Creating character: Theories of nature and nurture in Victorian sensation fiction

Creating character explores the range of ways in which the two leadingsensation authors of the 1860s, Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Wilkie Collins,engaged with nineteenth-century ideas about how personality is formed, and theextent to which it can be influenced either by the subject or by others.Innovative readings of Braddon's and Collins'ssensation novels - some of them canonical, others less well-known - demonstratehow they reflect, employ and challenge Victorian theories of heredity,degeneration, inherent constitution, education, upbringing and socialcircumstance. The book shows the creation of character to be a complexinterplay of internal and external factors that are as much reliant on chanceas on the efforts of the people who try to exert control over an individual'sdevelopment. Their works raise challenging questions about responsibility andself-determinism and, as the analyses of these texts reveal, demonstrate anacute awareness that the way in which character formation is understoodfundamentally influences the way people (both in fiction and reality) areperceived, judged and treated.Drawing on material from a variety of genres, including Victorian medical textbooks,scientific and sociological treatises, specialist and popular periodicalliterature, Creating character shows how sensation authors situatedthemselves at the intersections of established and developing thought about howidentity could be made and modified.