Show simple item record

dc.contributor.authorBates, Victoria
dc.date.accessioned2019-06-10T12:52:22Z
dc.date.available2019-06-10T12:52:22Z
dc.date.issued2017
dc.identifier.citation

Bates, V. (2017) 'The Child as Risk: Precocious Girls and Sexual Consent in Late Victorian Britain', SOLON Law, Crime and History, 7(1), p. 126-144.

en_US
dc.identifier.issn2045-9238
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10026.1/14278
dc.description.abstract

The figure of the precocious girl pervaded Victorian culture, yet is poorly understood. This article focuses on concerns about sexual precocity and their influence on age-of-consent debates in the 1880s. It shows that even this single form of precocity (sexual) took multiple forms and was a malleable concept, often used selectively in parliamentary debates to suit particular agendas. These different uses of precocity did have in common, however, a tendency to be situated against the normal as ‘ideal’ rather than only statistically ‘typical’. As precocity was generally measured against the ideal sexual development and behaviour of respectable North European girls, it was as much a value judgement as a measurable concept. Medical, legal and social commentators identified undesirable social groups along lines of race and class for whom precocity apparently was the norm rather than the exception. These girls were excluded – mostly implicitly, but at times explicitly – from the protection of the new age of consent law in 1885. Overall, the case study of sexual consent law shows that the idea of precocity operated to include and exclude certain girls from the ‘at risk’ framework. By embedding these social concerns into law, particularly in relation to girls aged between 13 and 16, the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act also had long-term repercussions. It provides an important backdrop to the continued challenges facing so-called ‘precocious’ girls up to the present day.

en_US
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.publisherUniversity of Plymouth
dc.rightsAttribution 3.0 United States*
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/*
dc.subjectAge of consenten_US
dc.subjectprecocityen_US
dc.subjectpubertyen_US
dc.subjectCriminal Law Amendment Acten_US
dc.subjectsexualityen_US
dc.titleThe Child as Risk: Precocious Girls and Sexual Consent in Late Victorian Britainen_US
plymouth.issue1
plymouth.volume7
plymouth.journalSOLON Law, Crime and History


Files in this item

Thumbnail
Thumbnail
Thumbnail

This item appears in the following Collection(s)

Show simple item record

Attribution 3.0 United States
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as Attribution 3.0 United States

All items in PEARL are protected by copyright law.
Author manuscripts deposited to comply with open access mandates are made available in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite only the published version using the details provided on the item record or document. In the absence of an open licence (e.g. Creative Commons), permissions for further reuse of content should be sought from the publisher or author.
Theme by 
Atmire NV