SOURCE: “Feminine Sensationalism, Eroticism, and Self-Assertion: M. E. Braddon and Ouida,” in Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, Vol. 7, No. 1, Spring, 1988, pp. 87-103.

In the following essay, Schroeder analyzes the ways in which sensationalist writers like Braddon encouraged Victorian women to subvert repressive social conventions.

Twentieth-century critics have recently affirmed the historical, social, and literary importance of popular Victorian fiction.¹ Mary Elizabeth Braddon's and Ouida's (Marie Louise de la Ramee) sensational novels are especially significant today for what they reveal about Victorian women's resistance to conventionally prescribed social roles. By rejecting the prudish moral tone that characterized popular fiction of the 1850s and by devouring novels filled with crime, passion, and sensuality, Victorian women readers began in the 1860s to rebel against the establishment. Monica Fryckstedt attributes the success of sensation novels to the fact that “they touched upon one of the hidden ills of Victorian society: the repressed...