“Another Woman in Your Shape”: Sexual and Class Duplicity in Sensation Fiction

Abstract

The chapter explores the concept of female “doubling” prevalent in sensation novels popular in the Victorian era. In these literary pieces, the predominant theme is female self-replication and transcendence of class boundaries through the institution of marriage. Conflict is manifested through subplots of adultery, female duplicity, and male oppression. These elements “empower” or force the heroine to constantly reinvent herself into different forms throughout the novel. These novels, when stripped of the veil of sensationalism, have at their base, anxieties of Victorian women regarding female duplicity and the loss or transformation of identity in marriage. Three sensation novels, Lady Audley's Secret, East Lynne, and Tess of the D' Urbervilles, are examined for their treatment of a female's power to change her identity, to manage the “otherness” within a one's self—the occurrence of which transforms the social institutions that restrict female difference—marriage and class—into another kind of fiction.