{"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.14288\/1.0067136":{"http:\/\/vivoweb.org\/ontology\/core#departmentOrSchool":[{"value":"Arts, Faculty of","type":"literal","lang":"en"},{"value":"English, Department of","type":"literal","lang":"en"}],"http:\/\/www.europeana.eu\/schemas\/edm\/dataProvider":[{"value":"DSpace","type":"literal","lang":"en"}],"https:\/\/open.library.ubc.ca\/terms#degreeCampus":[{"value":"UBCV","type":"literal","lang":"en"}],"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/creator":[{"value":"Page, Leanne Nicole","type":"literal","lang":"en"}],"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/issued":[{"value":"2009-04-16T18:45:11Z","type":"literal","lang":"en"},{"value":"2009","type":"literal","lang":"en"}],"http:\/\/vivoweb.org\/ontology\/core#relatedDegree":[{"value":"Master of Arts - MA","type":"literal","lang":"en"}],"https:\/\/open.library.ubc.ca\/terms#degreeGrantor":[{"value":"University of British Columbia","type":"literal","lang":"en"}],"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/description":[{"value":"This study analyzes and accounts for the mixed emotional responses to three Wilkie Collins novels: The Dead Secret (1857), The Woman in White (1860), and The Law and the Lady (1875). Contemporary reviews of these novels, in addition to Collins\u2019s comments on the reception of his works, suggest that these novels elicited both positive and negative emotions in readers who took a \u201cmasochistic\u201d pleasure in reading frustrating and often terrifying texts. In the role of detective, Collins\u2019s reader is placed in the uncomfortable and untenable position of disciplinarian (ferreting out secrets and restoring moral order) and of transgressor (reading secret diaries, adopting disguises, eavesdropping, and spying). Collins\u2019s novels portray scenes of masochistic reading: faced with the impossibilities of detection or interpretation resulting from the instability of text, Collins\u2019s characters mimic the reader\u2019s own frustrating interpretive activities. Detection that relies on the text as dependable evidence becomes a psychologically painful activity when texts do not open themselves up to easy interpretation. \n\nIn addition to the mixed emotional responses produced by acts of detection, the act of reading novels generally (and the sensation novel in particular) has produced strong emotional responses in both literary critics and non-literary observers. The historical context of sensation novel adds an additionally masochistic \u201clayer\u201d or dimension to the reading of these novels. If sensation novels were considered guilty pleasures in of themselves, separate from the guilty pleasures of detection and interpretation of private secrets and criminal activities within the narratives, the guilty pleasure of reading sensation novels would reinforce the reader\u2019s position as transgressor, in addition to his or her position as snooping amateur detective. \n\nMy project engages existing scholarly works while approaching the subject of emotional responses to literary interpretation (mimicked by the detection in which the novels\u2019 characters are engaged), and while looking at the affective combination of pleasure, terror, anticipation, and guilt, and its role in the popularity of Collins\u2019s novels. This study employs contemporary and historical theories of emotion and masochism as well as scholarship on detective fiction to explain why detection in Collins\u2019s novels is masochistically pleasurable for both readers and characters.","type":"literal","lang":"en"}],"http:\/\/www.europeana.eu\/schemas\/edm\/aggregatedCHO":[{"value":"https:\/\/circle.library.ubc.ca\/rest\/handle\/2429\/7233?expand=metadata","type":"literal","lang":"en"}],"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/extent":[{"value":"295783 bytes","type":"literal","lang":"en"}],"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/elements\/1.1\/format":[{"value":"application\/pdf","type":"literal","lang":"en"}],"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2009\/08\/skos-reference\/skos.html#note":[{"value":" MASOCHISTIC PLEASURES OF DETECTION IN THE SENSATION NOVELS OF WILKIE COLLINS by Leanne Nicole Page B.A., Simon Fraser University, 2006 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (English) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) April 2009 \u00a9 Leanne Nicole Page, 2009 ii \u00a0 ABSTRACT This study analyzes and accounts for the mixed emotional responses to three Wilkie Collins novels: The Dead Secret (1857), The Woman in White (1860), and The Law and the Lady (1875). Contemporary reviews of these novels, in addition to Collins\u2019s comments on the reception of his works, suggest that these novels elicited both positive and negative emotions in readers who took a \u201cmasochistic\u201d pleasure in reading frustrating and often terrifying texts. What makes reading Collins\u2019s novels \u201cmasochistic\u201d is not simply the author\u2019s incorporation of the sublime aesthetic and a domesticated version of the gothic; detection is masochistic because, in the role of detective, the reader is placed simultaneously in the uncomfortable and even untenable position of disciplinarian (ferreting out secrets and restoring moral order) and of transgressor (reading secret diaries, adopting disguises, eavesdropping, and spying). Collins\u2019s novels frequently portray scenes of masochistic reading, in which the characters serve as models for the actual reader of the novel. Collins\u2019s characters, faced with the impossibilities of detection or interpretation resulting from the instability of text, mimic the reader\u2019s own frustrating interpretive activities. Detection that relies on the text as dependable evidence becomes a psychologically painful activity when texts do not open themselves up to easy interpretation. In addition to the mixed emotional responses produced by the acts of detection in the sensation novels of Wilkie Collins, the act of reading novels generally (and the sensation novel in particular) has produced strong emotional responses in both literary critics and non-literary observers. Because of critics\u2019 insistence on the taboo nature of these texts, some readers might well have experienced feelings of shame. I shall argue that the historical context of sensation novel adds an additionally masochistic \u201clayer\u201d or dimension to the reading of these novels. If sensation novels were considered guilty pleasures in of themselves, separate from the guilty iii \u00a0 pleasures of detection and interpretation of private secrets and criminal activities within the narratives, the guilty pleasure of reading sensation novels would reinforce the reader\u2019s position as transgressor, in addition to his or her position as snooping amateur detective. My project engages existing scholarly works while approaching the subject of emotional responses to literary interpretation (mimicked by the detection in which the novels\u2019 characters are engaged), and while looking at the affective combination of pleasure, terror, anticipation, and guilt, and its role in the popularity of Collins\u2019s novels. This study employs contemporary and historical theories of emotion and masochism as well as scholarship on detective fiction to explain why detection in Collins\u2019s novels is masochistically pleasurable for both readers and characters. iv \u00a0 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026.....ii TABLE OF CONTENTS\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026...........iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026. .v DEDICATION\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026.....vi CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026...1 CHAPTER TWO DIDACTIC DETECTIVES: INSTRUCTING READERS IN THE DEAD SECRET (1857)\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026.21 The Uncanny, the Gothic, and the Role of Anticipation\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u202622 Didactic Detection and Reader Participation\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026.26 Masochistic Detection and the Guilty Pleasures of Reading\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026.31 Conclusions\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u202635 CHAPTER THREE MASOCHISTIC DETECTION IN A METATEXTUAL TEXT: MIXED EMOTIONAL RESPONSES TO LANGUAGE IN THE WOMAN IN WHITE (1860)\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u202637 A Metatextual Text\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u202640 Textual Fallibility\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026...42 Mixed Affective Responses to Text\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026.46 Conclusions\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u202652 CHAPTER FOUR CONCLUSION: KNOWLEDGE, SUFFERING, AND MASOCHISTIC DETECTION IN THE LAW AND THE LADY (1875)\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026..54 Literary Detection as Masochistic\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026.55 The Detective: Disciplinarian and Deviant\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u202659 The Deviant Detective and the Woman Reader\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026.62 Knowledge, Ignorance, Suffering\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026..64 Domination and Submission: A Question of Agency\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u202667 NOTES\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026.70 BIBLIOGRAPHY\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026...81 v \u00a0 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would particularly like to acknowledge the dedication, understanding, and guidance of my supervisor Dr. Deanna Kreisel. I would also like to thank the members of my thesis committee, Dr. Pamela Dalziel and Dr. Miranda Burgess, for their support of this project. vi \u00a0 DEDICATION This thesis is dedicated to my love Aaron, my sister Lindsay, and my mother. Without their unfailing confidence, support, and enthusiasm, the completion of this project would not have been possible. 