Said, in his land mark study Orientalism, posits a systematic attempt by western society to approach the study of the Eastern world "as a topic of learning, discovery, and practice... and advance securely and metaphorically upon the Orient."@Edward Said. Orientalism. New York, Vintage Books: 1978. 73. Unfortunately, this field of study often turns itself into a society's "projection onto and will to govern over"@Said, 95. another society, culture, or minority, the dangers of cultural hegemony come to bear, forcing the cultural minority to become a silent subaltern, a group which is unable to speak in a language of their own about a culture of their own. In the case of the Romani living in Victorian England, this chain of events can be witnessed throughout the century, but there is perhaps one serial that best illustrates the complicated nature of the Romani in Victorian society: "Zelda's Fortune."
    Published anonymously and monthly in The Cornhill Magazine from January 1873 to January 1874, "Zelda's Fortune" has the hallmarks of a Victorian serial: suspense, romance, secrets, and murder. "Zelda's Fortune" concerns a sunken ship, a chest of gold, a Doctor Vaughan, the sickly Claudia Brandt, a famous singer, and, most importantly, the young Romani girl, Zelda. The plot, as can be expected from a Victorian serial, is convoluted and complicated, so, because of this convolution and for the sake of not revealing too many spoilers, the plot won't be heavily delineated. Additionally, because the serial consists of thirteen separate issues, there are a plethora of instances in which the portrayal of Romani characters could be productively analyzed, for the sake of brevity, two specific instances will be examined.
    The first instance also marks the first appearance of a Romani character in the serial:

It comes to pass that the child held in the woman's arms, is not her own. And, fulfilling the stereotypical actions of the Romani people, the woman proceeds to sell the child to a Romani couple that she finds on the road. This portrayal of the Romani as wholly morally bankrupt people, people willing to steal and sell children for the right amount of money is a consistent strain. Common slang still attests to this. When someone has fallen victim to some trickery, generally involving the loss of money, they are said to "gypped," a word with obvious connections to gypsies. This connection to jobs of ill-repute is continued throughout the serial; Romani characters are only seen to be swindling for a living or performing jobs that definitively separate them from the higher classes, jobs such as singing and dancing in public. Zelda is herself only allowed to rise from simple barroom performer to popular stage actress through the help of wealthy Englishmen who proceed to ensure that she remains under their thumbs.
    In conjunction with a dulled sense of morality and an inability to perform meaningful work comes a suspicion on the part of the English that a change in lifestyle or, said more accuratly, an assimilation into the English way of life would allow the Romani a greater deal of happiness and fulfillment. Two instances of this are easily gleaned from a reading of "Zelda's Fortune." The first comes when the author of the serial directly addresses his audience, wanting the audience to consider how the Romani people keep from being bored from day to day: "Did it ever occur to, Reader, to speculate as to how those creatures who, having no acquaintance with books, newspapers dress, household management, business, or pleasure... manage to keep awake when left alone?"@"Zelda's Fortune." The Cornhill Magazine. March, 1873. 372. Later, once Zelda has been helped along to critical acclaim as a stage actress, we're shown her newfound contentedness:
"She [Zelda] was fairly content because she now had plenty to eat and drink, a roof to shelter her, freedom from tramping under burdens, and the clothes of a fine lady. in short, she was content as the house-lamb is, and realised her situation scarcely more."@"Zelda's Fortune." The Cornhill Magazine. April, 1873. 503. In short, a lack of meaningful cultural traditions, at least in the eyes of the English, can only cause severe boredom, but the assimilation to an English way of life (including changing one of the most quickly recognizable traits of the Romani: clothing) immediately brings the Romani up from a life of moral depravity, starvation, and hardship.
    In her study of Romani portrayal in English fiction and their ultimate "abjection," Abby Bardi (focusing mainly on works from the Twentieth Century) characterizes the English author's portrayal of Romani culture as "stereotypes that inform [the literary Gypsy figure] and which it in turn perpetuates have often... had tragic consequences. The abjection... [of the gypsy] appears to have fueled centuries of legislation designed to repress, control, and even extinguish the Romani community."@Abby Bardi, "The Gypsy as Trope in Victorian and Modern British Literature," Romani Studies.16.1, 2006. 41. And while this analysis is astute and entirely correct in summarizing the treatment of the Romani as exemplified by the above passages, recasting it in new language extends the understanding of the Romani existence in Victorian England and, indeed, most times and places of their dwelling. Looking beyond the voice of the English, the voice that is heard through their writings on and about the Romani, and instead looking to the voice of the Romani people themselves deepens our understanding of Romani representation. Especially when it is realized that the Romani, in terms of Victorian England, are almost entirely voiceless. Through a lack of access to the cultural hegemony that is created and dominated by the English, the Romani become the quintessential subaltern. This subaltern is said to be "silenced" due to an inability to inform this hegemony and the only alternatives offered by the English (whether it be to the Romani or any of the colonized peoples of the empire) are the aforementioned destruction of a group, extinction in Bardi's language, or, as shown in the third passage from "Zelda's Fortune," through assimilation into an English/Victorian lifestyle which, in terms of culture, amounts to the same thing.
    In this way, the portrayal of Romani within the serial fiction of Victorian England amounts to an unexplored form of Orientalism, of cultural imperialism that controls the group not only from a legal perspective, but from are presentational perspective as well. The Romani are thus exploited for their exoticism, their distinct un-English nature, an exoticism that also relegates them to a position of moral inferiority where their character and motives are always suspect and savage.