Erica’s Reviews > The Maniac in the Cellar: Sensation Novels of the 1860s > Status Update

"In her novels, the worst sort of crime is passionless and calculating--is always associated with a concern for appearances and a high standing in the world's estimation" (Braddon)

Braddon explores the underside of feminine image.

heroines possess expansive natures while villains fulfill "ordinary feminine ideal" --feminine idea is dangerous for Braddon (124)

Braddon's writing characterized as jaunty, cynical, tough

both Braddon and Wood write about "marriage as an unsatisfactory or illusory state instead of relegating it to a happy ending"

1863 was height of sensation vogue.

characters as "real, living, breathing" men and women with whom reader feels intimately acquainted"

common complaint = Braddon knows too much about men.

central heroine's moral ambivalence. WOMAN-fictional prominence, disturbed accepted social order

sensation fiction collided with domestic novel