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While previous scholarship regards Leigh Hunt’s obsession with decorating the prison, Horsemonger Lane Gaol, as an extension of his political activities, this essay argues that it was Hunt’s most Cockneyfied cultural reaction to the flourishing contemporary visual culture, which allowed to domesticate and contain his trauma in his visual space. In the first part of the essay, by applying Gaston Bachelard’s notion of topoanalysis, this essay investigates the fundamental reason for Hunt’s obsessive visuality for domestic decoration of the prison derived from his infantile traumatic memory. In the second part of the essay, while attempting to interpret and analyze the interior of the cell itself, the essay discusses that Hunt’s domestic visuality using facets of public visual culture can be viewed as the most Cockneyfied aesthetic gesture towards the public visual milieu. Although Hunt’s visual project of decorating the prison cell has been condemned as Cockneyfied aesthetic impertinence, this essay argues that by refashioning his prison-house as a place for looking, Hunt demonstrated his visual identity and aesthetic desire to be counted as a part of the visual activities within the aesthetic and cultural context of the romantic period.
