Examining the works of such Victorian writers as the Brontës, Dickens, Eliot, Trollope, and Hardy, Michie discusses the codes and taboos which distance the reader from the female body, allowing `safe' bodily parts - like hands - and `safe' physical activities - like eating - to stand for other, unspeakable aspects of female physicality. She reveals how these codes function as safe textual spaces for the entrance of the seemingly excluded female body, and shows that in the stylized discourses of synecdoche, euphemism, physiognomy, and metaphor lie the possibilities of their own subversion.