“Goodnight, Ladies.” A look at the figure of the Victorian female as represented in Alan Moore’s From Hell.
This essay will attempt to examine Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s depiction of women within their construct of Victorian Society in the graphic novel, From Hell: Being a Melodrama in Sixteen Parts in terms of the city, modernity and feminism. In order to do this the following will be considered; the space of Whitechapel and its place in Victorian society as well as its occupants’ places in Victorian society, i.e. the prostitutes, the insane; the figure of Victoria herself and the power struggle between men and women, particularly pertaining to modernity; and also looking at the women of the graphic novel through the lens of independence and repression in relation the their social class.
From Hell - a collaborative work between writer Alan Moore and illustrator Eddie Campbell - is fictional account the ‘Autumn of Terror’ that struck Whitechapel in 1888 , in which a series of brutal
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The streets an open brothel with prostitutes offering themselves up for “thruppence a ride” become a killer’s playground.
This idea of the “Other Victorians” encompasses the main female characters living in Whitechapel. The five victims who work the corner and the shopkeeper, Annie, who became impregnated with Prince Albert’s child - upon which the entire plot is hinged, as this is used as leverage by the four women against the royal family. Annie is driven into insanity, forced to spend the remainder of her days in an asylum against her will, the effects of which we see when after having briefly escaped the confines of the asylum she is seen defecating on the street completely unaware of her own