Ethnographic Encounter With Historical Source Material ‘The Bridge of Sighs’ (1844) by Thomas Hood

Abstract

The 18- stanza poem ‘The Bridge of Sighs’ (1844) was written in the early Victorian Era by Thomas Hood. It takes a progressive stance on the subject of a woman who due to her fall, commits suicide by drowning. The iconography of this poem must be understood not as a depiction of how female suicide took place in reality, but rather of how it took place in Victorian consciousness.