Abstract

Sarah Waters's The Little Stranger (2009) lacks what has been thought of as the main constituent of the neo-Victorian tale: the nineteenth-century setting. Yet, in this article I propose a reading of the novel as thoroughly neo-Victorian. My aim is not so much to place The Little Stranger on the shelf for neo-Victorian fiction as to illustrate how Waters's work meets, precisely, with the neo-Victorian revisionist project of renegotiating issues of otherness. I therefore analyse the neo-Victorian mode in the novel and look into Waters's complex manipulation strategies with a focus on the trope of female monstrosity. By reworking past and present constructions of the monstrous-feminine, I argue, The Little Stranger draws attention to the fact that the translation of medical discourse into culture not only was but remains particularly pertinent for women.

Keywords

female monstrosity, The Little Stranger, medical discourse, medicine, neo-Victorian, otherness, reverse psychology, re-vision, Sarah Waters

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