dangerous
sexuality.
The
rampaging orangutan of Poe’s
1841 story The Murders in the
Rue Morgue, who slits a
beautiful woman’s throat with
a
straight
razor,
helped
cement the associations of
these creatures with horror,
fascination, and sex. But the
link wasn’t new: two hundred
years arlier, Dutch doctor
Jacob Bontius wrote that
orangutans were “born from
the lust of Indian women, who
mix with apes and monkeys
with detestable sensuality.”
And while Julia’s promotional material emphasized her femininity,
in keeping with other representations of nineteenth century
bearded women, it also underlined her animalistic, racialized
otherness. Her promotional material referred to her tribe of
“Root-Digger Indians” as “spiteful and hard to govern,” living in
animal caves and enjoying intimate relations with bears and apes.
The implications were clear: Julia was both a symbol of our
repressed animal natures and the literal product of sex with
beasts.
In England, where Julia ventured with a new impresario after
successful tours of the eastern US and Canada, this otherness
continued to be a useful promotional strategy. A poster
advertising Julia’s show at London’s Regent Gallery, where she
appeared three times a day in 1857, portrayed her with
exaggerated, reddened lips and a large nose, much like
contemporary racialized images of African-Americans. (This
despite the fact that at least one doctor declared she had “no
trace of Negro blood.”) The twelve-page promotional booklet that
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