1 \u00a0 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION Of the three successive waves of gothic literature, only the first (1790s\u20131820s) and the last (1890s) are characterized by exotic, bizarre and remote settings, which are safely removed from the commonplace events of readers\u2019 everyday lives. During the second wave, writers such as Wilkie Collins used a different approach and effectively created the new gothic sub-genre of the sensation novel, in which the gothic invades the homely sphere of the realist or domestic novel.1 Patrick Brantlinger defines the sensation novel as \u201ca minor subgenre of British fiction that flourished in the 1860s,\u201d which focused on crime and detection in \u201capparently proper . . . domestic settings\u201d (\u201cWhat\u201d 1). Victorian critics used the word sensation to connote \u201csome extraordinary shock or thrill to the reader\u2019s nervous system\u201d (Brantlinger, Reading 143). 2 Authors included Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Braddon, Ellen Wood, and Rhoda Broughton (among others); they were fortunate enough to create some of the \u201cbest selling novels of the entire nineteenth century\u201d (Pykett, Sensation Novel 5). This study analyzes and accounts for the mixed emotional responses to three Wilkie Collins novels: The Dead Secret (1857), The Woman in White (1860), and The Law and the Lady (1875). Contemporary reviews of these novels, in addition to Collins\u2019s comments on the reception of his works, suggest that these novels elicited both positive and negative emotions in readers who took a \u201cmasochistic\u201d pleasure in reading frustrating and often terrifying texts.3 What makes reading Collins\u2019s novels \u201cmasochistic\u201d is not simply his incorporation of the sublime aesthetic and a domesticated version of the gothic; detection is masochistic because, in the role of detective, the reader is placed simultaneously in the uncomfortable and even untenable position of disciplinarian (ferreting out secrets and restoring moral order) and of transgressor (reading secret 2 \u00a0 diaries, adopting disguises, eavesdropping, and spying). Collins\u2019s novels frequently portray scenes of masochistic reading, in which the characters serve as models for the actual reader of the novel. Collins\u2019s characters, faced with the impossibilities of detection or interpretation resulting from the instability of text, mimic the reader\u2019s own frustrating interpretive activities. Detection that relies on the text as dependable evidence becomes a psychologically painful activity when texts reveal themselves to be ambiguous. Collins manipulates readers\u2019 emotional responses to entrap his readers into solving mysteries which are not always solvable.4 In addition to the mixed emotional responses produced by the acts of detection in the sensation novels of Wilkie Collins, the act of reading novels generally (and the sensation novel in particular) has produced strong emotional responses in both literary critics and non-literary observers.5 Those who were critical of the sensation novel consisted of well-known public figures and moralists (including the Archbishop of York), medical experts (including Alexander Bain), and literary critics (including Margaret Oliphant).6 In newspapers, magazines, books, and public speeches, these and other individuals often cited conventional Victorian gender ideology by arguing that women (the sensation genre\u2019s assumed audience) in particular were highly susceptible to emotional stimuli, and that such reading was both dangerous and shameful. Because of critics\u2019 insistence on the taboo nature of these texts, some readers might well have experienced feelings of shame. I shall argue that the historical context of sensation novel adds an additionally masochistic \u201clayer\u201d or dimension to the reading of these novels. If sensation novels were considered guilty pleasures in and of themselves, separate from the guilty pleasures of detection and interpretation of private secrets and criminal activities within the narratives, the guilty pleasure of reading sensation novels would reinforce the reader\u2019s position as transgressor, in addition to his or her position as snooping amateur detective. 3 \u00a0 Contemporary scholarship on masochism in literature and on the development of the detective story provides the conceptual framework through which one can address the popularity of Collins\u2019s novels in the face of widespread criticism of the sensation genre. Given the continuing popularity of the gothic, one might argue that the shame or guilt associated with reading gothic or sensation novels becomes enjoyable in and of itself. Perhaps because of critics\u2019 insistence on the immorality of such reading, guilt is such an integral part of the reading experience that it is a pleasurable sensation which makes novels more popular, not less.7 There has been a great deal of recent scholarly interest in the history and reception of gothic and sensation novels and in the figure of the woman reader, but there have been few studies that position the processes of detection and interpretive reading as inherently masochistic.8 My project engages existing scholarly works while approaching the subject of emotional responses to literary interpretation (mimicked by the detection in which the novel\u2019s characters are engaged), and while looking at the affective combination of pleasure, terror, anticipation, and guilt, and its role in the popularity of Collins\u2019s novels. This study employs contemporary and historical theories of emotion and masochism as well as scholarship on detective fiction to explain why detection in Collins\u2019s novels is masochistically pleasurable for both readers and characters. In this introductory chapter, I shall outline the theoretical framework of my analysis of three Wilkie Collins novels\u2014The Dead Secret, The Woman in White, and The Law and the Lady\u2014 looking at scholarship on masochism, the sublime, the uncanny, and detective fiction. I shall then provide the historical context for my project, in which I shall consider theories of emotion, their relation to female readership, and their relation to the reception of gothic novels from the mid-eighteenth century to the late-nineteenth century. Finally, I shall situate Wilkie Collins\u2019s work within this wider theoretical context by examining how Collins reinforces his reader\u2019s 4 \u00a0 sense of anxiety and guilt over consuming taboo texts by submitting his readers to the guilty pleasures of detection and interpretation of private secrets and criminal activities within the narratives, as well as the psychologically painful activity of attempting to interpret the un- interpretable. The Oxford English Dictionary defines masochism as \u201cthe urge to derive pleasure . . . from one\u2019s own pain or humiliation; the pursuit of such pleasure,\u201d or the \u201cdeliberate pursuit of or enthusiasm for an activity that appears to be painful, frustrating, or tedious.\u201d What is unknown or uncertain provokes anxiety but also sustains the reader\u2019s interest: \u201c[R]eaders of suspenseful plots take pleasure in the very anxiety that events to come may not fit their expectations or fulfill their desires\u201d (Levine 9). If readers are able to derive pleasure from fearful, frustrating, and possibly shameful experiences (if, as I suggest, readers occupy the positions of both transgressor and disciplinarian), we might argue that, by reading terrifying and suspenseful narratives, readers gratify themselves through self-administered literary suffering. Many scholarly definitions and explorations of masochistic phenomena are based in a psychoanalytic framework, such as the works of Sigmund Freud, Jessica Benjamin, Shirley Panken, and Michelle Mass\u00e9. Although these works are important to any study of masochism in general, they are less relevant for my project because they tend to view masochism mainly as a sexual practice, based largely on Freud\u2019s early definition of masochism as \u201csadism turned round upon the self, which serves as surrogate for the sexual partner\u201d (Panken 18). Freud\u2019s later work on masochism in his essay \u201cThe Economic Problem of Masochism\u201d is more relevant. His development of the category of \u201cmoral masochism,\u201d which he defines as a \u201cnorm of behaviour\u201d rather than a strictly sexual practice (275), maintains the association between guilt and punishment which is central to Freud\u2019s conception of masochism without insisting on sex and 5 \u00a0 sexuality.9 Many feminist psychoanalytic analyses do not move beyond their focus on women as masochistic subjects.10 While I am interested in the role of the woman reader, I do not want to use scholarly work on masochism as a way of approaching Collins\u2019s texts from a feminist perspective; I want to focus instead on how detection and interpretation in and of sensation novels is emotionally masochistic for readers of both genders. Anna Jones\u2019s article on masochism in Wilkie Collins\u2019s No Name is especially useful because it explores masochism in relation to Victorian readers. Her conception of the \u201csensation reader . . . does not depend on describing an imaginary reader\u2019s \u2018response\u2019 to the novel, but in defining an \u2018ideal\u2019 reader who is posited by the text itself\u201d (196-197). According to her description, such an ideal Victorian reader is familiar both with conventional Victorian gender ideology and with \u201cquestions of Woman\u2019s agency and rights\u201d; s\/he occupies a somewhat tenuous position because although s\/he is \u201cwell-conditioned to respond to the affective stimuli of the sensation novel\u201d s\/he is \u201cdeeply suspicious\u201d of the sensation genre (197). This reader (as Jones suggests) is both \u201cwell-disciplined and deviant\u201d in his or her enjoyment and distrust of the sensation novel (196), and thus prone to masochistic sentiments related to the guilty pleasures of sensational reading. In my analysis of Collins\u2019s manipulation of readers\u2019 responses, I shall be imagining a similar \u201cideal reader,\u201d whose characteristics and preferences will be additionally informed by contemporary reviews of Collins\u2019s novels and by Collins\u2019s own comments on his readers. Jones\u2019s methodology, centred on her notion of an \u201cideal reader,\u201d opens a space for the inclusion of some key concepts from reader-response