Starting with a cultural-historical framing of late-Victorian sensation fiction and focusing onderanged and rebellious women that populate sensation narratives, this article explores the figure ofJoseph Sheridan Le Fanu and his artistic closeness to late-Victorian sensationalism. Having asmainstay Le Fanu’s familiarity with late-nineteenth-century psychiatry, this paper pivots around thesensational that permeates Le Fanu’s The Rose and the Key, a work that never experienced the fame, forinstance, of Uncle Silas or Carmilla. Paying attention to the stormy relationship between Maud andBarbara – daughter and mother – and to the countless secrets guarded by the latter, in this article Ilook at The Rose and the Key as a denunciation of a highly corruptible psychiatric system, muchoriented towards repression, especially in the case of women.
Evil Feminine and Untamed Nerves: Sensationalism in Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's The Rose and the Key
Stefano Rossi
2023
Abstract
Starting with a cultural-historical framing of late-Victorian sensation fiction and focusing onderanged and rebellious women that populate sensation narratives, this article explores the figure ofJoseph Sheridan Le Fanu and his artistic closeness to late-Victorian sensationalism. Having asmainstay Le Fanu’s familiarity with late-nineteenth-century psychiatry, this paper pivots around thesensational that permeates Le Fanu’s The Rose and the Key, a work that never experienced the fame, forinstance, of Uncle Silas or Carmilla. Paying attention to the stormy relationship between Maud andBarbara – daughter and mother – and to the countless secrets guarded by the latter, in this article Ilook at The Rose and the Key as a denunciation of a highly corruptible psychiatric system, muchoriented towards repression, especially in the case of women.
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