Infectious Corruption

In my chapter, I show how stories of corruption, especially in terms of sexual violence, are reworked into the metaphor of infection on the examples of Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White and its neo-Victorian retelling, Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith . This connection of sexual corruption with infection is clearly shown in Fingersmith , where an instance of sexual assault is explained away as a localised outbreak of scarlet fever because it produces similar “symptoms” in the victim. On the other hand, such an association is only obliquely voiced in The Woman in White . Collins’ novel, therefore, despite some overt references to infection (Count Fosco’s corrupting, predatory influence), leaves to the readers’ imagination the specific nature of corruption to which its female characters are subjected. The chapter examines two examples of such infection metaphors to support my argument that falling victim to sexual corruption has characteristics of infectious disease. In both novels, an actual infectious disease can be read as a stand-in for a different kind of body violation. However, the differences in how Collins and Waters approach their respective sensational tales show that the infection metaphor can be read as a means of both concealment and discovery.