theory without necessitating a catalogue of evidence of actual readers\u2019 responses.11 Jones also argues that all narratives are masochistic to some degree: \u201cat some level any act of reading implies a relinquishing of control to the text. To pick up a novel and read is to consent 6 \u00a0 to submit to its affective power and to collaborate in the production of our selves as disciplined reading subjects\u201d (210). Her essay emphasizes how authors use \u201crhetorical framing,\u201d or narrative, to control readers\u2019 emotional responses. As I shall argue, it is in part Collins\u2019s \u201crhetorical framing\u201d that makes reading his sensation novels masochistic. The notion that emotion or affect can function as a method of directing readers\u2019 responses to texts is central to my argument. In her study of the \u201cfeminist politics of affect\u201d (1), Ann Cvetkovich argues that readers of sensation novels such as The Woman in White \u201cwho are excited by the sensational lure of [the novels\u2019] mysteries are provided with the experiences of affect that are ultimately regulated and controlled\u201d (7). Cvetkovich suggests that the emotional responses evoked by sensation novels are \u201csafe\u201d because they are controlled by the author. I shall argue that it is precisely the author\u2019s assumed control over readers\u2019 emotions that makes the texts masochistic. Incorporating Cvetkovich\u2019s notion of affective regulation, Jones defines affect as \u201cthe control a novel exerts over its reader\u2014the means by which the reader\u2019s emotions and sympathies are \u2018produced, regulated, and controlled\u2019 by the text\u201d (205). Jones emphasizes that narrative control of readerly anticipation is closely connected with masochism, which Gilles Deleuze defines as \u201ca state of waiting\u201d (Jones 206). The rhetorical framing of the text forces readers into this \u201cstate of waiting,\u201d in which they experience the excitement of the unravelling mystery, and the painful suspense of waiting for it to unfold. Anticipation plays a key role in masochistic acts of reading. In her discussion of psychologist Theodor Reik\u2019s theories, Panken states that \u201cthe masochist does not accept punishment and humiliation but rather anticipates them\u201d (40). A sensation novel reader anticipates both the pleasurable resolution of the mystery and the torturous suspense of the text\u2019s rhetorical framing. In Serious Pleasures of Suspense, Caroline Levine emphasizes the \u201canxious delay between the 7 \u00a0 excitement of conjecture and the appearance of more certain knowledge,\u201d which functions in Victorian literature (6). Although Levine implies that suspense is not masochistic by linking it to \u201cjoy\u201d rather than \u201ctorture\u201d (9), it is this \u201canxious delay\u201d which makes anticipation masochistic. It is my argument that suspense, or anticipation, in Collins\u2019s novels is both torturous and joyful, and therefore masochistic. Freud emphasizes the connection between transgression and its punishment by associating masochism with \u201ca sense of guilt\u201d (\u201cMasochism\u201d 277); the \u201ctorture\u201d of masochism functions as punishment for the (pleasurable, transgressive) crimes of the masochist. Masochism is \u201ca need which is satisfied by punishment and suffering,\u201d and this need is based on the \u201cconsciousness of guilt\u201d and the \u201canxiety\u201d of the ego (Freud 282, 280). Ellen Rosenman arrives at a similar conclusion when she defines masochism as \u201ca negotiating tool in which pain is not the price of a chosen desire that violates a moral or ideological norm. The masochist pursues a forbidden pleasure or agency but arranges to suffer for it, and therefore maintains moral credibility. Suffering may function not only as a strategy but as a ruse, a cover for pleasure or power\u201d (23- 24). In this study, I want to connect the concept of suffering as a \u201ccover for pleasure or power\u201d with reluctant performances of eavesdropping, snooping, and spying by characters acting as detectives, and with the reader\u2019s own transgressive complicity. Nick Mansfield makes an analogous connection between anticipation and guilt in his analysis of Reik\u2019s work on masochism. Since masochism involves forbidden pleasures and the anticipation of punishment, Mansfield argues that \u201cmasochism, therefore, is all about the control of anticipation\u201d (25). Mansfield\u2019s analysis of masochism draws a strong connection between masochism and the sublime, both of which associate pleasure with pain. Mansfield argues that the sublime \u201cis not possible\u201d without masochism, and vice versa: \u201cmasochism and the sublime depend upon and 8 \u00a0 condition one another. The sublime produces a masochistic experience for the subject, and the subject can only live out the impossibilities of masochism in the sublime\u201d (29, 31). If, as Mansfield suggests, a study of masochism is impossible without a consideration of the sublime, we must consider briefly Burke\u2019s work on the sublime, one of several pre-Victorian attempts to explain why negative emotional responses provide a pleasurable experience for readers.12 In A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757), Burke argues that when we read, we achieve sensations of fear and pleasure through sympathetic characters and through the evocative power of words: \u201cwe take an extraordinary part in the passions of others . . . we are easily affected and brought into sympathy by any tokens which are shewn of them; and there are no tokens which can express all the circumstances of most passions so fully as words\u201d (158).13 Elsewhere, he explains the strange combination of fear and pleasure produced by certain kinds of reading: \u201cI conceive we must have a delight or pleasure of some species or other in contemplating [the misfortunes and pains of others]\u201d (42). Although Burke does not look at a particularly wide array of emotional responses to language and literature, his Philosophical Enquiry represents an early attempt to account for mixed emotional responses to literature, which lie at the heart of this project.14 In his article \u201cGothic Sublimity,\u201d David B. Morris argues that Burke\u2019s eighteenth-century theory of the sublime is inadequate when applied to the gothic genre, since Burke\u2019s definition of terror is based on \u201ca narrow, mechanical account of bodily processes\u201d (301). He suggests that Burke\u2019s Philosophical Enquiry should be supplemented by Sigmund Freud\u2019s work on the uncanny, in which terror has a psychological and emotional component in addition to its physical manifestations. Although Burke\u2019s descriptions of \u201cbodily processes\u201d are relevant to a study of 9 \u00a0 reader responses to the sensation novel, Morris\u2019s argument that Freud\u2019s \u201cThe Uncanny\u201d is an essential supplement to Burke\u2019s work is persuasive. Burke does not examine the function of suspense or anticipation (emotional responses which are at play in my analysis of masochistic reading), and so Freud\u2019s work on the uncanny does help to explain the appeal of suspense. At the outset of his treatise, Freud argues that the uncanny constitutes \u201cthat species of the frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar\u201d (620). Freud\u2019s essay on the uncanny is particularly useful for any study of the sensation novel, in which the domestic or homely (heimlich) setting becomes \u201cunhomely\u201d (unheimlich), or uncanny, as secret actions are revealed to the reader which should have remained hidden. The domestic sphere of sensation novels is an uncanny space\u2014something familiar which becomes frightening when associated with intrigue and crime. Freud notes that the term \u201cuncanny\u201d sometimes denotes \u201c[c]oncealed, kept from sight\u201d (622). As Levine argues in The Serious Pleasures of Suspense, many Victorian novels \u201cflaunt their secrets\u201d (2), and sensation novels in particular were known as \u201cnovels with a secret.\u201d By \u201c[c]onspicuously withholding crucial pieces of knowledge,\u201d such texts are sure to \u201cinvite the ravenous readerly curiosity we call \u2018suspense\u2019\u201d (2). In addition to withholding knowledge, authors of uncanny narratives have what Freud (referring to story-tellers in general) describes as \u201ca peculiarly directive power over us,\u201d especially when they create a narrator who \u201cpretends to move in the world of common reality. In this case he [i.e. the author] accepts as well all the conditions operating to produce uncanny feelings in real life; and . . . he can even increase his effect and multiply it far beyond what could happen in reality, by bringing about events which never or very rarely happen in fact\u201d (\u201cUncanny\u201d 641). Collins\u2019s novels self-consciously occupy this space of \u201cuncanny\u201d realism; for instance, the anonymous reviewer of The Woman in White 10 \u00a0 in the Saturday Review notes that Collins \u201cinterweaves with mystery incident just sufficiently probable not to be extravagant\u201d (Bachman & Cox 629). Incorporating Freud\u2019s and Levine\u2019s statements, I want to suggest that the emotional and\/or psychological \u201cmasochism\u201d involving the enjoyment of texts whose rhetorical framing is based on readerly anticipation might be regarded as a submission to the narrative and affective power of the author. In The Delights of Terror, Heller expands on Freud\u2019s work by investigating why uncanny texts are so appealing; since the sensation novel falls largely under the uncanny genre (according to Tzvetan Todorov\u2019s definition), Heller\u2019s examination of the uncanny helps to evaluate the appeal of sensation fiction.15 He devises his own set of sub-genre categories, based largely on Todorov\u2019s definitions in The Fantastic, as well as on his own definitions of horror and terror: \u201cuncanny horror stories; horror thrillers; and terror fantasies\u201d (10). According to Heller\u2019s arrangement, Collins\u2019s sensation novels tend to fall under the category of \u201cuncanny horror stories,\u201d which \u201coffer the reader the opportunity to pretend to experience extreme mental and