Mary Elizabeth Braddon's 'Unknown Public': The Penny Dreadful and the Sensation Novel
Though the influence of penny fiction on the sensation novel was widely recognized by Victorians and is acknowledged by modern critics, there has been little examination of the relationship between these genres. My dissertation addresses this gap in scholarship, analyzing the similarities between th...
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| Format: | Others |
| Language: | English English |
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Florida State University
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| Online Access: | http://purl.flvc.org/fsu/fd/FSU_2017SP_Natt_fsu_0071E_13745 |
| Summary: | Though the influence of penny fiction on the sensation novel was widely recognized by Victorians and is acknowledged by modern critics, there has been little examination of the relationship between these genres. My dissertation addresses this gap in scholarship, analyzing the similarities between the two genres in terms of their content, popularity, and the controversy they provoked. Through drawing clear parallels between the penny dreadful and the sensation novel, I illustrate that the penny dreadful is more complex and subversive than previous scholarship has acknowledged. I argue that the penny dreadful represents an important lens into mid-Victorian culture and working-class agency, particularly because lower-class tastes drove the mid-Victorian market forces. Not only did penny fiction outsell more 'legitimate' fiction, but the lower classes rejected and resented the free and 'good' literature that the middle classes tried to impose on them. The penny dreadful, then, operates as a site of resistance against industrial literacy; moreover, it reflects lower-class anxieties and encourages sympathy for the poor through emphasizing the societal criminalization of poverty. I use Mary Elizabeth Braddon as a case study because at the same time that she was composing her most famous sensation novels, she was also writing anonymous penny fiction. Moreover, though the Victorians were unaware that Braddon authored penny fiction, she was the focus of harsh criticism from contemporaries for violating class- and genre- boundaries by incorporating markers of lower-class fiction in her sensation novels. My dissertation aims to demonstrate the larger socio-historical importance of the two genres, which responded to very specific audience needs and thus generated very specific audience- and genre- related anxiety in mid-Victorian England. === A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the Doctor of Philosophy. === Spring Semester 2017. === March 8, 2017. === Braddon, crime, genre, penny dreadful, sensation novel, violence === Includes bibliographical references. === Margaret Kennedy Hanson, Professor Directing Dissertation; Charles Upchurch, University Representative; Eric Walker, Committee Member; Helen Burke, Committee Member. |
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