In 1895: Drama, Disaster and Disgrace in Late Victorian Britain, Nicholas Freeman discusses the way that same-sex desire in men was viewed, arguing that surprisingly late in the nineteenth century, ‘homosexuality had yet to be articulated in the bourgeois consciousness, and late-Victorian perceptions of it had not crystallized into the fatally neat syllogism, “he is not ‘manly’ therefore he may be an ‘invert’ “ ‘ (Freeman 2011: 13). Despite this lack of rigid categorisation in relation to homosexuality, simultaneously, the male body was being categorised, judged, and in the case of Oscar Wilde, eventually condemned. Throughout the Victorian era there were things that a white male body was not supposed to do; bodily acts that were not allowed to be performed, sexualities that were taboo, clothes that adorned the male body that were deemed inappropriate. The male body, in the nineteenth century was bound, constricted and limited in how it could express itself. Or so it would seem. In fact, the way that the white male body was seen and spoken about changed over the Victorian period, shifting from the rigid prescription of manliness to flamboyant and extrovert celebrations of otherness and sometimes back again. However there is no neat correlation between these extremes, and both were apparent (and many other bodily expressions and expectations in between) at various times in the nineteenth century. The Victorian Male Body examines the differing expressions and forms that the white male Victorian body represents and embodies, turning the spotlight onto one of the most ideologically important of all Victorian bodies.

There has been much written on women, food and bodily control in both the Victorian period and beyond, but with the rise of fat studies and scholarly research into masculinity academia has begun to recognise that there is also a discourse that is deeply embedded in men's relationship to food and the body. This relatively new field of scholarship has produced many insightful and highly pertinent readings of the fat male body. In the Victorian period, in particular, one focus has been on that Dickensian favourite, Joe from the Pickwick Papers (Dickens 1837). Fat boy Joe is easily categorised partly due to the fact that sleep apnoea was latterly entitled Pickwickian syndrome by Burwell et al., which helped to align the reading of his corpulent form with a medicalised interpretation of his fat (Burwell et al. 1956). In addition to this type of reading, critics such as Sander L. Gilman have dwelt on Joe's indolence and dubious voyeuristic sexuality (Gilman 2004: 159−60). Jos, the ‘fat gourmand’ from Thackeray's Vanity Fair has also received critical attention because his indulgence in dubious foreign foodstuffs, such as curries, is written on his corpulent form (Thackeray 1968: 93). Scholars, such as Annette Cozzi, have attributed his fat as being due to both the dangers of empire and his unrestrained appetite (Cozzi 2010). Both Jos’ and fat boy Joe's weight can be said to be gained from over-indulgence and a lack of will, but Fosco's fat is less easy to attribute to lack of self-control and regulation. Collins’ corpulent Count is instead a wearer of ‘fat drag’ which Huff considers to be both exploitative of, and ‘disrupt[ive] of dominant narratives of fatness’ (Huff 2010: 93; 104). I wish here to extend this argument further, as I will consider how Fosco's fat engages with discourses of power and gender, through both its performativity and his transgressive consumption of feminine treats.

The first accurate weighing scales were developed in the eighteenth century, but increased in popularity and use in the nineteenth century, due to the contemporary obsession with quantification and categorisation (Rogers 1993: 172). Rogers comments on how