physical states by identifying with characters who undergo such experiences. Stories of this type form part, though not necessarily all, of Todorov\u2019s uncanny genre\u201d (10). However, I would argue that not all the \u201cextreme mental and physical states\u201d experienced by the reader are imaginary and based solely on the reader\u2019s identification with the characters in the novel. Because Collins\u2019s novels place his readers in the uncomfortable and insecure position of detective, interpreting texts which reveal themselves to be fallible and even deceitful, the mental anguish his readers experience is at least partly real. Heller suggests that \u201cthe most frightening . . . tales turn the screw just a little, entangling the implied reader in the ambiguities and hesitations that extend beyond the end of the reading of the text\u201d (13). Collins \u201cturn[s] the 11 \u00a0 screw\u201d with his readers, not by leading them to hesitate between uncanny and marvelous interpretations of his narrative, but by inviting them to interpret the un-interpretable. My definition of masochism concerns mixed emotional responses to texts and to the interpretation of texts; reader-response theory\u2019s concepts of the \u201cimplied reader\u201d and the \u201cactualization\u201d of text are thus useful for my project. Terry Heller\u2019s methodology is based largely on the reader-response theories of Roman Ingarden and Wolfgang Iser; it incorporates the concept of the implied reader and his or her \u201cactualization\u201d (Iser 106) of narrative, in which the interaction between the author\u2019s creation and the reader\u2019s reception make up the text. What interests me are Wilkie Collins\u2019s efforts to create \u201ca schematized set of instructions\u201d within the text for the actualization or interpretation of the work as a whole (Heller 1). Jones\u2019s \u201cideal [sensation] reader\u201d is similar to Iser\u2019s concept of the \u201cimplied reader,\u201d which Heller adopts for his study of the Fantastic: \u201cThe text includes instructions for the creation of the appropriate reader for that text . . . The implied reader comes into being in the process of filling gaps, of making connections between the always underdetermined presented elements\u201d (Heller 4). In the context of uncanny and\/or fantastic genres, the implied reader becomes an entrapped reader, \u201csuspended between alternate readings\u201d (195). Collins structures his narratives so that the \u201csensation reader\u201d (as described by Jones) becomes an entrapped reader, caught in the ambiguities of the texts within the novels, and of the novels themselves. A sensation novel is arguably \u201cbest\u201d when the reader is constantly anticipating what will happen next, and \u201cwhen it involves readers in it as completely as possible without their forgetting that it is a work of art and interacting with it as if it were reality\u201d (Heller 3). The involvement of the reader was in part what Victorian critics of the genre objected to; at the same time, the text\u2019s ability to draw in the reader is what makes such reading enjoyable. 12 \u00a0 George N. Dove incorporates reader-response theory into his analysis of the detective genre; he argues that \u201cthe reader cannot be excluded from the definition of the tale of detection\u201d (1). Peter Thoms echoes Dove\u2019s reader-centred perspective when he suggests that the \u201cprocess of [narrative] construction becomes the very subject of [early detective fiction]\u201d (1). These two studies reveal an essential similarity between the detective and sensation genres: both are self- conscious of their own \u201cconstruction.\u201d16 Many of Collins\u2019s novels contain texts, documents, and transcripts within the narrative, thereby drawing attention to the novels\u2019 textuality. Whereas detective stories\u2019 self-reflexivity tends to reassure the reader that the conventions of the genre will be adhered to, Collins\u2019s novels disturb the reader, calling into question the reliability of the narratives themselves by demonstrating that texts within the novels are ambiguous (difficult or impossible to interpret) and vulnerable (to misinterpretation or manipulation). I am especially interested in examining what Tony Hilfer calls the \u201cmore torturous [or masochistic] satisfactions\u201d (1; emphasis added) of Collins\u2019s novels, with regard to interpretive difficulties and guilty pleasures. Gregory Forter argues that the process of detection is what is pleasurable in hard-boiled detective fiction, not the \u201cend-pleasure\u201d of narrative closure or resolution (1), and that even the process of detection is \u201cbound up with the pain of an interpretive dissatisfaction\u201d (5). In Detection and Its Designs, Peter Thoms suggests that \u201cdetection rebounds upon its practitioners . . . as a system of surveillance they helped create\u201d (3). He states, \u201cdetection is internalized so that the individual embodies a system of regulation, being both the oppressive law and its transgressor\u201d (6). The reader of Collins\u2019s novels is both detective and criminal: as detective, characters and readers represent both the system of disciplinary regulation and the transgressors who must be disciplined. If literary masochism involves mixed emotional responses to fiction, Collins\u2019s readers both give and receive emotional \u201cpunishment.\u201d 13 \u00a0 Although D. A. Miller\u2019s The Novel and the Police is not about the detective genre per se, his analysis of \u201cpolicing power\u201d (within and without the institution of the police) in the nineteenth- century novel (2) informs my definition of masochistic detection. Miller argues that discipline functions in the Victorian novel according to class distinctions or boundaries; the police are concerned with \u201cdelinquency\u201d (3), which we might define as the \u201cpetty\u201d crimes of the lower classes (13), whereas the middle- and upper-class worlds (which the sensation novel usually occupies) are governed by \u201can alternative power of regulation\u201d (7), which includes the family unit (1), the amateur detective, and the forces of \u201cpublic opinion\u201d and \u201csocial humiliation\u201d (14). Miller argues that non-traditional disciplinary power leads to \u201cendless self-examination\u201d (18), so that participants in the \u201calternative power of regulation\u201d police themselves as well as others. The amateur detectives of Collins\u2019s novels participate in this \u201calternative power of regulation,\u201d and by so doing they become both disciplinarians and transgressors. As detectives engaged in textual interpretation, Collins\u2019s readers and characters must engage in morally suspect activities such as snooping, spying, and eavesdropping. In Eavesdropping in the Novel from Austen to Proust, Ann Gaylin\u2019s comparison of interpretation and eavesdropping suggests that the kinds of interpretations in which the reader or \u201csecret listener\u201d engages are morally questionable (8): \u201ceavesdropping dramatizes some of the fundamental issues that inform our hermeneutic and epistemological efforts. A non-consensual, deceptive activity, it introduces intriguing moral questions about human interaction and subjectivity, since eavesdropping always depends on discovering connections among other people\u201d (1). Because eavesdropping \u201cacts out both the urge to know and the fear of others knowing\u201d (5), we might argue that Collins\u2019s readers also experience the masochistic, guilty pleasures of delving into private secrets while fearing their own discovery. 14 \u00a0 Earlier I suggested that the historical context of the sensation novel adds an additionally masochistic \u201clayer\u201d or dimension to the reading of these novels. If sensation novels were considered guilty pleasures in and of themselves, in addition to the guilty pleasures of detection and interpretation of private secrets and criminal activities within the narratives, this view would reinforce the reader\u2019s position as transgressor, in addition to his or her position as snooping amateur detective. In this section, I shall discuss the context of the sensation novel as it applies to my reading of Collins\u2019s novels: Victorian theories of emotion; nineteenth-century views of the novel in general and the sensation novel in particular; and the category of the \u201cwoman reader.\u201d Psychology in the Victorian period was not an established discipline (Vrettos 69). Most theories of how the mind functioned were based on the principle of association: according to this model, the human mind begins as a \u201cblank slate,\u201d which then \u201creceive[s] sensations, conceive[s] ideas of sensations, and eventually associate[s] those ideas on the basis of resemblance, contiguity, and causation\u201d (70). Victorian degeneration theory, which argues that \u201cthe human species was suffering from an intellectual, physical, and moral decline, and becoming increasingly enfeebled,\u201d might be regarded as a pessimistic take on the theory of association (77), since one could worsen one\u2019s mental development through negative \u201cassociations.\u201d In the mid to late nineteenth century, Herbert Spencer devoted considerable effort to \u201cexplaining how dangerous the emotions are and how strongly they can hinder rational thought and action\u201d (Stedman 131). As women were generally regarded as excessively affective, many believed that the consumption of \u201cthrilling\u201d fictions could have a detrimental effect on women\u2019s mental state. In The Emotions and the Will (1859), Alexander Bain examined (among other things) the subject of emotionally charged reading through a mixture of psychological, physiological, and philosophical methodology. 