Victoria, industry, and urban disparity.The novel is set in 1899, a turning point, in many ways, for British and world history. In Britain, it was the end of the Victorian era, named for the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901), who, with her husband Prince Albert, set an example of duty and decorum, emphasizing adherence to a strict code of propriety. This image of prim morality was partially undercut at the end of the Victorian era by the behavior of Victoria’s eldest son, Edward, the Prince of Wales, to whom the British throne would soon pass. Edward embarrassed the court and entertained the public with his scandalous and highly publicized lifestyle of gambling, drinking, and womanizing. In the novel, Prince Edward is a nightly spectator at London’s Alhambra Theater where Fevvers, the novel’s winged heroine, performs her trapeze act. There he sits “stroking his beard and meditating upon the erotic possibilities of her ability to hover and the problematic of his paunch vis-àvis the missionary position” (Carter, Nights at the Circus, p.
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