Community Lecture Series: "The Victorian Freak Show"

Presenter: Dr. Lillian Craton
Reception: 5:30 p.m.
Presentation: 6:00 p.m.

Lillian Craton’s presentation offers a brief history of the freak show, particularly the social conditions of Victorian England and America that shaped its heyday. Bodily spectacle was a mainstay of popular entertainment in the nineteenth century. Dwarves, bearded ladies, conjoined twins, and fat people delighted audiences from all walks of life—not just in side-shows, but also reputable lecture halls. Why? The Victorians experienced intense change: imperial expansion, the Industrial Revolution, the rising middle class, the development of modern sciences, and the interrogation of gender and class roles. The appeal of the freak show may arise from the impulse to define and defend a concept of normality amidst so much change; these performances offered a thrill of the exotic while affirming the audience’s own social acceptability. At the same time, the freak show was a cultural space where expectations for the human body could be mocked, challenged, or enlarged. We will explore this freak show tradition, including the reasons for its popularity and eventual decline, along with the lives of some individual performers.

Dr. Lillian Craton is a professor of English and director of the Honors College and Interdisciplinary Studies program at Lander University. She holds a B.A. from UNC-Chapel Hill and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Emory University. Her publications include a 2009 book The Victorian Freak Show from Cambria Press and a forthcoming chapter in Freak Inheritance from Oxford University Press.