17 According to Bain, the novel is \u201cthe greatest elaboration of the 15 \u00a0 pleasures of ideal pursuit, [and] is also the occasion for the greatest excesses in this mode of excitement\u201d (196). He continues: \u201cThe concentration of the mental stream upon artificial ends is so overdone [that the] temporary suspension and lull that we experience in a chase for objects of moderate desire [is replaced by] a series of devices for alternating suspense and issue for the greatest length of time without fatigue\u201d (Bain 196-197). As Nicholas Dames argues, the \u201cconsideration of the novel . . . in the work of Bain become[s] expressed as . . . a wave-theory of novelistic affect [which] reorients us from a world of fiction as an engine for the production of knowledge to a world of fiction as a machine for the production of affect\u201d (Dames, \u201cWave- Theories\u201d 210). Bain argued that the \u201cseeming contradiction or paradox in the passion of terror\u201d is an extension of the method by which pain may be used to cause pleasure (Bain 91).18 If apprehension of \u201cideal pain\u201d is \u201cthe grand procuring cause of the sentiment of fear,\u201d a novel producing a great deal of anxiety and suspense in its readers would be likely to provoke the most \u201cideal\u201d fear (Bain 74). The combination of anxiety and suspense is \u201cideal\u201d in that no physical harm ever comes to readers, and yet the experience of reading suspenseful novels provokes the \u201csentiment of fear.\u201d Bain\u2019s concept of \u201cideal\u201d fear resembles the kind of masochistic pleasure I am interested in exploring; the crucial difference between the two concepts is that Bain\u2019s \u201cideal\u201d fear is composed of only two emotional responses (pleasure and fear); it does not address emotional responses to literature such as frustration, guilt, or shame. Psychological and physiological approaches to the novel developed in conjunction with the increasing readership and criticism of the genre. In the late eighteenth century, circulating libraries facilitated the rapid spread of the novel, and of particular fictional works \u201cto which the moralists and often the reviewers objected\u201d (John Taylor 21). In the nineteenth century, as readership increased and the novel became \u201can undeniable part of Victorian culture\u201d (Childers 16 \u00a0 414). Critics of the novel tended to be concerned with what Margaret Oliphant termed the \u201cglorious confusion of all morality,\u201d while still more conservative opponents of the genre regarded \u201call reading for amusement, particularly on the part of the new middle-class public,\u201d as equally disconcerting (Oliphant, \u201cNovels\u201d 170; John Taylor 101). Given the popular Victorian belief in \u201cthe affective powers of what was read,\u201d it comes as no surprise that the moralists and critics who opposed the novel regarded women as \u201cthe persons most susceptible to the inordinate sensibility which was generally accredited with being the worst type of poison contained in this dangerous plant\u201d (John Taylor 94, 52). Since, as Nicola Diane Thompson points out, most reviewers remained anonymous and \u201coften used the pronoun \u2018we,\u2019 the individuality of particular critics . . . was replaced by anonymous, oracular voices which seemed to speak with the authority of Culture behind them\u201d (4). One example of this kind of authoritative rhetoric is Alfred Austin\u2019s alarmist essay on \u201cThe Vice of Reading\u201d: \u201c[W]e are unable to dispel the conviction that Reading . . . has become a downright vice . . . a softening, demoralizing, relaxing practice, which, if persisted in, will end by enfeebling the minds of men and women, making flabby the fibre of their bodies, and undermining the vigour of nations\u201d (251). Austin appears to condemn all novels as dangerous reading; his real criticism, however, is of books \u201cwhich neither confer information which is worth having, nor lift the spiritual part of us up to loftier regions, nor, by judicious diversion, refreshen [sic] the mind for further serious efforts\u201d (251). Although he does not refer to sensation novels specifically, many other critics of \u201creading for amusement\u201d did. Attacks on mid-Victorian sensation works denounced in particular the \u201ceagerness [for] physical sensation\u201d expressed by fans of the genre (\u201cNovels\u201d 258). Sensation novels, according to Margaret Oliphant in Blackwood\u2019s Magazine, \u201cdeprive [their] readers of their lawful rest,\u201d and are delivered to audiences through the \u201cviolent stimulant of serial publication\u2014of weekly 17 \u00a0 publication, with its necessity for frequent and rapid recurrence of piquant situation and startling incident\u201d (\u201cSensation Novels\u201d 565, 568; emphasis in original). In 1864, the Archbishop of York attacked sensation fiction for \u201cexciting in the mind some deep feeling of overwrought interest by the means of some terrible passion or crime\u201d (\u201cArchbishop\u201d 9). One year earlier, an anonymous writer for Dickens\u2019s periodical All the Year Round wrote that the \u201cunnatural appetite for sensation . . . is a diseased craving [and] an unwholesome fancy\u201d (\u201cNot a New Sensation\u201d 517). The content of these reviews and the fact that the sensation genre was \u201cperceived as a feminine phenomenon regardless of the gender of the particular sensation writer\u201d suggest that critics were concerned about the sensation genre\u2019s largely female (so they supposed) audience (Pykett, Sensation Novel 41). In their attacks on the genre, moralists and critics of popular fiction played on the popular Victorian stereotype of the \u201cwoman reader,\u201d a woman who loves tales of terror and excitement but who is unable to control her emotional responses. They argued that certain kinds of books \u201ccould arouse a female\u2019s sexual impulses, drain her vital energies, damage her mental and reproductive health, divorce her attention from her maternal and domestic duties, undermine her self-control, and rot her mind, leading to ruination\u201d (Golden 22). Some accused female novel-readers of abandoning their domestic duties; others spurned such reading \u201cwhich is one of the chief amusements of . . . women and unoccupied persons,\u201d suggesting that they (the critics) preferred to occupy their time with more serious matters (John Taylor 56; \u201cNovels\u201d 257). The decision of sensation authors to emphasize the middle-class home as the centre of crime \u201croused a furious debate in the press about the suggestiveness of their representation of domestic life\u201d (Trodd 3). The domestic setting of the sensation novel was in fact one of the genre\u2019s \u201cselling points\u201d; as Winifred Hughes suggests, the appeal of the sensation novel was \u201cnot to the 18 \u00a0 terror of the unknown, of the vaguely suggested and barely imagined, but to the even more terrifying terror of the familiar\u201d (8). In addition, the \u201chomely\u201d and yet uncanny setting of the sensation novel may have enabled its female readers to subvert the association of women with the domestic sphere. In \u201cImproper\u201d Feminine: The Women's Sensation Novel and the New Woman Writing, Lyn Pykett distinguishes between two nineteenth-century female figures: the \u201cproper feminine\u201d (the \u201cangel in the house\u201d) and the \u201cimproper feminine\u201d (24). The latter, which Pykett defines as \u201cthe domestic ideal\u2019s dangerous other,\u201d was also the heroine of many sensation novels. One fear of critics and moralists was an identification of women readers with this \u201cimproper feminine\u201d figure, who might quit the domestic sphere to seek adventure or to assist a loved one (as is the case in many of Collins\u2019s novels).19 In addition to considering Victorian responses to the sensation genre, this study will incorporate the considerable work done on the sensation genre in general and on Wilkie Collins in particular.20 There are three studies of Wilkie Collins\u2019s work that are especially relevant to my study. The first is D. A. Miller\u2019s The Novel and the Police (1988), which I have already discussed in this chapter. The second is Jenny Bourne Taylor\u2019s In the Secret Theatre of Home: Wilkie Collins, Sensation Narrative, and Nineteenth-Century Psychology. Taylor argues that the sensation novel \u201ccame to be perceived as the \u2018bad object\u2019 of mid-nineteenth-century culture by being read, qua cultural object, through a framework of physiological psychology\u201d; she analyzes this genre in the context of \u201cfears about the effects of \u2018sensation\u2019 on individual readers with longer-term evolutionary anxieties about cultural crisis and collective nervous decline\u201d (20). Finally, Sue Lonoff\u2019s Wilkie Collins and His Victorian Readers: A Study in the Rhetoric of Authorship concerns the relationship between Wilkie Collins and his readers. Lonoff argues that \u201cCollins tended to compose with an invisible reader at his elbow, an imaginary sympathizer who 19 \u00a0 cried when he cried, laughed when he laughed, and shivered with horror when he shivered\u201d (66). I shall connect this compositional tendency of Collins\u2019s with Freud\u2019s notion that authors have a \u201cdirective power over us\u201d (\u201cUncanny\u201d 641) to suggest that sensation authors have the ability to provoke and control particular emotional responses in their readers through the use of suspense, ambiguity, and characters whose detective work mimics that of the readers themselves. I have opted not to examine the role of detection in The Moonstone (1868) because this particular novel contains professional as well as amateur detectives; I want to focus on novels in which the amateur detective characters serve as doubles for the reader. I have chosen to examine three Collins novels that \u201cflaunt their secrets\u201d (Levine 2). Since The Woman in White (1860) is generally regarded as the first sensation novel, I feel it must be included in any analysis of Collins\u2019s work. The Dead Secret (1857) was written before the sensation craze, but it clearly participates in the genre with its emphasis on domestic crime, hidden secrets, and detection. Although The Law and the Lady (1875) was written after the sensation craze, it develops further the concept of masochistic detection. In the following chapters, I shall analyze how Collins\u2019s novels condition particular emotional responses in readers, paying particular attention to the parallel position of characters that function as detectives within the text and readers who act as detectives while interpreting the text. I shall consider the reception of each novel, as well as the wider debate over