Moral Uncertainty and the Afterlife: Explaining the Popularity of Marie Corelli's Early Novels

Abstract

Marie Corelli's early popular success as a novelist took place within a culture anxious about the meaning and experience of death. Generally, Corelli is considered to be a writer of romantic fiction, but this essay considers the heterogeneous appeal that she was able to generate through her engagement with the contemporary cultural and emotional fascination with mortality and the destruction of the corporeal form. Through a consideration of theories about the role of popular fiction in cultural debate, it is possible to reconsider rather than dismiss Corelli's success as aberrant, the common twentieth century practice. She devises specific narrative constructs that allow readers to engage in social debates about the body and contemplate alternative religious beliefs. This essay analyses death scenes in five of Corelli's early best-sellers—Ardath (1895), Thelma (1897), The Soul of Lilith (1892), The Sorrows of Satan (1895), and The Murder of Delicia (1896). These death scenes are distinct rather than formulaic and, by considering their cultural context, it is possible to understand the way Corelli's fiction negotiates different subject positions and responds to varied rather than specific cultural perspectives. Best-selling fiction requires a writer to effect ambiguity rather than clear cultural alignment in order to achieve resonance with differentiated audiences. This essay proposes that the example of the varied and nuanced appeal Corelli offered her contemporary audiences necessitates a revaluation of the place of popular fiction in literary and cultural histories.