Hannah Cullwick - Diaries

Diaries

Her diaries reveal that the erotic games with Munby often included infantilism and ageplay, with Cullwick carrying Munby in her arms and holding him on her lap.

Cullwick appeared in Munby's photographs in many different roles: a farm girl, a kitchen drudge, a chimney sweep with blackface, a well-dressed lady (though with her hands, unmistakably those of a working woman, prominently displayed), a Magdalen, and even as a man. Her ability to take different roles delighted Munby.

Cullwick's diaries (small prejudicial selections of which are published as The Diaries of Hannah Cullwick, Victorian Maidservant in the controversial edition by the Marxist historian Lizbeth Stanley, not approved by Cullwick's family), provide detailed information on the lives of working-class Victorian servant women. They are a record of sixteen-hour days and profound respect for the middle-class morality of the era despite her obvious deviancy from sexual norms especially, and her reversion to the maternal archetype in role-play with Munby almost certainly indicates that she was fundamentally a typical Victorian 'maternal type'. If she had been born into a middle-class home she may never have developed her deviancies and have been just another normal, domesticated woman .

Making sense of Cullwick's life still proves to be a challenge. How relationships are interpreted between men and women of the era seems to be the greatest challenge. Cullwick's links with Gibbs and Bearley, also mistakenly rendered by Stanley in her edition as many others, obtains in this instance. Cullwick's individualism makes it difficult to explain the nature of these and other relationships.

In 2003, a short independent film based on Cullwick's diaries and called On My Knees was made by Kim Wood and stars Melora Creager of Rasputina.