Inked in: The feminist politics of tattooing in Sarah Hall’s "The Electric Michelangelo"

Presented as part of the SLLL Literary Studies Seminar Series 2015 This paper evaluates neo-Victorian fiction’s attempt to redress historical silences toward non-normative models of femininity through a case study of Sarah Hall’s The Electric Michelangelo (2004). Hall’s novel follows Grace, a heavily tattooed performer whose body is both revered—as a curio in the circus-like setting of 1930s Coney Island; and feared—for its off-stage subversion of feminine beauty. Situating the novel within a framework of feminist scholarship on body modification and corporeal agency, I argue that Grace’s tattoos act as an assertion of her capacity for bodily autonomy. By reinscribing tattoos as acts of resistance, rather than defilement, embodied subjects like Grace reject narrow definitions of femininity in favour of constructing meanings of becoming woman which are typified by their multiplicity, individuality, and freedom of expression Ashley Orr is a PhD Candidate in the School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics. Her research is focused on the construction of the female body in neo-Victorian literature and its relationship to contemporary gender ideology.