Description - Varieties of Women's Sensation Fiction, 1855-1890 by Andrew Maunder
Beginning with a critical introduction to the sensation genre, this section contains key articles from the periodical press in the period 1860-1885, providing readers with an indication of some of the responses to the genre from moralists, churchmen and literary reviewers. When considered together the articles will also suggest some of the ways in which the label 'sensational' was used at this time and its development as a critical tool for classifying fiction. None of the articles have been collected together in this way before; many would normally be difficult for students to obtain. Section B: A bibliography of sensation fiction published in volume form 1855-1890. Drawing on the evidence of publishers' catalogues, adverts and those periodicals which regularly reviewed and advertised new fiction (e.g. The Athenaeum, The Spectator, The Saturday Review, London Review, Sixpenny Magazine, The Examiner, the Bookseller, John Bull, The Critic, The Weekly Despatch) this list will expand the boundaries, chronological and generic, of what critics have come to term 'sensation fiction' and will help point the way to new avenues of research in this field.
Volume 2 - Florence Marryat, Love's Conflict (1865). Advertised by her publishers, Bentley and Son, in 1868 as the novelist who 'today commands the largest number of readers of any English female novelist', Florence Marryat (1838-1899) was the author of more than seventy-five books. She was also an actress and the editor of the journal London Society (1872-76). Her first novel, Love's Conflict (1865), contains many of the tropes associated with the sensation genre and ones which Marryat would repeat in later works. Marryat's main interest in this first novel is the stability of the family unit and the ways in which it can be undermined. The novel opens with the elopement of Harriet Treherne (the daughter of a country squire) with her dancing master and describes her subsequent descent into prostitution. The couple's resulting child, Nell is put out to nurse with a fisherman's family in Dover and left there. Harriet is shunned by her family but following her death eighteen years later her blood-relatives re-claim her daughter with the intention of re-educating her as a 'lady'.
The child, Nell, grasping, ambitious and illiterate, proves a recalcitrant pupil but a cousin, George Treherne, is persuaded to marry her in order to keep the family estate together. George is himself in love with his brutish cousin William's wife, Elfrida. The long-suffering Elfrida's mental and physical torture at the hands of her husband forms the novel's second plot-line. Once married to Nell, George Treherne quickly realises his mistake. However it is only when Nell is conveniently shot and killed by a jealous former lover that George gains his freedom. In the meantime William Treherne falls down a crevice while climbing Mont Blanc and he develops rheumatic fever, which leaves him unable to walk. Elfrida, who has previously left him, returns and realises that it is her duty to remain with him, despite the fact that she loves George Treherne. A novel which raises more questions than it answers, Love's Conflict highlights the sensation novel's obsession with property, the transgression of class boundaries, scandal, 'bad blood', and threats to the family unit.
Yet although it ends by suggesting the redemptive power of the middle-class woman, the novel is also an example of the way in which women writers like Marryat used their novels explicitly or implicitly to expose the dark side of women's lives, encapsulating much of what feminist critics might say about the suppression of women's speech and desires. Volume 3: Ellen Wood's St Martin's Eve is a story of hereditary madness, degeneration and infanticide. When Charlotte leaves her five-year old stepson to burn alive in a locked room ('a dark mass smouldering on the floor at the far end of the room...no trace of him save that shapeless heap from which the spirit had flown!'), before disappearing into the ghostly mansion's maze of darkened passages, the narrator declares, in ringing tones of disapproval, that she is both insane and wicked. Wood was fond of secret mansions and underground passages and her characters invariably have some kind of subterranean existence. The novel is grounded in the form of the female Gothic, with its nightmare vision of the home.
Wood uses the female Gothic's tropes of secrecy and transgression and draws on the form's association with what is 'other', subversive and marginal, to construct a story about female criminality and victimisation, but one, like Wood's most famous novel, East Lynne, which is located in a historical reality that has particular implications for women. On the one hand Wood views Charlotte's behaviour as the product of inherited insanity and unstable femininity. On the other hand, Charlotte's insanity can be seen as the product of a woman who is trapped by her economic dependency and caught up in the snares of primogeniture which do not acknowledge her claims or those of her own child. Charlotte's actions may be evil but she is also simply displaying the capacity for maternal love judged as acceptably feminine by her society. And as Wood makes clear it is the sheer strength of her impulses and her concern for her own child's advancement that makes her dangerous.
The novel confirms Wood as an important commentator on nineteenth century gender politics engaged in a project, which is feminist in effect, if not in intent: that of highlighting the patriarchal and legal obstacles to women's self-expression. Volume 4: a) One of the least known novelists proposed here, Felicia Skene, may also be the most controversial. Hidden Depths, 'a story founded on fact' ('Preface' to 2nd edition), was published in 1866. Originally published anonymously, the novel shows the woman writer assuming the role of agitator, protesting against women's predicament. Skene was a High Anglican who did philanthropic work in Oxford. She wrote to raise money for her favourite charities, one of which was the reclamation of 'fallen' women. Hidden Depths reflects this, telling the story of how the well-born heroine, Ernestine, sets out to save from prostitution a girl whose sister Ernestine's brother, a hero of the Indian Mutiny, has earlier seduced and abandoned. The independent heroine's journey takes her into the unknown territory of London's brothels and madhouses, both institutions are graphically portrayed.
