Hinds, Naomi;
(2023)
Circulations of Waste in Victorian London.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
In mid-nineteenth century London, the concept of a unified sewage system was gaining traction. This involved standardising and ordering the circulatory routes that waste took through urban space, but it also sparked a proliferation of discourse in excremental economics. By this logic, waste could be made useful: transformed from the depleted leftovers of urban life to a valuable commodity. In short, waste was not simply understood as stagnant accumulations, but as matter moving in potentially perpetual cycles. Focusing on a broad spectrum of genres from the Blue Book to the juvenile penny serial, this thesis investigates how texts from the 1840s to the 1860s engage with, and struggle against, the logics of circulating waste. The first chapter of this thesis delves into the sanitary rhetoric of the late 1840s and early 50s and its attempt to construct and convey a comprehensive sanitary system. The second chapter examines the unproductive circulations of Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit. In chapter three, the focus shifts to Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor’s descent into disorganisation through portrayals of transforming, mutating matter. The final chapter looks towards the juvenile penny serial The Wild Boys of London and the ways in which circulation disrupts its redemptive arcs. I argue that rather than showing the utopian potential of endlessly recyclable, renewable matter, these texts illustrate how the principles of circulating waste can infect narrative forms, work against organisational strategies and establish limits for progress and selfimprovement.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | Circulations of Waste in Victorian London |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2023. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10182095 |
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