Introduction

76
Vanessa Mangione
Critics have argued that East Lynne’s powerful attraction to Victorian readers
lay not only in the subject matter but in that she reinvented the “conventions of
domestic realism but also employs seemingly anti-realistic devices roofed in the
Gothic in order to convey a darker vision of the home” (Introduction: Ellen
Wood, Writer 151). Thus, the sacred home suddenly became a place of secrets and
lies. The consequence of placing the home within a Gothic setting “led to Wood –
rather than Wilkie Collins – being labelled as “the originator and chief of the sensational
school” by commentators” (Introduction: Ellen Wood, Writer 151). Sensational
novels describe a literary genre that was popular in the 1860s and 1870s.
They have been characterized as “novels with a secret”.
This genre was regarded as a completely new form of fiction by contemporary
reviewers of the mid-Victorian literary scene that replaced the stereotypical form
of the the domestic novel, the only proper one for female readers, from its position
of dominance as it indulged the public craving for scandal. In this new novelistic
mode, the heroines of the complicated plots about crime, bigamy, or adultery
evolve in a passionate, devious and dangerous manner. The novels evoke the Victorian
public’s lust for scandal as they situated murders, mysteries, and social improprieties
within respectable middle class or aristocratic homes. The sanctity of
the family, as well as the stability of middle-class mores, was put into question,
their narratives parallelizing the daily newspapers' contents of the newly instituted
divorce courts. Furthermore, the stability of individual identity was challenged
frequently by showing that a person's outer appearance and status could not be
taken as proof of personality and motives.
To express both feminine desire and fears that were otherwise ignored by contemporary
discourses, Wood used the supernatural which found a way into the
home. Jaquet notes that the “non-realistic mode of the supernatural becomes a
strategic choice for female authors in order to represent the often marginalized
experiences of Victorian women” (245). She continues by pointing out that Wood
“illuminates the operations of the supernatural … as a form of investigation and
redefinition of the domestic sphere” (245). Accordingly, the supernatural in Wood
that is demonstrated, among others, through uncanny dreams and shadows, is
connected to the domestic sphere, thus the author is able to present the various
and different experiences of women. Dickerson argues that “the supernatural tale
allows for play, speculation, investigation and redefinition” and is thus “presenting
an important avenue for female writers to comment on their society” (148). The
new motif of the family threatened from the outside, in this case by an aristocratic,
dangerous male seducer, evoked both indignation and curiosity.
Many established critics thought that the primary function of art was to “elevate
or purify“ and as sensational novels did no such thing, they responded with
moral outrage and dismay at the public approval of this new genre. Sensational
novels exhibit a variety of characteristics of genres, such as melodrama, romance,
gothic, realism, and Newgate fiction and thus can be seen as generic hybrids that