the merits of sensation fiction and the continuing popularity of the gothic genre, and the question of how Collins produced multiple emotional responses from his readers in the context of this debate. The chapter on The Dead Secret (1857) provides a brief analysis of Collins\u2019s use of \u201cuncanny\u201d and \u201cdomesticated gothic\u201d settings to provoke responses of unease from readers. The central focus of this chapter is Collins\u2019s manipulation of readerly anticipation, particularly 20 \u00a0 through the involvement of readers in the unravelling of the mystery and though teaching them how to detect and\/or interpret his text (what I shall call \u201cdidactic detection\u201d). Using Anna Jones\u2019s definition of affect as \u201cthe control a novel exerts over its reader\u201d (205), I shall argue that Collins\u2019s novel attempts to situate the reader in a position of masochistic submission to the author and his text. The subsequent chapter will examine how detection in The Woman in White (1860) is essentially (and problematically) text-based, and how both characters\u2019 and readers\u2019 reliance on text proves frustrating when texts (within the novel and the novel itself) prove to be unreliable. Incorporating the work of D. A. Miller, Peter Thoms, and Ann Gaylin, I shall argue that the reader of The Woman and White becomes both disciplinarian and transgressor. Finally, in the chapter on The Law and the Lady (1875), I shall suggest that Valeria, the detective figure in the novel, dominates others and is herself dominated in her quest for knowledge and rejection of blissful ignorance. By both seeking and withholding knowledge, Valeria comes to represent the sensation genre itself, which, as Levine says of the Victorian novel in general, is notorious for \u201cwithholding crucial pieces of knowledge\u201d (2). In The Law and the Lady, the desire for knowledge and the possession of knowledge are equally masochistic. 21 \u00a0 CHAPTER TWO: DIDACTIC DETECTIVES: INSTRUCTING READERS IN THE DEAD SECRET (1857) The Dead Secret was one of the first of Collins\u2019s novels to be published in serial instalments.21 It had a mixed reception: some critics, such as the anonymous reviewer of Lippincott\u2019s Magazine, felt the The Dead Secret displayed \u201cthe wonderful skill of the author in constructing and unfolding a plot,\u201d but others agreed with Margaret Oliphant\u2019s assessment of the novel as \u201ca dreary web\u201d (Page 180; Oliphant 569). We can account for some of these mixed reviews by examining Collins\u2019s authorial style: although he does occasionally leave readers to \u201cdetect\u201d for themselves (after having instructed them in the arts of detection and interpretation), Collins frequently manipulates readers\u2019 responses to the text. In the introduction to the Oxford edition of The Dead Secret, Ira B. Nadel notes that Charles Dickens urged Collins \u201cnot to control the reader too strongly\u201d (xiii). As he explains in his preface to the 1861 edition of The Dead Secret, Collins appears to have been torn between Dickens\u2019s advice and his own desire to produce \u201ca sustained work of fiction\u201d that his readers would find highly engaging (5). The \u201cmasochistic nature of detection\u201d in The Dead Secret lies in Collins\u2019s determination to dominate his readers; to become engaged in the story is to be dominated by Collins\u2019s efforts to direct readers\u2019 emotional responses. Rather than creating a \u201c[m]asochistic fantasy\u201d that allows the spectator to shift himself or herself from the position of one who passively submits to the position of one who controls and directs the infliction of pain, Collins forces the reader into a paradoxical position of both passivity and activity.22 Collins\u2019s attempts to magnify readers\u2019 feelings of anticipation and terror (as well as pleasure) by involving readers more deeply in his uncanny narrative and his apparent efforts to teach readers how to interpret his text place the reader in the more passive position of one who accepts Collins\u2019s authorial power. Nonetheless, 22 \u00a0 the reader is not helpless before the endless machinations of the author, since s\/he is able to use the tools provided by Collins to take the interpretation of the novel and the detection of the secret into his or her own hands. This chapter will analyze The Dead Secret to see how Collins attempts to provoke various positive and negative emotional responses in his readers, blending the trepidation of anticipation with the pleasures of detection. Using Anna Jones\u2019s definition of affect as \u201cthe control a novel exerts over its reader\u201d (205) and her argument that \u201cat some level any act of reading implies a relinquishing of control to the text\u201d (210), I shall suggest that Collins\u2019s novel attempts to situate the reader in a position of masochistic submission to the author and his text, yearning for clues to the mystery\u2019s solution but forced to wait for Collins to provide them in his own time.23 This chapter will examine Collins\u2019s use of the uncanny yet \u201chomely\u201d atmosphere of what I will call the \u201cdomesticated gothic,\u201d and his view that readers\u2019 anticipation is essential to their engagement with the story: as he states in the 1861 preface, \u201cI thought it most desirable to let the effect of the story depend on expectation rather than surprise\u201d (5; emphasis added). I will discuss Collins\u2019s attempts to instruct the reader how to read his text through an examination of the various characters that function as didactic tools for the reader. The masochistic frustrations and pleasures of detection are enhanced by Collins\u2019s emphasis on readerly anticipation, and enable what Andrea Henderson calls a \u201cdeferral of gratification\u201d (8)\u2014a prolonging of frustrating and yet pleasurable suspense. Finally, I will discuss detection as a \u201cguilty pleasure,\u201d particularly for women readers, who detect and interpret despite frequent patriarchal reproaches. THE UNCANNY, THE GOTHIC, AND THE ROLE OF ANTICIPATION Collins\u2019s manipulation of readerly anticipation is essential to the masochistic pleasure of reading The Dead Secret, because of the strong relationship between anticipation and masochism, 23 \u00a0 which Mansfield and Panken have identified.24 In her discussion of Collins\u2019s No Name, Anna Jones suggests that \u201cthe reader\u2019s suspense is produced (and painfully sustained) by frozen scenes of anticipation\u201d (205). If anticipation is an essential component of masochism, it is also an essential component of suspense in literature, as Levine argues: \u201c[r]eaders of suspenseful plots take pleasure in the very anxiety that events to come may not fit their expectations\u201d (9). In The Dead Secret, the reader may use his or her imagination to increase feelings of anticipation and terror; the more the reader uses his or her imagination to predict what will come next, the more terrifying (and exciting) the novel becomes. Using Freud\u2019s treatise on the uncanny, I shall show how Collins\u2019s incorporation of gothic elements into his novel sets readers on edge by provoking readers\u2019 expectations of the gothic genre.25 At the same time, because these gothic elements are situated in familiar, domestic settings, Collins confuses reader expectations. Lonoff argues that Collins habitually \u201cgrounded the sensational elements in a thoroughly domestic setting, familiar to his readers in its homely outlines if not in its particulars\u201d (82). Rather than setting his story in a distant and mysterious past, in The Dead Secret Collins uses specific dates and locations to give readers the sense that their familiar domestic sphere has been darkened by the conventions of turn-of-the-century gothic narratives. Gothic texts are notable for their remote and uncanny settings: old castles, dilapidated mansions, isolated abbeys, and gloomy crypts. By integrating traditionally gothic elements such as the isolated and supposedly haunted family estate of Porthgenna Tower into an otherwise domestically situated novel, Collins juxtaposes sublime surroundings against scenes of familial tranquility. 26 He combines \u201cthe mundane and the mysterious, the terrifying and the reassuring\u201d so that the subversion of everyday life becomes \u201cthe starting-point of nearly all his plots\u201d (Lonoff 94). 24 \u00a0 One example of the subversion of everyday life is the figure of Sarah, a lady\u2019s maid with a secret past and an uncanny aspect. This character serves the same function as Porthgenna Tower, providing elements of the gothic genre to put readers on edge; she is also a masochistic reader who mimics Collins\u2019s readers. At first glance, this domestic servant is hardly a terrifying figure in comparison with the evil monks and rapacious lords of late eighteenth-century gothic novels. Although she initially appears to be a familiar figure, she soon becomes \u201cunfamiliar,\u201d or uncanny. Collins\u2019s use of the uncanny is part of a larger effort to manipulate readers\u2019 emotions by appealing \u201cnot to the terror of the unknown . . . but to the even more terrifying terror of the familiar\u201d (Hughes 8). The narrator depicts Sarah as having inexplicably grey hair, \u201clarge, startled, black eyes,\u201d and a habit of \u201cwhisper[ing] affrightedly to herself\u201d (12, 13). He then describes her as \u201ca woman whom it was impossible to look at without a feeling of curiosity, if not of interest\u201d (Collins, Dead 10). By beginning his sketch of Sarah with a description of the unsatisfied curiosity with which observers regard her, Collins piques our interest and then sustains it with revelations of Sarah\u2019s unusual and disturbing characteristics. Sarah\u2019s presence enhances the uncanny atmosphere of the novel by virtue of her unnatural appearance and behaviour, and leads the reader to anticipate that Sarah\u2019s character will be associated with uncanny events in the novel.27 If we return to Freud\u2019s additional explanations for the existence of the uncanny, we see that Sarah\u2019s character encompasses a number of \u201cuncanny\u201d elements. For instance, Freud maintains that the term uncanny sometimes denotes \u201c[c]oncealed, kept from