‘Alexa Wright offers an intriguing meditation on the survival
of some classical rhetorics of monstrousness in medieval and
especially modern visual cultures. Well illustrated and lively, this
book will appeal to anyone intrigued by the history of monsters.’
Jeffrey J. Cohen,
Professor of English, George Washington University
‘Alexa Wright’s thought-provoking new book takes the study
of human monstrosity from its earliest manifestation in Pliny’s
Monstrous Races right up to an analysis of contemporary mass
murderers. Using a plethora of illustrations, Wright investigates
Foucault’s contention that the human monster has vanished from
view to be replaced by monstrous character and behaviour to
show how iconography still remains crucial to our ability to place
and contain those who deeply disturb us. The great strength of
Monstrosity lies in the author’s deft handling of complex and
scholarly images and analysis alongside the expression of her
own fascination and puzzlement. The questions “What is truly
human?” and even “Who am I?” are never far from the surface.’
Margrit Shildrick,
Professor of Gender and Knowledge Production,
Linköping University, and author of Embodying the Monster
‘With Monstrosity, Alexa Wright offers a provocative and fresh
understanding of the monster, the cultural figure that has haunted
the human imagination from antiquity to the present. Human
monsters, Wright demonstrates, are the unusual and unexpected
beings which are on the very edges of the human and onto which
we have projected and continue to project our own meanings,
fears and fantasies. Alexa Wright’s unique contribution to the
recent conversation about human monsters comes from her
perspective as a photographer. Approaching the human monster
from the visual perspective as she does allows Wright to consider
the complicated human dilemma about knowing what we see
and seeing what we know.’
Rosemarie Garland-Thomson,
Professor of Women’s Studies, Emory University
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Alexa Wright
Monstrosity
The Human Monster
in Visual Culture
Published in 2013 by I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd
6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU
175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010
www.ibtauris.com
Distributed in the United States and Canada
Exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan
175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010
Copyright © 2013 Alexa Wright
The right of Alexa Wright to be identified as the author of this work has
been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book,
or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced
into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
the prior written permission of the publisher.
ISBN: 978 1 78076 335 4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978 1 78076 336 1 (pbk)
A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available
Typeset by JCS Publishing Services Ltd, www.jcs-publishing.co.uk
Printed and bound in Great Britain by T.J. International, Padstow,
Cornwall
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| Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Acknowledgements x
Introduction 1
1 Monstrous Strangers at the Edge of the World:
The Monstrous Races 9
2 Blurring the Boundaries of Nature and Culture:
Wild People and Feral Children 27
3 Bodies and the Order of Society: The Greek Ideal,
the Monster of Ravenna and Physiognomy 47
4 Monsters in Proximity: Freaks and the Spectacle of
Abnormality 79
5 A Monstrous Subject: Representations of Joseph
Merrick, the ‘Elephant Man’ 104
6 Monstrous Images of Evil: Picturing Jack the Ripper
and Myra Hindley 125
7 Modern Monsters and the Image of Normality:
Ted Bundy and Anders Breivik 145
Afterword 164
Notes 167
Bibliography and Further Reading 193
Index 209
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| Illustrations
1.1 The Monstrous Races, Arnstein Bible, c.1172 (British
Library, Harley 2799, f. 243) 8
1.2 Panotii, lintel of Basilique Ste-Madeleine, Vézelay,
France, c.1125–30 13
1.3 Richard of Haldingham, Mappa Mundi, c.1300
(Hereford Cathedral) 22
1.4 Detail from a nineteenth-century facsimile of the
Hereford Mappa Mundi, showing Monstrous Races
at the edge of the world 23
2.1 Alexander and the Wild Man, painted manuscript
illumination, c.1420 (© The British Library Board) 36
2.2 Alexander and the Wild Man, painted manuscript
illumination, c.1410–12 (© Bibliothèque nationale de
France) 37
2.3 Jean Bourdichon, ‘The Wild Condition’, c.1500
(© L’École nationale supérieure des beaux arts, Paris) 38
2.4 ‘What Is It?’, poster originally produced in London,
c.1846 (© The British Library Board) 40
2.5 Oxana Malaya (Courtesy of Animal Planet) 45
3.1 Leonardo da Vinci, ‘Vitruvian Man’, c.1487 (Photo:
Luc Viatour) 50
3.2 Gregor Reisch, ‘De Astrologia – Astrological Man’,
1503 (Wellcome Library, London) 51
3.3 Roman copy of Myron’s ‘Discobolus’ (‘Discus
Thrower’) (© Trustees of the British Museum) 53
3.4 The Monster of Ravenna from a German broadside
of 1506 (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Munich,
Einbl. VIII, 18) 55
3.5 Licetus, ‘The Monster of Ravenna’, 1634 (The
Liverpool Medical Institution) 56
3.6 Leonardo da Vinci, ‘Five Grotesque Heads’,
c.1480–1510 (Supplied by Royal Collection Trust.
