THE SECRET VICE MASTURBATION IN VICTORIAN FICTION AND MEDICAL CULTURE DIANE ELIZABETH MASON A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of the West of England, Bristol for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Bath Spa University College
This dissertation considers the representation of masturbation in medical and fictional
texts between the mid-Nineteenth Century and the first decade of the Twentieth.
Discussion of masturbation in this period has been dominated by the writings of
medical historians such as Paula Bennett and Vernon A. Rosario II, and Jean Stengers
and Anne van Neck, who make but passing reference to the wider cultural
manifestations of the practice. This dissertation goes beyond the pioneering work of
these writers in order to address how the symptomatologies and prognoses associated
with the medicalised practice of masturbation are manifested in the fiction of the
period.