sight, so that others do not get to know of or about it, withheld from others\u201d (Freud 622). Sarah is an accessory to the creation of the secret, and she is also the character who is the most terrified of its discovery. The \u201cdead secret\u201d of Rosamond\u2019s true identity arguably belongs to that genre of the uncanny \u201cthat ought to have remained secret and hidden but has come to 25 \u00a0 light\u201d (623). Collins plays with the idea of the \u201cdead secret\u201d by revealing some information to the reader while preventing the entire secret from \u201ccoming to light\u201d until almost the end of the novel, so that the reader is continually anticipating the secret\u2019s disclosure in a kind of masochistic waiting game. Sarah\u2019s association with insanity further contributes to the uncanny quality of her character. Her continuing psychological decline in the second half of the novel is a fundamental part of Collins\u2019s apparent efforts to infuse his text with traditionally gothic elements. There is no positive indication that Sarah\u2019s character is indeed insane, but according to Freud, the \u201cuncanny effect of madness\u201d (636) requires only the \u201cmanifestations of insanity\u201d (625); in other words, to be uncanny Sarah needs only to appear insane. Sarah\u2019s association with insanity is strengthened by her tendency to become overexcited. In the mid-Victorian period, excessive emotion was often cited as a cause or symptom of insanity, particularly in female patients; for instance, James Cowles Prichard argued that a major symptom of moral insanity is \u201ca morbid perversion of the natural feelings [and] affections\u201d (quoted in Bucknill & Tuke 259).28 Finally, a number of characters in Collins\u2019s novel believe or fear that Sarah is mentally unbalanced. After spending an evening with Mrs. Jazeph (Sarah\u2019s alias and married name), Rosamond suddenly realizes that \u201c[a]ll that was unaccountable in [Sarah\u2019s] behaviour . . . every one of her strange actions (otherwise incomprehensible) became intelligible in a moment on that one dreadful supposition that she was mad\u201d (Collins, Dead 126). It is not clear whether Collins\u2019s portrayal is intended to indicate a tendency towards madness or simply a hyper-sensitivity to overexcitement, but Sarah\u2019s behaviour is sufficiently unusual to warrant at least an association with insanity in the mind of the Victorian reader. 26 \u00a0 In addition to contributing to the uncanny, gothic atmosphere of the novel, Sarah\u2019s tendency to overreact to emotionally charged stimuli highlights the connection between over-excitement and reading. Sarah provides a commentary on the figure of the Victorian woman reader by modelling how such a reader might respond to sensational texts.29 One instance of such reading is the scene in which Sarah hides the letter containing the secret in the Myrtle Room, reading it over before hiding it in a drawer: \u201c[S]he took the sheet of note-paper from its place of concealment in her bosom\u2014shuddering, when she drew it out, as if the mere contact of it hurt her\u2014placed it open on her little dressing-table, and fixed her eyes eagerly on the lines which the note contained\u201d (23). This excerpt could quite easily be a description of a woman deeply engaged in a sensation novel\u2014afraid to read on yet unable to stop, and still afraid even when she has finished reading. This passage contains a depiction of masochistic reading, in the sense that Sarah is \u201ceager\u201d for the pain involved in reading the letter, which \u201churt[s] her\u201d even as she handles it. This scene also emphasizes the connection between anticipation and masochistic reading: by shuddering when she removes the letter from her dress, Sarah anticipates the emotional pain of reading the letter. DIDACTIC DETECTION AND READER PARTICIPATION Collins appears to want his readers to participate as much as possible in the unravelling of the mystery, and so he teaches them how to detect and\/or interpret his text through what I shall call \u201cdidactic detection.\u201d In Wilkie Collins and his Victorian Readers, Lonoff maintains that the author \u201ccapitalized on his readers\u2019 fascination with crime and criminal lives, on their interest in the processes of detection [by creating] mysteries that he challenged his readers to solve, if they could, before he provided the keys\u201d (Lonoff 109). If we return to the Oxford English Dictionary\u2019s definition of masochism as the \u201cdeliberate pursuit of or enthusiasm for an activity 27 \u00a0 that appears to be painful, frustrating, or tedious,\u201d detection (on the part of the reader as well as on the part of the novel\u2019s characters), when limited by an omniscient author, is a masochistic endeavour. In this section, I shall examine Collins\u2019s apparent efforts to direct diverse readers\u2019 experiences or \u201cactualizations\u201d of the text in certain pre-determined directions. 30 Using characters to \u201cmodel\u201d the activities involved in detection, Collins attempts to create what Heller refers to as \u201ca schematized set of instructions\u201d for the interpretation of the novel (1). By increasing reader involvement in the unravelling of the plot, Collins increases his readers\u2019 immersion in the narrative, and consequently their emotional involvement in the story. As I suggested in the previous chapter, a sensation novel is \u201cbest\u201d when the reader is constantly anticipating what will happen next, and \u201cwhen it involves readers in it as completely as possible without their forgetting that it is a work of art and interacting with it as if it were reality\u201d (Heller 3). Greater reader involvement in the narrative means that the author has a greater ability to manipulate reader\u2019s emotional responses. Lonoff maintains that \u201cCollins tended to compose with an invisible reader at his elbow,\u201d and that his \u201c[p]refaces, letters, and miscellaneous pieces suggest that . . . he thought of readers as a manipulable mass\u201d (66, 67). He does not appear to trust his readers to find these clues without his help, so he devises ways to \u201cinstruct\u201d the reader in the arts of detection, surveillance, and snooping. In the first chapter of Book Two, Collins introduces us to an \u201cobservant stranger\u201d through whose eyes we are permitted to look, almost as if peering through a keyhole to observe what transpires on the other side of the door: \u201cif any observant stranger had happened to be standing in some unnoticed corner of the churchyard, and to be looking about him with sharp eyes, he would probably have been the witness of proceedings which might have led him to believe that there was a conspiracy going on in Long Beckley\u201d (38). This \u201cobservant stranger\u201d 28 \u00a0 observes the body language of all individuals passing by, simultaneously providing implicit instructions to the reader to do the same. After a few pages, Collins dispenses with this stranger: \u201cLeaving . . . the visionary stranger of these pages to vanish out of them in any direction that he pleases\u2014let us follow Doctor Chennery to the vicarage breakfast-table, and hear what he has to say about his professional exertions of the morning in the familiar atmosphere of his own family circle\u201d (40). Collins\u2019s \u201cobservant stranger\u201d plays only a small part in the story, but it is a crucial part: he instructs the reader how to observe, detect, and deduce as the narrative unfolds. Once Collins writes the stranger out of the narrative, he then invites the reader to accompany him in the stranger\u2019s place: \u201clet us follow Doctor Chennery . . . and hear what he has to say\u201d (emphasis added). Here, Collins situates the reader in the role of detective. Collins also uses his protagonist Rosamond to situate the reader in the role of the detective by using her as a didactic tool (much like the \u201cobservant stranger\u201d) to show the reader how to decipher his text. Like Jane Austen\u2019s Catherine Moreland, Rosamond is anxious to find mysteries in her own country and time.31 The very thought of discovering something mysterious excites her greatly: \u201cI never saw anything of that ruinous north side of the house\u2014and I do so dote on old rooms. . . . I prophesy that we shall see ghosts, and find treasures, and hear mysterious noises\u2014and, oh heavens! what clouds of dust we shall have to go through. Pouf! the very anticipation of them chokes me already!\u201d (Collins, Dead 77; emphasis added). This is the sort anticipation of both fear and excitement that Collins seems to want his readers to feel. As the novel progresses, Rosamond becomes, like the reader, a detective attempting to solve a mystery. Rosamond reveals her deductive abilities while teaching us how to solve the mystery ourselves. For instance, when she reaches the Myrtle Room, she does not know that the secret is contained in a letter, so when she begins to search for the secret, she has to deduce in what form 29 \u00a0 it might be: \u201cWe thought . . . that the mystery of the Myrtle Room might be connected with hidden valuables that had been stolen, or hidden papers that ought to have been destroyed, or hidden stains and traces of some crime, which even a chair or a table might betray. Shall we examine the furniture here?