Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-18T20:21:24.732Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

THE SEDUCTION OF SEEING IN M. E. BRADDON'S ELEANOR'S VICTORY: VISUAL TECHNOLOGY, SEXUALITY, AND THE EVOCATIVE PUBLISHING CONTEXT OF ONCE A WEEK

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2008

Laurie Garrison
Laurie Garrison*
Affiliation:
Royal Holloway, University of London
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The Victorian fascination with the influence of technology on human vision led to a proliferation of replications of its effects in all manner of media, including novel writing. Like the kaleidoscope that holds the viewer in thrall, M. E. Braddon's sensation novel Eleanor's Victory, as this reviewer describes, holds a certain “power” over the reader that forces her to listen to, if not accept, the arguments Braddon posits in her work. “Power” is at issue in other ways in Braddon's work as her heroines continually seek ways of developing agency by shaping sexual identities that press the limits of the norm of the bourgeois family unit. What is also significant here is the appropriateness of the kaleidoscope as a metaphor for Braddon's writing, a metaphor she used personally in describing her work in an unpublished letter: “I will give the kaleidoscope another turn, and will do my best with the old bits of glass and pins and rubbish” (letter to Edmund Yates, qtd. in Maxwell 150). The kaleidoscope fractures the vision of a single object or scene into a multitude of different but interrelated forms of the same. One of the prominent issues Braddon repeatedly addresses in her work is the construction of multiple forms of sexuality. The fracturing or multiplying effect of the kaleidoscope resembles the isolation and reduction of different forms of sexuality as described by Foucault in The History of Sexuality.

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , March 2008 , pp. 111 - 130
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

WORKS CITED

A. A. “My First Run.” Once a Week 2 (14 Mar 1863): 327–32.Google Scholar
A. B. “No Change!” Once a Week 9 (15 Aug 1863): 209–10.Google Scholar
Armstrong, Isobel. “The Microscope: Mediations of the Sub-visible World.” Transactions and Encounters: Science and Culture in the Nineteenth Century. Ed. Luckhurst, Roger and McDonagh, Josephine. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2002. 30–54.Google Scholar
Benjamin, Walter. “A Short History of Photography.” Screen 13.1 (1972): 5–26.Google Scholar
Bradbury and Evans. Prospectus for Once a Week! A Miscellany of Literature, Art, Science and Popular Information. [Circular] May 1859. 1–2.Google Scholar
Braddon, M. E.Eleanor's Victory. Once a Week 8–9 (1863): 296–300, 323–27, 351–56, 407–15, 435–42, 519–24, 575–81, 603–09, 631–37, 127–32, 183–88, 407–14.Google Scholar
Buckler, William E. “Once a Week Under Samuel Lucas, 1859–65.” Papers of the Modern Language Association 67 (1952): 924–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
C. H. A. C. “An Ice Storm.” Once a Week 8 (21 Mar 1863): 349–50.Google Scholar
Cooke, Simon. “George du Maurier's Illustrations for M. E. Braddon's Serialization of Eleanor's Victory in Once a Week.” Victorian Periodicals Review 35.1 (2002): 89–106.Google Scholar
Crary, Jonathan. Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century. London: MIT P, 1998.Google Scholar
Christ, Carol T., and Jordan, John O., Eds. Victorian Literature and the Victorian Visual Imagination. London: U of California P, 1995.Google Scholar
“Eleanor's Victory.” Athenaeum. September 19, 1863: 361–2.Google Scholar
Flint, Kate. The Victorians and the Visual Imagination. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. Vol. 1. Trans. Robert Hurley. London: Penguin, 1981.Google Scholar
From the Mountain. [Harriet Martineau]. “A New Kind of Wilful Murder.” Once a Week 8 (28 Feb 1863): 36–39.Google Scholar
Johnson, Heidi H. “Electra-fying the Female Sleuth: Detecting the Father in Eleanor's Victory and Thou Art the Man.” Beyond Sensation: Mary Elizabeth Braddon in Context. Ed. Trompe, Marlene, Gilbert, Pamela K., and Haynie, Aeron. Albany: State U of New York P, 2000. 255–75.Google Scholar
“The Loves of an Eccentric Author.” Once a Week 9 (27 Jun 1863): 23–25.Google Scholar
Marcus, Laura. “‘The Beginning of the Affair: Relationships Between Literature and Film.” The Moving Subject. Institute of English Studies. Senate House, London. 11 June 2004.Google Scholar
Maxwell, W. B.Time Gathered: Autobiography. New York: Appleton-Century, 1938.Google Scholar
R. A. B. “A Celibate Consoled.” Once a Week 8 (2 May 1863): 518.Google Scholar
Robinson, Solveig C. “Editing Belgravia: M.E. Braddon's Defense of ‘Light Literature.’” Victorian Periodicals Review 28.2 (1995): 109–22.Google Scholar
“Sensation Novels.” Medical Critic and Psychological Journal 3 (1863): 513–19.Google Scholar
Smith, Lindsay. Victorian Photography, Painting and Poetry: The Enigma of Visibility in Ruskin, Morris and the Pre-Raphaelites. Cambridge: CUP, 1995.Google Scholar
Stewart, Garrett. “Reading Figures: The Legible Image of Victorian Textuality.” Victorian Literature and the Victorian Visual Imagination. Ed. Christ, Carol T. and Jordan, John O.. London: U of California P, 1995. 345–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turner, Mark. Trollope and the Magazines. London: Macmillan, 2000.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wynne, Deborah. The Sensation Novel and the Victorian Family Magazine. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001.Google Scholar