Depraved and Disorderly
Female Convicts, Sexuality and Gender in Colonial Australia

This innovative book looks at the cultural meanings of aspects of convict women's lives in colonial society.

Joy Damousi (Author)

9780521587235, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 28 May 1997

232 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.3 cm, 0.35 kg

'This is an excitingly formulated, ambitiously researched and, in its writing and careful editing, an elegantly evocative reading experience.' Australian Historical Studies

This innovative book marks a new way of looking at convict women. It tells their stories in a powerful and evocative way, drawing out broader themes of gender and sexual disorder and race and class dynamics in a colonial context. It considers the convict past in light of contemporary concerns, looking at the cultural meanings of aspects of life in the colony: on ships, in the factories and in orphanages. Using startlingly original research, Joy Damousi considers such varied topics as headshaving as punishment in the prisons and the subversive nature of laughter and play, as well as analysing the language of pollution, purity and abandonment. She also dicusses the nature of sexual relationships, including evidence of lesbianism. The book shows how understanding about sexual and racial difference was crucial for both the maintenance and disturbance of colonial society, and became a focus for cultural anxiety.

Part I. Sexuality, Resistance and Punishment: 1. Chaos and order: gender, space and sexuality on female convict ships
2. Depraved and disorderly: the sexuality of convict women
3. Disrupting the boundaries: resistance and convict women
4. Defeminising convict women: headshaving as punishment in the female factories
Part II. Familt Life and Convictism: 5. Convict mothering
6. Wretchedness and vice: the 'orphan' and the colonial imagination
7. Abandonment, flight and absence: motherhood and fatherhood during the 1820s and 1830s
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], Australasian & Pacific history [HBJM]