Creating character: Theories of nature and nurture in Victorian sensation fiction, by Helena Ifill

Abstract

Reviewed by: Creating character: Theories of nature and nurture in Victorian sensation fiction by Helena Ifill Tara MacDonald (bio) Creating character: Theories of nature and nurture in Victorian sensation fiction, by Helena Ifill; pp. viii + 232. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018, £80.00, $120.00. In Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret (1861–62), Lucy Audley claims that the "hereditary taint" in her blood caused her to cross "that invisible line which separates reason from madness" (edited by Lyn Pykett [Oxford World's Classics, 2012], 300, 301). Yet the doctor who sees her says, notoriously, that she is not mad but dangerous. Can Lucy's desperate actions be explained by heredity or simply by her impoverished circumstances? In Creating character: Theories of nature and nurture in Victorian sensation fiction, Helena Ifill argues that sensation novelists were deeply invested in such questions. These writers, specifically Braddon and Wilkie Collins, were not merely interested in portraying good or evil characters but, rather, in detailing how characters came to be good or evil. This is a key way, Ifill suggests, in which sensation novels depart from melodrama: instead of simply being a villain, a character like Mannion in Collins's Basil (1852) might instead be diagnosed as a "dangerous monomaniac" (Collins qtd. in Ifill 35). Ifill demonstrates the ways in which Braddon and Collins were developing arguments about determinism and the influence of biological inheritance at the same time that a range of scientists and psychologists were. One of the more innovative aspects of her argument is that she places these discussions within the context of theories about degeneration and eugenics. While acknowledging that eugenic ideas were especially dominant in the 1890s, the book demonstrates the ways in which they emerged in the 1860s via notions of undesirable hereditary influences. The introduction devotes some space to defining sensation fiction as a genre distinct from realism, a topic to which later chapters might have returned. Ifill notes that [End Page 473] determinism has typically been linked to realism, specifically to the work of George Eliot (and we might add Thomas Hardy here, too). Yet she persuasively notes that sensation novels are attentive to the impact of irrepressible, external forces on characters' development. She claims that "sensation fiction's emphasis on plot can be interpreted as considering the human condition in a manner that acknowledges that a combination of internal and external pressures drive the individual through life, often precluding the possibility of truly independent action" (8). This is a persuasive point, and she notes further that degenerationist thinking and sensational plotting are linked in that every small action or weakness has great meaning. These ways of thinking about sensational plotting will be useful to critics working on the genre, especially since sensation fiction was (and perhaps still is) often thought to subordinate character to plot. Given the use of the term character in the book's title, it would have been helpful to hear more about the ways in which she sees Braddon and Collins as crafting ideas about literary character: did they understand character differently from Eliot or, say, Charles Dickens? Braddon's and Collins's letters and Collins's prefaces would have been potential resources here. The book is divided into three sections: part 1 discusses monomania as an exploration of the limits of free will, part 2 discusses biological inheritance, and part 3 departs somewhat to focus on education and environmental influences. Each section includes one chapter on Braddon and one on Collins. While the prodigious output of both authors means that Ifill has more than enough material to choose from, she could be more explicit about why the book focuses only on these two sensation writers. Ellen Wood's St. Martin's Eve (1866) is briefly mentioned, and indeed that novel, as well as others by Wood, is invested in upper-class degeneration, as well as the impact of possible hereditary madness. Throughout each section there are frequent quotations from Victorian doctors and philosophers like William Carpenter. In this way, Ifill follows in the footsteps of scholars who have been attentive to crossovers between psychological and scientific writing and sensation novels, such as Jenny Bourne Taylor and Laurie...