CENTURY LITERATURE A Dissertation by JUNG SUN ... - Repository

that he has a “suffocating sensation” (62)? Valentine and Mary become a spectacle when
they stand facing each other, eye to eye, their gazes penetrating into each other. While
we are uninformed of Mary’s affective status, Valentine’s affectation is described in
detail as his nerves are shaken accompanying his outburst of excitement. It is worth
noting that even though the affective phenomenon is apparently reciprocal between the
two entities, the emotional impact on only one side is delivered to us as it is often
influenced by gender (of the masculine subject) or class (of the middle-class subject). In
Aurora Floyd, Braddon’s narrator tries to focus in her description only on what Aurora
feels or how she emotionally reacts to Hargraves, her counterpart, disregarding what
Hargraves feels and how he responds. The narrator in Hide and Seek also appears to be
interested only in what or how Valentine feels in the presence of Mary. From the ways in
which the information is delivered, it is the narrator who assigns the positions of either
the feeler or provoker, determining a degree of value and meaning. As affective response
of the feeler is the only considered value and meaning in the representation, Aurora and
Valentine as the feelers are privileged to express their emotive status even as it is related
to erotic desire. Once the reader is persuaded to lose interest in the spectacle, Mary, that
provokes sensation, the narrator leads the reader to concentrate on understanding the real
nature of Valentine’s nerve-shaking experience.
As much as his eccentric behavior has something to do with his affection for a
woman with disabilities and his ensuing act of marital union, Valentine’s suffocating
sensation must be related to his eccentric interest in the fragility and poorness of the
human subject and human body that indicate a difference. While Doctor Joyce and the
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