The Bigamy Plot: Sensation and Convention in the Victorian Novel (Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture, Series Number 100)

The courtship plot dominates accounts of the Victorian novel, but this innovative study turns instead to a narrative phenomenon that upends its familiar conventions: the bigamy plot. In hundreds of novels, plays, and poems published in Victorian Great Britain, husbands or wives thought dead suddenly reappear to their newly remarried spouses. In the sensation fiction of Braddon and Collins, these bigamous revelations lead to bribery, arson, and murder, but the same plot operates in the canonical fiction of Charlotte Brontë, Dickens, Eliot, Thackeray, and Hardy. These authors employ bigamy plots to destabilize the apparently conventional form and values of the Victorian novel. By close examination of this plot, including an index of nearly 300 bigamy novels, Maia McAleavey makes the case for a historical approach to narrative, one that is grounded in the legal and social changes of the period but that runs counter to our own formal and cultural expectations. The courtship plot dominates accounts of the Victorian novel, but this innovative study turns instead to a narrative phenomenon that upends its familiar conventions: the bigamy plot. In hundreds of novels, plays, and poems published in Victorian Great Britain, husbands or wives thought dead suddenly reappear to their newly remarried spouses. In the sensation fiction of Braddon and Collins, these bigamous revelations lead to bribery, arson, and murder, but the same plot operates in the canonical fiction of Bronte, Dickens, Eliot, Thackeray, and Hardy. These authors employ bigamy plots to destabilize the apparently conventional form and values of the Victorian novel. By close examination of this plot, including an index of nearly 300 bigamy novels, Maia McAleavey makes the case for a historical approach to narrative, one that is grounded in the legal and social changes of the period but that runs counter to our own formal and cultural expectations Cover Half-title page Series Page Title page Copyright page Dedication Contents Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction Part I A wife and not a wife Chapter 1 The plot in time: historical bigamy and Sylvia’s Lovers Chapter 2 The plot in space: skeletons in the closet in Jane Eyre and East Lynne Part II Dead yet not dead Chapter 3 David Copperfield’s angelic bigamy Chapter 4 Dorothea’s simultaneous remarriage Part III Sensational and canonical Chapter 5 Colonial return: Pendennis and Lady Audley’s Secret Chapter 6 The improper end: Aurora Floyd and Jude the Obscure Coda: the end of bigamy Appendix: List of Victorian bigamy novels Notes Bibliography Index A Wife And Not A Wife. The Plot In Time: Historical Bigamy And Sylvia's Lovers; The Plot In Space: Skeletons In The Closet In Jane Eyre And East Lynne -- Dead Yet Not Dead. David Copperfield's Angelic Bigamy; Dorothea's Simultaneous Remarriage -- Sensational And Canonical. Colonial Return: Pendennis And Lady Audley's Secret; The Improper End: Aurora Floyd And Jude The Obscure -- Coda: The End Of Bigamy -- Appendix: List Of Victorian Bigamy Novels. Maia Mcaleavey. Includes Bibliographical References (pages 216-230) And Index. A study exploring the prevalence of bigamy as a popular plot in Victorian fiction that upends familiar categories and revises our sense of the period's social and narrative conventions. It features the innovative use of periodical archives, an exhaustive appendix, and detailed close readings of familiar and unfamiliar novels. This title explores the prevalence of bigamy in Victorian fiction to challenge traditional understanding of the period's social and narrative conventions