The terrible conditions in which women live while their seducers go unpunished prompts the question 'Shall it be ever thus?' 'Shall its hideous wickedness still be ignored, glossed over made light of, as regards the destroyers, while the destroyed are branded with dishonour and driven to deeper evil by the blackest injustice that ever disgraced a Christian land?'. Unlike other writers of her time, Skene moves beyond stereotypes to deal boldly with the issue of prostitution and the double standard, and pleads for the reform of the too severe and unsympathetic penitentiaries for 'fallen' women. Volume 4: b) Rhoda Broughton, Cometh' up as a Flower (1867); Rhoda Broughton (1840-1920) was a writer whose success as part of the sensation school prompted her contemporary the Reverend Francis Paget to proclaim that 'France is not the only country in the annals of the world in which a region of lust has been followed by a reign of terror.' Shocking, and condemned as the work of an unbalanced and unlady-like mind, when it first appeared, Cometh Up as a Flower helped make Broughton a Victorian best-seller.
The story is told autobiographically by the heroine Nell Le Strange, the motherless daughter of an impoverished nobleman who falls for a penniless soldier, Dick McGregor. In the meantime she receives a proposal from a rich aristocrat, Sir Hugh Lancaster. The proposal coincides with her father's bankruptcy and death. Nell's sister Dolly forges a letter from Nell jilting Dick. He leaves and Nell marries Sir Hugh. When the truth emerges, Nell pines and we learn that her narrative is being written from her deathbed. To the extent that pathos and anger share the stage with erotic arousal and explorations of women's sexuality, Cometh Up as a Flower is a prime example of the way in which women's writing could shock and dominate the market. Labelled 'disgusting in the fullest sense of the word' by Margaret Oliphant, the most shocking idea was that well-bred middle-class English ladies had sexual needs and desires. In terms of popularity Broughton was nothing less than the Barbara Cartland or Daniel Steele of her day: much imitated and much derided.
With its first-person, death-bed narrative Cometh Up as a Flower is also one of the most experimental works in this collection even if Broughton's use of the plot line of thwarted love is a familiar one. Volume 5: Mary Cecil Hay, Old Myddleton's Money (1874); Initially published in the mass-market magazine The Family Herald, this novel can be compared to the small-town social satires made famous by Anthony Trollope and Elizabeth Gaskell, but is also an early example of the detective story. A mysterious stranger, Ryder Keith, arrives in town and begins asking awkward questions about the brutal murder ten years earlier of the miserly local squire, Myddleton. The solving of the crime and the family's unease at what might come out is the starting point for wider discussions about class, money, revenge and the question of whether murder is ever justified. The novel is also striking for its utilisation of the now familiar tropes of detective fiction, including photographic evidence, and for its restrained, matter-of-fact tone which contrasts with the more emotive styles of Broughton and Wood.
Volume 6: Dora Russell, Beneath the Wave (1878); First serialised in the Bolton Weekly Journal (May-October 1878), Beneath the Wave is an example of sensation fiction written for a slightly different market than that of the middle-class circulating-library. Syndicated by Tillotson's fiction bureau, Dora Russell is an example of a sensation novelist who sold her serials mainly to local newspapers (with their large lower-middle and working-class readership). In keeping with the conventions of the sensation genre, Beneath the Wave is a novel with a secret; the secret involves the body of an unidentified woman washed up on the beach. No-one comes forward to claim the woman who is quietly buried. Soon afterwards, a yacht, carrying Sir George Hamilton is shipwrecked on the same stretch of beach; a local tutor, Philip Hayward, saves Sir George and the two men become close friends. Philip Hayward is in love with Isabel Trevor, the daughter of the local squire. Isabel, scheming and narcissistic, prefers the wealthy Sir George and marries him. Isabel gives birth to a son but the marriage collapses when her affair with a soldier, Captain Warrington becomes known.
Sir George shoots himself, leaving Hayward to discover that the drowned woman was his first wife, a Spanish peasant, whom he had struck and knocked overboard. The mismatched couple have had a son, Juan, who is now the rightful heir to the Hamilton property. Isabel tries to contest her husband's will but fails. In addition to exploiting some of the recognisable conventions of sensation fiction (secret marriages, missing heirs, unfaithful women, blackmail) Dora Russell's narrative is characterised by the subtle undermining of conventional morality. Although the novel contains a heavy dose of moralising and exemplary behaviour on the part of the novel's 'good' characters, the same exemplary conduct is persistently undercut. Isabel (her name is itself significant - it brings to mind the victimised heroine of Ellen Wood's earlier East Lynne) is ruthless in her behaviour, is selfish and cruel and is outspoken in her scorn for the proprieties of 'respectable' behaviour. Yet she also goes unpunished. At the end of the novel we hear of her living an idle, comfortable life on the continent.
Buy Varieties of Women's Sensation Fiction, 1855-1890 by Andrew Maunder from Australia's Online Independent Bookstore, BooksDirect.
Other Editions - Varieties of Women's Sensation Fiction, 1855-1890 by Andrew Maunder
A Preview for this title is currently not available.
No Stock on Hand, Supplier Has No Due Date for Supply.
