Alternative Archives: Approaching Museum Collections Through Neo-Victorian Fiction

This chapter discusses an ambiguous tension between museum practice and the neo-Victorian agenda—indeed, in some cases, these frameworks appear curiously one and the same. The chapter explores perhaps the most problematic part of narratorship and disability: lack of voice. Christian Gutleben contends, “that neo-Victorian novels both venerate and subvert its precursors can best be traced in the co-presence of pastiche and parodya [Gutleben, Nostalgic Postmodernism: The Victorian Tradition and the Contemporary British Novel. New York: Rodopi (2001), p. 89]. The chapter discusses two key novels, Ellen Bryson’s The Transformation of Bartholomew Fortuno (2011) and The Horrific Sufferings of the Mind-Reading Monster Hercules Barefoot, His Wonderful Love and Terrible Hatred by Carl-Johan Vallgren (2004), alongside a textual analysis of the National Fairground Archives in Sheffield UK, and the Wellcome Collection archives in London UK. The texts which I explore in this chapter reveal a parody-like agenda, both utilising and challenging the frameworks of historical knowledge using visual parodies of archival documents to create fictional histories. The relationship between these archives and the texts begs the question—what is more ethically viable—omission or creative contextualisation? The answer to this question is not easily resolved; however, the texts reveal a more progressive postmodern agenda on the part of neo-Victorian freakery that raises awareness of the façade of knowledge archives continue to carry over contemporary culture. Vitally, this analysis shows that the ethically dubious tendencies of the neo-Victorian novelist does not exist in a vacuum, rather, it extends to the spaces of museum practices that seek to (re)present historical figures.