Sound, Sin, and Conversion in Victorian England

The plight of the fallen woman is one of the salient themes of nineteenth-century art and literature; indeed, the ubiquity of the trope galvanized the Victorian conscience and acted as a spur to social reform. In some notable examples, Julia Grella O’Connell argues, the iconography of the Victorian fallen woman was associated with music, reviving an ancient tradition conflating the practice of music with sin and the abandonment of music with holiness. The prominence of music symbolism in the socially-committed, quasi-religious paintings of the Pre-Raphaelites and their circle, and in the Catholic-Wagnerian novels of George Moore, gives evidence of the survival of a pictorial language linking music with sin and conversion, and shows, even more remarkably, that this language translated fairly easily into the cultural lexicon of Victorian Britain. Drawing upon music iconography, art history, patristic theology, and sensory theory, Grella O’Connell investigates female fallenness and its implications against the backdrop of the social and religious turbulence of the mid-nineteenth century.

'The Diana McVeagh Prize Committee commends Dr. O’Connell’s interdisciplinary scholarship, which traverses visual art, literature, theology, and music with great skill, and is delivered in exceptionally refined and lucid prose. Through her focus on the trope of the ‘fallen woman,’ Dr. O’Connell demonstrates--among other things--how images involving Saint Cecilia or Mary Magdalen informed Victorian perceptions of music's moral agency.' North American British Musical Studies Association, 2019 McVeagh Prize Committee 'In Sound, Sin, and Conversion in Victorian England, Julia Grella O’Connell provides a wide-ranging and learned study of music and theology in the Victorian era. O’Connell’s complex argument addresses the varied cultural manifestations of the notion that music and conversion are connected phenomena…the great strength of O’Connell’s book is its ability to follow the thread of music, hearing, and conversion through so many different cultural genres, including fiction, painting, and music.' Victorian Studies/Volume 62, No. 2

Julia Grella O'Connell is the founder of the research-driven performance initiative the Risorgimento Project. She received her Doctor of Musical Arts degre from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in 2009, and has served on the faculties of Hunter College and The City College of New York. In addition to her international concert appearances with the Risorgiomento Project, she has performed as a soloist with Syracuse Opera, Opera at Caramoor, and ConcertOpera Philadelphia. She is currently a member of the music faculty at Broome Community College of the State University of New York.