In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the body was a key focus of discourse. Fat and the Body in the Long Nineteenth Century animates discussion and analyses of fatness, highlighting how corporeal expectations fit into larger social systems and showing how interpretations have shifted over time. This collection examines a host of primary sources – including literature, art, medical treatises, journalism, political cartoons, soldiers’ letters home, and popular fiction – to identify trends in how fat was perceived and promoted in the English-speaking world over the long nineteenth century.
Divided into four thematic sections, the book addresses epistemologies, artistic and literary representations, the turn towards quantification and measurement, and the connections to imperialism and colonialism. It explores the complex debate about the meaning of fat and its signalling of health, beauty, moral strength, and class status. The book shows how contemporary presentations and discussions of fat offer insights into ideals of gender and race and the processes of imperialism and of professionalization in the social sciences and medicine. By tracing how debates shifted over time, the book ultimately reveals that there was no universal interpretation of fat as a positive or negative characteristic throughout the nineteenth century.
List of Figures and Tables
Introduction
Section I: Epistemologies and Philosophies
1. The Enfleshment of Difference: Medicalizing and Gendering the Fat Body in
the Nineteenth Century
Kristen A. Hardy
2. To Measure Skulls, to Measure Waists: The Nineteenth-Century Origins of
Modern Health Standards
Bessie Rigakos and Wesley R. Bishop
Section II: Weights and Measures
3. "All young things are fat if they are in health": The Shift from
Qualitative to Quantitative Assessments of Infant Weight in the
Nineteenth-Century United States
V. Lynn Kennedy
4. Physical Culture and the Denial of Fat in fin de siècle America
Conor Heffernan
5. Prison Bodies: The Height and Weight of Men in Canadian Prisons,
18741935
L. Antonie, K. Inwood, and H. Maxwell-Stewart
Section III: Cultural Representations and Constructions
6. Visual and Material Cultures of the Fat Body, 17801840: Representation,
Commodification, and Display
Freya Gowrley
7. The Fat Body and Colonial Symbolism: Imperialism, Appetite, and Hunger in
Joseph Conrads Heart of Darkness
Tatiana Konrad
8. Visualizing the Body: The Mbopo Ritual and the Politics of Fatness in
Southern Nigeria in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries
Nsima Udo
Section IV: Imperialism, Colonialism, and the Body Politic
9. Colonial Engorgement in the Pictorial Arts: "Fat" Uncle Sam in the
Imperialist Debates, 18981902
Bonnie M. Miller
10. Gaining in Flesh: Canadian Soldiers in the War in South Africa
Amy J. Shaw
Conclusion
Bibliography
List of Contributors
Index
Amy J. Shaw is an associate professor in the Department of History and Religion at the University of Lethbridge.
V. Lynn Kennedy is an associate professor in the Department of History and Religion at the University of Lethbridge.
