The article analyzes the sociocultural reality of Victorian England associated with the phenomenon of photography as a new medium and the type of a “new woman”. Both publicistic and fiction style sources are used as research material. Anna Atkins, Julia Cameron, Clementinа Hawarden and others contributed to cultural history not only as the first English women photographers, but also as the first critics and theorists of photography. Such a sociocultural phenomenon as “a woman and photography” is touched upon in the novel by the English writer Amy Levy “The Romance of a Shop” (1888), which hasn’t been translated into Russian. Describing the experience of four sisters who opened their own photo studio, E. Levy presents, first of all, the social status of women in the Victorian era. The Lorimer sisters' desire to take up photography is a kind of challenge to Victorian foundations and traditions, that patriarchal model in which power belonged to no one but men. Standing on the other side of the photographic lens, they had the opportunity to observe the outside world, basically for the sake of closely observing and studying men. The image of the “new woman” finds its expression in each of them to a different degree: most of all it was embodied in Gertrude, the most active supporter of gender equality, as well as in Fanny, who combined marriage and professional development in the field of photography. E. Levy’s novel is a paragon of “women’s writing” (a novel about a woman written by a woman), a woman’s perspective on current issues related to gender issues of the second half of the 19th century and received artistic interpretation in the works of modern English-speaking writers.
For citation: Poluektova T.A. Women and photography in the Victorian Era (based on the novel “The Romance of a Shop” by Amy Levy), Ivanovo State University Bulletin, Series: Humanities, 2024, iss. 4, pp. 22—29.