Tara MacDonald, Narrative, Affect and Victorian Sensation: Wilful Bodies. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2023, 217 pp. Hb £90.00. ISBN: 9781399522199
Reviewed by Rosie Blacher
Recommended citation: Blacher, Rosie. 2025. Review of Narrative, Affect and Victorian Sensation: Wilful Bodies, Victorian Popular Fictions, 7.2 (Autumn): 181-3. ISSN: 2632-4253 (online) DOI: https://doi.org/10.46911/NLUD8962
Tara MacDonald’s Narrative, Affect and Victorian Sensation brings together the popular areas of affective criticism, narrative technique and the often-maligned sensation fiction genre. MacDonald identifies that discovering Amelia Edwards’s novel Barbara’s History (1868) and struggling to assign a genre to the text instigated her exploration into sensation fiction and its attributes. Analysing the sensation genre led her to suspect that, despite historical and contemporary tendencies to deride the field, the authors of sensation novels create affective texts with complex narrative techniques.
The author establishes the importance of her studies within contemporary society, observing that the post-pandemic world has brought renewed interest to the way in which human bodies feel, affect and transmit. Moving away from the popular temptation to consider sensation novels through analysis of their supposedly scandalised readership, MacDonald shifts instead towards considering the novels as complex narratives that give insight into Victorian ideas of feelings and notions of sympathy. Narrative, Affect and Victorian Sensation studies lesser-known sensation novelists alongside more popular literary figures, rationalising that focusing on texts that Victorian readers actually consumed valuably informs criticism. A thorough literature review situates MacDonald’s work within the field of affect theory and serves to define how her research area is distinct from emotion. This text reclaims the use of hyperrealism and notes the materialist, metafictional and self-reflexive qualities of sensational literature whilst acknowledging the historical tendency towards sexist evaluations of the genre.
The introduction is split into four parts: “Defining Sensation and Hyperrealism,” “Free Will and Embodiment,” “Theorising Victorian Affect” and “Narrating Affect.” In the first chapter, “Immersive Reading and Sensational Emplotment,” MacDonald returns to Amelia Edwards and considers not only Barbara’s History but also her earlier text Hand and Glove (1858). The two texts by Edwards are analysed alongside Rhoda Broughton’s Cometh Up as a Flower (1867) to identify links between the reading material of fictional characters and the impact this has on both their physical body and the plot of the text. MacDonald draws on Victorian reviews of sensation fiction, such as those by Margaret Oliphant, and argues against assumptions about the negative impact the genre would have on its readership. Instead, MacDonald contends that contrary to modern and Victorian critics, the narrative techniques and intertextual references used in sensation fiction require the reader’s critical engagement and appraisal, drawing from examples of narration and emplotment to enhance her argument. MacDonald suggests that rather than conforming to sensational tropes, the self-reflexive narratives of these novels instead serve to parody their genre as well as challenge Victorian realism. The metafictional nature of sensation fiction is also identified as offering readers opportunities to engage intellectually with their reading, as well as providing a pleasurable experience.
The second chapter of MacDonald’s text, “Morbidity and Sensational Authorship,” defines the meaning of “morbid” and goes on to explore the ways in which the concept threatened the social order. MacDonald expands upon previous suggestions of impropriety attached to sensation fiction but moves away from the impact on the readership and instead considers the reputation of the authors. This chapter identifies a tendency to assume that sensational stories are written from personal experience and challenges the notion that any supposed impropriety reflects the author’s lived experience or reveals their viewpoint.
“Privacy and ‘Public Feeling’ in Salem Chapel and Armadale” is the third chapter of MacDonald’s text and explores ideas of gender, class and performance alongside physical appearance in the works of Margaret Oliphant and Wilkie Collins. In this section, emphasis is moved away from reading as a solo activity, and instead, the prevalence of gossip and the Victorian fascination with scandalous true events are brought to the fore, for example, the captivating trial of a Scottish socialite accused of poisoning her lover. MacDonald identifies surveillance as a common theme in nineteenth-century literature and considers its use in sensation fiction, examining textual examples of watching and descriptions of the human eye’s characteristics.
In the fourth chapter, “Crowds and Bodily Sympathy in Wood and Clive,” MacDonald explores crowd behaviour with specific consideration of the role of the mob, bringing in social issues of the time, such as unions and employment disputes. MacDonald highlights the distinction between being affected by an event and experiencing affect, as well as the ways in which incidents and behaviours are carried between physical human bodies. In this chapter, ideas of absolving or reinforcing social differences are also explored alongside examples of challenging social conventions and antisocial behaviour. MacDonald further develops this by exploring both nineteenth- and twenty-first-century conceptions of sympathy and the narrative devices used to evoke or discourage it in readers.
Chapter five, “Collins, Hardy and Reade’s ‘Sympathetic Doubles,’” moves away from the double as a typically fearsome Gothic literary convention and instead explores the idea of sympathetic doubling with consideration of the counterfictional life and transpersonal affect. MacDonald identifies Victorian fears that readers would become like the fictional characters they read about and explores the presentation of touch and sympathy in narratives. MacDonald employs close reading for an innovative focus on the frequently overlooked character of Anne in The Woman in White (1860) to further her argument. In addition to this, MacDonald’s interest in the often-neglected Desperate Remedies (1871) by Thomas Hardy offers an innovative and valuable contribution to studies.
In the brief coda of her book, MacDonald concludes by examining the body as a site of narrative interpretation and considers what sensation novels offer their readers, encompassing the pleasures of reading, distracted reading, and nonreading.
On the whole, this innovative text resituates sensation fiction within literary criticism, showcasing the plot intricacies and narrative skills which encourage critical thought and intellectual engagement in the reader. Narrative, Affect and Victorian Sensation will be of particular interest to those studying popular fiction of the nineteenth-century as it purposefully considers texts that were well-liked during the Victorian era. Furthermore, bringing together ideas of affect and narrative techniques, MacDonald’s text makes a valuable contribution to research on sensational fiction, narrative studies, and affect theory.
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