Disease, Desire, and the Body in Victorian Women's Popular Novels (Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture, Series Number 11)

Pamela Gilbert argues that popular fiction in mid-Victorian Britain was regarded as both feminine and diseased. She discusses work by three popular women novelists of the time: M. E. Braddon, Rhoda Broughton and "Ouida". Early and later novels of each writer are interpreted in the context of their reception, showing that attitudes toward fiction drew on Victorian beliefs about health, nationality, class and the body, beliefs that the fictions themselves both resisted and exploited. Popular fiction in mid-Victorian Britain was regarded as both feminine and diseased. Critical articles of the time on fiction and on the body and disease offer convincing evidence that reading was metaphorically allied with eating, contagion and sex. Anxious critics traced the infection of the imperial, healthy body of masculine elite culture by 'diseased' popular fiction, especially novels by women. This book discusses works by three novelists - M.E. Braddon, Rhoda Broughton, and 'Ouida' - within this historical context. In each case, the comparison of an early, 'sensation' novel against a later work shows how generic categorization worked in the context of social concerns to contain anxiety and limit interpretive possibilities. Within the texts themselves, references to contemporary critical and medical literatures resist or exploit mid-Victorian concepts of health, nationality, class and the body Cover......Page 1 Title......Page 6 Copyright......Page 7 Contents......Page 8 Acknowledgments......Page 9 Introduction......Page 10 1. “In the body of the text”: metaphors of reading and the body......Page 24 2. Genre: the social construction of sensation......Page 67 3. M. E. Braddon: sensational realism......Page 101 4. Rhoda Broughton: anything but love......Page 122 5. Ouida: romantic exchange......Page 149 Afterword: the other Victorians......Page 191 Notes......Page 198 Bibliography......Page 207 Index......Page 215 CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE AND CULTURE......Page 217 Pamela Gilbert argues that popular fiction in mid-Victorian Britain was regarded as both feminine and diseased. She discusses work by three popular women novelists of the time: M. E. Braddon, Rhoda Broughton and 'Ouida'. Early and later novels of each writer are interpreted in the context of their reception, showing that attitudes toward fiction drew on Victorian beliefs about health, nationality, class and the body, beliefs which the fictions themselves both resisted and exploited. Pamela Gilbert argues that popular fiction in mid-Victorian Britain was regarded as both feminine and diseased. She discusses, in particular, work by three very popular women novelists of the time - M. E. Braddon, Rhoda Broughton, and 'Ouida' - in the context of their reception by readers and critics. The police and soap ... were the antithesis of the crime and disease which supposedly lurked in the slums ... [but policing is effected through the gaze of the bourgeoisie, which is then implicated in its object:] Popular fiction in mid-Victorian Britain was regarded as both feminine and diseased. This text discusses the work of three novelists - M.E. Braddon, Rhoda Broughton and 'Ouida' - within this historical context