How ‘Fingersmith’ Engages with Debates Surrounding Pornography: Female and Queer Representation Daisy van der Post College

Sarah Waters' Neo-Victorian novel ‘Fingersmith’ situates itself against a backdrop of contentious debates surrounding pornography. Second wave feminists were divided in their beliefs about whether pornography was detrimental or beneficial to women. The Anti-pornography movement, championed by Dworkin, Mckinnon, Jeffreys and others, argued that ‘pornography is encoded misogyny that replicates the ideology of male supremacy,’ and that ‘pornography exemplifies the degradation, rape, and torture of women’ (O'Callaghan 561). However, the Anti-censorship movement, led by the FAC collective, argued that ‘pornography contributes to a wider system of patriarchal oppression and inequality in which women are continually debased and subordinated.’ and by denying women access to or involvement in pornography we engage in the same patriarchal erasure that feminism should stand against (O'Callaghan 561). That Waters considers these debates is to be expected, given ‘the author’s emergence in the 1990s, a period when the feminist sex wars were at their peak’, yet her use of Victorian culture to critique contemporary issues marks her work as unique (O'Callaghan 569). At its surface, Waters’ novel is not about modern pornography, but rather its...