“Is there anybody there?” Participants at a séance attempt to speak with the dead
The word séance may conjure up images of ghostly figures, darkened rooms and bereaved people in Victorian dress huddled around circular tables, but the séance in its Victorian day was also an occasion of titillation and sexual opportunity.
Social sexual mores of the time, the public appearance of morality, and sexual abstinence before or strict monogamy within marriage, belied another world that was hidden and discreet. But the séance offered yet another possibility, an acceptable public sphere where a female spirit might appear in scanty transparent dresses, kiss a stranger on the head, or have a stranger’s hand placed on her thigh or breast to prove she was “real”.