Sensational Deviance: Disability in Nineteenth-Century Sensation Fiction (Routledge Studies in Nineteenth Century Literature)

"Sensational Deviance: Disability in Nineteenth-Century Sensation Fiction investigates the representation of disability in fictional works by the leading Victorian sensation novelists Wilkie Collins and Mary Elizabeth Braddon, exploring how disability acts as a major element in the shaping of the sensation novel genre and how various sensation novels respond to traditional viewpoints of disability and to new developments in physiological and psychiatric knowledge. The depictions of disabled characters in sensation fiction frequently deviate strongly from typical depictions of disability in mainstream Victorian literature, undermining its stigmatized positioning as tragic deficit, severe limitation, or pathology. Close readings of nine individual novels situate their investigations of physical, sensory, and cognitive disabilities against the period's disability discourses and interest in senses, perception, stimuli, the nervous system, and the hereditability of impairments. The importance of moral insanity and degeneration theory within sensation fiction connect the genre with criminal anthropology, suggesting the genre's further significance in the light of the later emergence of eugenics, psychoanalysis, and genetics."--Provided by publisher Cover 1 Half Title 2 Series Page 3 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Table of Contents 6 List of Figures 8 Acknowledgements 10 Introduction 12 Part I: Wilkie Collins and Disabled Identities 34 1 Hide and Seek (1854) 36 2 The Dead Secret (1857) 68 3 Poor Miss Finch (1871–2) 99 4 The Law and the Lady (1875) 126 PART II: Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Disabled Identities 168 5 The Trail of the Serpent (1860–1) 170 6 Lady Audley’s Secret (1861–2) and John Marchmont’s Legacy (1862–3) 203 7 The Lady’s Mile (1866) and One Thing Needful (1886) 228 Conclusion 252 Bibliography 256 Index 270