Getting Lost in the Novel: Strategic Confusion in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century British Fiction [Hardcover]

Amanda Auerbach reveals how subgenres of the British novel developed to help women and working-class readers covertly satisfy their needs.Focusing on the psychological needs that drew readers in the past  and that still draw readers today  to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novels, Amanda Auerbach reveals the conditions within readers' lives that led them to find books by authors such as Jane Austen and George Eliot so moving and meaningful.Focusing on the psychological needs that drew readers in the past  and that still draw readers today  to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novels, Amanda Auerbach reveals the conditions within readers' lives that led them to find books by authors such as Jane Austen and George Eliot so moving and meaningful.Instances abound in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novels where characters, particularly female characters, become lost, often moved by overwhelming emotion. Amanda Auerbach delves into the impact of these scenes on the character and the reader. On one level, 'getting lost' can realign a character's and our own sense of self and of social situation, while more broadly these instances reflect arcs within the overall narrative, highlighting easily-missed elements, sometimes even reflecting on our own experiences while reading. The emotions that move characters most powerfully often relate to their psychological needs, which the social conditions of their lives prevent them from meeting or fully acknowledging. These episodes appear across multiple novels in multiple subgenres, including the marriage plot, the gothic novel, the Victorian bildungsroman, and the sensation novel. These episodes collectively reveal how eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British novelistic subgenres developed to help women and working-class readers covertly satisfy their psychological needs.Introduction; Part I. 'Psychological' Subgenres: 1. Ending up alone with a man in the eighteenth-century marriage-plot Novel; 2. Getting carried away inlC†