ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book suggests that taboo bodies were those which were in some way unsettling to nineteenth-century French society. It explains how the reader is manipulated into occupying the position of sadist or masochist against his or her will. The book discovers that confronting the taboo on physical deformity can become a positive means of encouraging the reader to think again about preconceived notions of 'normality', 'beauty', and 'perfection'. It shows that the taboo has a persistent desire to be heard, which can never be fully articulated. The book demonstrates that the negative connotations of physical monstrosity are strong enough to be used unproblematically to represent the morally unforgiveable act of paedophilic rape and murder. It also demonstrates that even those physical deformities which are purely aesthetic are so shocking as to be impossible to depict in the realist text.
