My Secret Life and the Sexual Economy of Fin-de-Siècle England

This paper proposes that the volumes of My Secret Life reveal an explicit linkage and juxtaposition of the respectable and perverse which was at the heart of fin-de-siècle British culture. In particular this paper reads ‘Walter’s’ text as a parody of materialism that terminates in fin-de-siècle ‘exhaustion’ and decline - ‘free-enterprise’ itself beyond control. Confession opens a site for resistance and subversion, ‘Walter’s’ text legitimating deviance and rejecting ideas of the thrift of sperm which characterized the discursive controls of the late-nineteenth century