![]() ![]() Chapter two examines Braddon's fiction in the context of the sensation novel's rise and fall, mass appeal, rapid reproduction, and largely negative critical reception exploring the conflict between Braddon's novels and her critics, it offers insights into the alarm generated by their critique of gender and class. The first chapter places Braddon's fiction within the Victorian cultural climate in which women had limited opportunities and faced unfair economic conditions many women, like Braddon's fraudulent females, were becoming increasingly discontented and angry. Braddon's female frauds subverted dominant Victorian ideology's representation of women as domestic ideals by defying the impractical and impossible role of "angel" and rejecting gender and class-based discrimination. ![]() Her novels suggest how a number of women became frauds, in the sense of using deception, inventing false identities, and committing crimes in order to meet conventional society's expectations for the proper female. ![]() By focusing on three of her early sensation novels, this study examines how Mary Elizabeth Braddon's fiction challenged conventional assumptions about the feminine and spoke to women's growing discontent with their limited roles as daughters, wives, and mothers. ![]()
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