Diane Mason begins The Secret Vice by staking out the ground for her study within a crowded landscape. In respect to Thomas Laqueur's landmark Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation (2003), Mason observes that its focus on the medical and philosophical writings of the eighteenth century results in the nineteenth century receiving scant attention. Solitary Pleasures: The Historical, Literary and Artistic Discourses of Autoeroticism (1995) is acknowledged as more wide-ranging in its geographic and temporal coverage, but it included only one chapter on the nineteenth-century novel as a vehicle for the discussion of masturbation. While many authors, beginning with Steven Marcus in The Other Victorians (1966), have identified characters in Victorian fiction (such as Uriah Heep from Charles Dickens's David Copperfield [1850]) who exhibit behaviors consistent with nineteenth-century medical descriptions of the masturbator, Mason argues that many of these connections are made as passing remarks and that potentially rich material, such as that provided by the headmaster's speech in Eric; or, Little by Little (1858), has yet to receive thorough analysis. Mason also claims that while other works have focused primarily on male masturbation, her work “represents the first detailed and, more essentially, balanced study of the mostly overlooked literature on masturbation as it pertains to women in clinical writing and in popular medical works aimed at the female reader” (3).

So many qualifications given at the start might imply a study that has limited room for originality or one that might become overly combative in its tone in order to differentiate itself from alternate interpretations, but Mason's work avoids both of these pitfalls. The first two chapters move through a range of medical literature on male and female masturbation, highlighting Mason's central point that the classic symptoms of the masturbator, “the pallor, languor and sunken eyes,” were also associated with a range of other ailments. The possibility of reading these symptoms as indicative of other conditions, such as consumption or even pregnancy, facilitated their inclusion in mainstream publications such as medical advertisements and novels. The Victorian public was taught to identify these symptoms by “the heavy commercial promotion of alleged ‘cures’ for self-pollution, [making it] conceivable that a high proportion of the literate middle and lower-middle-class population would have been able to recognize onanism's characteristic signifiers” (104).

Once this ground has been established, Mason moves though a range of Victorian novels, both popular and clandestine, drawing connections between medical understandings of masturbation and the characters described. In one memorable sequence, Mason interweaves the analysis of Lady Beatrice Pockingham, heroine of an 1879 erotic novella first serialized in The Pearl, with that of Lucy Westenra from Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897). Pockingham's unrepentantly libidinous behavior is read through her diagnosis within The Pearl as a “poor consumptive,” while Mason demonstrates how Westenra's behavior before her encounter with Dracula implicates her as a masturbator, with Dracula seeking her out in part because she has already polluted herself in this way. While the conclusion that “masturbators and consumptives are ‘dying’ but are, equally, ‘undead’ and infectious” (43) may not strike the reader as particularly innovative, the value of the chapter comes through the density of the connections made within it rather than by the points made on the final page.

A similar pattern of analysis is featured in the subsequent chapters. Havelock Ellis's descriptions of the lesbian are related in chapter 3 to the characters Laura and Carmilla in J. S. Le Fanu's Victorian vampire novella Carmilla (1872). In the following chapter, Mason examines Teleny, or The Reverse of the Medal (1893) and finds that “the characters of Teleny and Des Grieux appear to conform to the models of sexual inversion/perversion presented in the case studies of nineteenth-century continental practitioners such as Krueg and Krafft-Ebing” and provide evidence of “the heavily medicalised nature of much nineteenth-century pornographic writing” (75–76).

To fully appreciate this work, the reader does have to make peace with the conditional. Evidence of masturbation in popular Victorian literature is found more in hints and suggestions than in explicit statements. Occasionally, the reader becomes conscious of just how much hinges on the selection of one inference among many, such as when Mason argues that a blush “can be interpreted as an overt manifestation—even a display—of sexual tension rather than of girlish purity. One popular medical advice manual … suggests that blushing can be caused by ‘the knowledge of a secret habit’ and this could be true of Carmilla” (57). The reader might also question Mason's choice in the final chapter to place opium addiction, rather than masturbation, at the center of the analysis of The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) and The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870). This choice was at least in part influenced by Robert Mighall's previous interpretation of Wilde's novel in relation to the medical literature on masturbation, and while there is no doubt that Mason is on to something in tracking the ambiguous symptoms of a disorder that are not absorbed by Gray's portrait, the argument over opium ultimately seems to describe more than explain the evidence for both novels.

If the reader might occasionally question some of the choices made, Mason ultimately proves a knowledgeable guide to the connections within her source material. Compelling evidence is provided for the idea that medical understandings of masturbation were a part of popular fictions of the Victorian era. Most points are explained with concision, making this a good volume for the upper-level undergraduate or graduate classroom, introducing many valuable ideas while also leaving space for discussion and debate.