Disease, Desire, and the Body in Victorian Women's Popular Novels [Hardcover]

The work of popular women novelists in mid-Victorian Britain and beliefs about femininity and disease.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 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 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.Introduction: why transgression, why now?: physical integrity in the electronic age; 1. 'In the body of the text': metaphors of reading and the body; 2. Genre: the social construction of sensation; 3. M. E. Braddon: sensational realism; 4. Rhoda Broughton: anything but love; 5. Ouida: romantic exchange; Afterword: the other Victorians; Bibliography.