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Features of Victorian fiction in the biography of a Victorian character: The motif of the “animated portrait”

https://doi.org/10.26907/2782-4756-2025-81-3-74-78

Abstract

This article examines the elements of the Victorian novel in Ben Macintyre’s documentary biography “The Napoleon of Crime: The Life and Times of Adam Worth, Master Thief” (1997), with a particular focus on the motif of the “animated portrait”. The study analyzes the complex intertextual dialogue between Macintyre’s nonfiction narrative and the literary conventions of the Victorian era, notably the Newgate and sensation novels. A central case in point is Adam Worth’s obsessive relationship with the stolen Gainsborough painting of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, which is interpreted not merely as a valuable object but as a symbolic figure within the narrative. Drawing on Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory of desire and Laura Mulvey’s concept of the male gaze, the article demonstrates how the portrait acquires subjectivity and functions as a reflection of the protagonist’s psychological fragmentation, moral duality, and constructed identity. Macintyre’s approach, which romanticizes the criminal figure in the tradition of the “gentleman-thief”, turns the biography into a postmodern reinterpretation of the Victorian novel, where the stolen painting emerges as both a literal artifact and as a metaphor for longing, loss, and unattainable social integration. The portrait becomes the protagonist’s double, lover, and mirror – a character in its own right.

About the Author

K. F. Ayupova
International School of Kazan
Russian Federation

Ayupova Kamilya Faritovna, Master of Arts, Teacher-Librarian,

5 Mavlyutov Str., Kazan, 420101



References

1. Macintyre, B. (1998). The Napoleon of Crime: The Life and Times of Adam Worth, Master Thief. 320 p. (In English)

2. Mulvey, L. (1975). Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. Screen. Volume 16, Issue 3, Autumn 1975, pp. 6–18. (In English)

3. Manion, D. M. (2010). “The Ekphrastic Fantastic: Gazing at Magic Portraits in Victorian Fiction”. PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) Thesis, University of Iowa. URL: https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/1360 (accessed: 05.08.2025). (In English)


Review

For citations:


Ayupova K.F. Features of Victorian fiction in the biography of a Victorian character: The motif of the “animated portrait”. Philology and Culture. 2025;(3):74-78. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.26907/2782-4756-2025-81-3-74-78

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ISSN 2782-4756 (Print)