Simulation and Sartorial Subversion in 19th and 21st Century Sensation Fiction

Abstract

Closely linked in themes and plot devices to the Gothic fiction of the late 18th century, sensation novels startled Victorian readers by locating crime, secrets, and sexual deviancy, not inr emote European castles and convents, but in seemingly respectable English homes. They became a major venue for women novelists, foremost among them Mary Elizabeth Braddon. In Lady Audley's Secret (1861), Braddon subverts the idealized figure of the domestic 'angel in the house' with the story of an ambitious woman who, abandoned by her first husband, uses her beauty to climb the social ladder - and who will stop at nothing to protect her new identity. When her crimes are exposed, she argues that she was driven to them by the limited options available to her as a woman. Is she a villain, then, or a victim? Recent feminist scholarship on sensation fiction has emphasized its exposure of the limits on Victorian women's roles and the constraints on their economic independence and mobility. In her novel Fingersmith (2002), Sarah Waters rewrites the sensation novel from a feminist perspective, taking a particular interest in the issue of re-fashioning gender identities. In her essay, Emily Corrie focuses on how Braddon and Waters use literal clothing to invoke these issues of female identity. Clothing can repress individuality and enforce both gender and class conventions, but it also creates the possibility of 'emulation' and thus social mobility - a possibility that, as Corrie explores, can generate both anxiety and excitement.

-Dr. Rohan Maitzen