Introduction: Victorian Popular Fiction, Culture and The Third Sex
Helena Esser and Claire O’Callaghan
Abstract
This introductory article for this special issue of Victorian Popular Fictions explores Victorian popular fiction and culture as key sites for negotiating gender and sexual non-conformity, with a focus on the concept of the ‘third sex.’ Taking the 1871 trial of Fanny and Stella as a point of departure, it re-examines nineteenth-century anxieties around gender and sexuality within legal, medical, and cultural discourse, particularly the emergence of sexology and the categorisation of sexual and gender diversity. It traces how popular literature, media, and culture both reflected and shaped public debates about non-conforming gendered and sexual lives. Engaging with Victorian texts and contexts, as well as their neo-Victorian legacies, the introduction foregrounds the instability of gender binaries by examining how non-conforming subjects were represented, regulated, and imagined. Combining historical and literary analysis, it demonstrates how such representation in nineteenth-century popular literature and culture continues to inform modern understandings of LGBTQIA+ identities, power, and resistance, and highlights the enduring significance of the long nineteenth century in shaping debates around gender, sexuality, and normativity.
Keywords
gender; non-conformity sexuality; LGBTQIA+; third sex; sexology; queer; history; Victorian; neo-Victorian
Date of Acceptance: 18 December 2025
Date of Publication: 19 December 2025
Double Blind Peer Reviewed
Recommended Citation:
O’Callaghan, Claire, and Helena Esser. 2025. “Victorian Popular Fiction, Culture and The Third Sex.” Victorian Popular Fictions, 7.2 (Autumn): 1-29. ISSN: 2632-4253 (online) DOI: https://doi.org/10.46911/SUGU3911
Return to Contents page of VPFJ 7.2
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