© HM Queen Elizabeth II 2012) 63
3.7 Charles Le Brun, ‘The Head of an Ox and the Head of
an Ox-like Man’, c.1820 (Wellcome Library, London) 64
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viii 3.8 Johann Kaspar Lavater, ‘Eight Ways of Looking at
Socrates’, 1789 66
3.9 Sir Francis Galton, composite portraits, 1883 (UCL
| Library Services, Special Collections) 69
y 3.10 Cesare Lombroso, ‘Six Criminal Types’, 1888
t
si (Wellcome Library, London) 72
o
tr 3.11 Hugh Welch Diamond, ‘Religious Melancholy’,
s
n c.1850–8 (Royal Society of Medicine, London) 76
o
m 3.12 Lithograph after Figure 3.11, 1858 (Royal Society of
Medicine, London) 77
4.1 ‘JoJo, the Russian Dog-faced Boy’, c.1884 (Photo:
Charles Eisenmann. Courtesy of Michael Mitchell) 84
4.2 Henry Johnson as ‘Zip’ with Ashbury Benjamin, the
‘Leopard Boy’, c.1885 (Photo: Charles Eisenmann.
Courtesy of Michael Mitchell) 88
4.3 Freak show at the Rutland Fair, Vermont, 1941
(Photo: Jack Délano. Library of Congress, Prints and
Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection) 91
4.4 Bearded lady, Madame Devere, c.1878 (Photo:
Charles Eisenmann. Courtesy of Michael
Mitchell) 95
4.5 Bearded lady, Madame Devere, with her husband,
c.1878 (Photo: Charles Eisenmann. Courtesy of
Michael Mitchell) 96
4.6 Charles Tripp, calling card, 1885 (Photo: Charles
Eisenmann. Courtesy of Michael Mitchell) 98
5.1 Letter written by Joseph Merrick to Leila Maturin,
7 October 1889 (The Record Office for Leicestershire,
Leicester and Rutland, ref. DE3644) 106
5.2 Medical photographs of Joseph Merrick, 1886 (Royal
London Hospital Archives) 117
5.3 Carte de visite portrait of Joseph Merrick
in his ‘Sunday-best’ suit, c.1887 (Royal London
Hospital Archives) 119
5.4 Merrick’s cap and veil (Royal London Hospital
Archives) 121
6.1 Sketches of Jack the Ripper, 20 October 1888
(© Museum of London) 132
6.2 Photo-fit of Jack the Ripper, compiled for police at
Scotland Yard in 2006 134
6.3 Widely distributed version of the police mug shot
of Myra Hindley, 1965 (Original © Cheshire Police) 138
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6.4 Version of the image of Myra Hindley as it appears ix
on the Daily Telegraph website 138
6.5 Hindley in prison, c.1993 (© The Daily Star. Express
Newspapers) 139 |
6.6 Marcus Harvey, Myra, 1995 (Courtesy of the artist) 141 illu
6.7 Police mug shots of Hindley and Brady on the front s
t
page of the Daily Mirror, 7 May 1966 142 ra
t
6.8 The photograph of Hindley on the front page of the io
n
Daily Mirror, 16 November 2002 143 s
7.1 Some of Ted Bundy’s various guises 150
7.2 Anders Behring Breivik, passport photograph 159
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| Acknowledgements
I owe special thanks to Helen Coxall, without whom this project
would never have been realized. Thanks also to David Bate,
Alex Warwick, Peter Ride, Stefan Szelkun and others at the
University of Westminster who made helpful comments in the
early stages of the project. A very big thank you to Clare Waite,
whose encouragement and insight helped me to clarify my ideas
and reshape later drafts of the chapters, and to Mari Roberts
for her incisive editorial suggestions. Thanks to Liza Thomson
at I.B.Tauris for believing in this project and for her support as
commissioning editor, and to Frances Underhill for helping with
image permissions during her internship at I.B.Tauris.
Every effort has been made to contact the copyright holders of
images used in this book; if any have been omitted inadvertently,
acknowledgement will be made at the earliest opportunity.
In memory of Helen Coxall
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