*snip*
Quote:
|
Thanks for the background on the genre! Your description definitively fits "Lady Audley's Secret", but in Wilkie Collins' "The Woman in White", the main characters are victims and/or heroes, but don't transgress (except, in Laura's case, by being incredibly naive). Would you say that "Woman in White" isn't a sensation novel, or is it just an atypical one?
|
Sensation novels could be sentimental, Gothic, melodramatic, supernatural, etc. To me, the key element is the fantastic nature of the plot -- the number and type of coincidences included (and believed by the characters), the success of secret/false identities, the acceptance of supernatural elements, the hoarding of secrets, the number of turns & twists of the plot, the convenient accidents, the gullibility of characters, etc.
So, yes, I think
Woman in White can be regarded as a sensation novel.