\u201d (266). As the reader learns how to recognize clues and develop theories, s\/he becomes more deeply involved in the narrative. By Book Three, both Rosamond and (one assumes) the reader are \u201cmore curious than ever to see [Porthgenna Tower] again,\u201d and \u201c[its] uninhabited rooms . . . than to see the Seven Wonders of the World\u201d (95, 124). In her efforts to locate the secret, Rosamond writes to Mr. Munder and Mrs. Pentreath, the steward and housekeeper of Porthgenna Tower. Her response to the letter sent from Mr. Munder and Mrs. Pentreath further enables our identification with Rosamond because we are both engaged in the acts of reading and interpreting: [T]he letter, with all its faults and absurdities, was read by Mrs. Frankland with the deepest interest. . . . The fresh element of complication imparted to the thickening mystery of Mrs. Jazeph and the Myrtle Room, by the entrance of the foreign stranger on the scene, and by his intimate connexion with the extraordinary proceedings that had taken place in the house, fairly baffled them all. The letter was read again and again; was critically dissected paragraph by paragraph [and] was carefully annotated. (225-226) Rosamond and her companions are engaged in the same activities as are we\u2014interpretation, reading, and rereading. After extensive analysis, Rosamond and her husband pronounce the letter \u201cto be the most mysterious and bewildering document that mortal pen had ever produced\u201d (226). The characters\u2019 bewilderment mimics the reader\u2019s own interpretive uncertainty; it would 30 \u00a0 seem that Collins\u2019s intention in writing The Dead Secret is to torment his characters and readers alike with unintelligible clues to maintain their interest but to prevent them from discovering the truth of the mystery until the end of the narrative. Detection and interpretation become masochistic endeavours when the evidence is indecipherable (or, at least, difficult to decipher until Collins provides the reader with the information required to for its interpretation) and the desire to solve the mystery increases with each chapter. In addition to employing similar interpretive strategies as Collins\u2019s readers, Rosamond experiences similar emotional responses to her reading material. One such response I shall describe as a kind of \u201cliterary paralysis\u201d: if the reader were sufficiently involved, or immersed, in the text, s\/he might experience a sensation of being unable to \u201cput down\u201d his or her book, as s\/he was rendered immobile by the affective power of the narrative. In The Dead Secret, Rosamond displays all the symptoms of this inability to move or speak: Line by line, and word by word, she read through the writing . . . When she had come to the end of the third page, the hand in which she held the letter dropped to her side, and she turned her head slowly toward Leonard. In that position she stood . . . with the fatal letter crumpled up in her cold fingers, looking steadfastly, speechlessly, breathlessly at her blind husband. (275) While reading the letter, Rosamond digests the contents so intensely that she is completely unaware of her surroundings; when she has finished, the terror resulting from the contents of the \u201cfatal letter\u201d lengthens her \u201cliterary paralysis.\u201d Once she has recovered from her discovery of the secret, Rosamond \u201crereads\u201d her account of the preceding narrative: \u201cWe know now why she warned me so anxiously not to go into the Myrtle Room. Who can say what she must have 31 \u00a0 suffered when she came as a stranger to my bedside?\u201d (289). If Rosamond is a didactic tool for Collins\u2019s readers, her behaviour in this passage encourages the reader to revisit the novel in search of clues missed during the first reading, and to repeat the painful pleasures of detection. Collins\u2019s efforts to teach readers how to interpret his text serves to involve the reader more deeply in his narrative, and to increase readers\u2019 feelings of anticipation and pleasure. MASOCHISTIC DETECTION AND THE GUILTY PLEASURES OF READING Collins\u2019s characters seem designed to teach the reader how to engage with his uncanny text, particularly with regards to emotional responses to reading. Thus far we have looked at Collins\u2019s attempts to provoke enthusiasm for thrilling discoveries and fearful anticipation of what will come next, but Collins\u2019s novel also addresses emotional discomfort and even shame in connection with reading and detection. Since men and women continued to read sensation stories despite widespread criticism of the genre, I argue that the historical context of the sensation novel adds an additionally masochistic dimension to the reading of these novels. Moralists and critics argued that the desire for excessive emotional stimulation through reading was unnatural and unhealthy; for instance, one anonymous writer for All the Year Round suggested that the \u201cunnatural appetite for sensation . . . is a diseased craving [and] an unwholesome fancy\u201d (\u201cNot a New Sensation\u201d 517). Women in particular were singled out for reading sensation stories, and were sometimes accused of being addicted to such novels.32 In her work on the woman reader, Kate Flint points out the two contradictory arguments behind regulating women\u2019s readings: \u201cFirst, the argument ran, certain texts might corrupt her innocent mind. . . . Second, it was often put forward that she, as woman, was peculiarly susceptible to emotionally provocative material\u201d (22). Reading sensation novels could thus be described as a \u201cguilty pleasure\u201d\u2014an enjoyable yet shameful activity. If we accept Freud\u2019s definition of 32 \u00a0 masochism as something which \u201ccreates a temptation to perform \u2018sinful\u2019 actions, which must be expiated by the reproaches of the sadistic conscience . . . or by chastisement from [a] parental power\u201d (\u201cMasochism\u201d 283), then reading sensation novels is indeed a masochistic pleasure.33 Like the Victorian woman reader whose enjoyment of sensational novels was opposed by critics and moralists, Rosamond is discouraged from allowing herself to become over-stimulated through activities such as reading. She receives lectures from various male characters in The Dead Secret, beginning with Mr. Orridge (a doctor), who \u201cexpatiate[s] on the evils of overexcitement\u201d (Collins, Dead 122). The opposition to overexcitement from sensation reading seems to have failed (given the popularity of the genre throughout the nineteenth century), and Mr. Orridge is no exception: \u201cHis remonstrances, however, would have produced very little effect, even if Rosamond had allowed him to continue them\u201d (123). Rosamond\u2019s husband has similar concerns with regards to Rosamond\u2019s nerves. When Rosamond reacts to a course of action proposed by her husband by \u201cwalk[ing] agitatedly up and down the room,\u201d he responds by taking her pulse and regretting his actions: \u201cI wish I had waited until tomorrow morning before I told you my idea about Mrs. Jazeph . . . I have agitated you to no purpose whatever, and have spoiled your chance of a good night's rest\u201d (248). In The Dead Secret, Mr. Frankland and Mr. Orridge represent those engaged in what Flint describes as \u201cpaternalistic surveillance\u201d of women\u2019s reading (4). As some Victorian critics suggested, women readers might suffer both physically and mentally from the overexcitement of certain genres. Although it seems obvious that Collins was a supporter of the sensation genre (since he helped to develop it), in a number of passages of The Dead Secret, he appears to illustrate the potential dangers faced by women exposed to various forms of emotional excitement\u2014like the kind found in sensation novels. For instance, 33 \u00a0 Rosamond seems to be physically affected by her frightening experience with Mrs. Jazeph: \u201cOn entering Mrs. Frankland's room, the doctor saw at a glance that she had been altered for the worse by the events of the past evening. . . . Her eyes looked dim and weary, her skin was dry, her pulse was irregular. It was plain that she had passed a wakeful night, and that her mind was not at ease\u201d (133). Although the memory of Mrs. Jazeph\u2019s uncanny words frightens her, she continues to dwell upon them, admitting that she has \u201cthought of nothing else\u201d and that her heart \u201cis beating quicker than usual only with saying them over. . . . They are such very strange, startling words\u201d (136; emphasis added). Later, Rosamond experiences a kind of relapse as a result of similarities between present and past fears: \u201cAs she turned her head once more towards the bed, a momentary chill crept over her. She trembled a little, partly at the sensation itself, partly at the recollection it aroused of that other chill which had struck her in the solitude of the Myrtle Room\u201d (344). In these passages, Collins appears to suggest that there is truly a potential for damage as a result of emotional encounters. By emphasizing the potential dangers of reading \u201csensational\u201d texts and undergoing emotionally charged experiences, Collins seems to remind readers of the reasons why some critics considered the sensation novel hazardous, emphasizing the taboo nature of the sensation genre to increase the \u201cguilty pleasures\u201d of reading. In other passages, Collins seems to argue against the idea that highly affective reading can cause lasting injury. While attempting to discover Sarah\u2019s whereabouts in London, Rosamond falls prey to a \u201cdepression of spirit\u201d produced by \u201cthe doubt and suspense of the past week\u201d (303). Although Rosamond is susceptible to suspense, the narrative suggests that such anxiety actually enhances one\u2019s ability to observe minute details: when Uncle Joseph returns to give the Trevertons news of Sarah, \u201cRosamond's observation, stimulated by anxiety, detected a change in his look and manner the moment he appeared\u201d (309; emphasis added). Although Collins 34 \u00a0 acknowledges some criticisms of sensation reading in The Dead Secret through certain male characters (Mr. Treverton, Mr. Orridge), at least one of his protagonists has the capacity to recover from her fear. When the Franklands finally arrive at Porthgenna Tower, Rosamond conveys her desire to begin searching for clues as soon as possible: \u201c[N]ow we are on the spot I feel as if we had driven the mystery into its last hiding-place. We are actually in the house that holds the Secret. . . . But don't let us stop on this cold landing. Which way are we to go next?\u201d (243). Although it was only a few moments ago that she was \u201cnervously pressing her husband\u2019s arm\u201d (242), Rosamond is now more eager than ever to continue her investigation of the mystery. As she informs her husband, she has every intention of \u201ccontinuing our journey to Porthgenna the moment I am allowed to travel, and [of] leaving no stone unturned when we get there until we have discovered whether there is or is not any room in the old house that ever was known, at any time of its existence, by the name of the Myrtle Room\u201d (138). Should she find such a room, she states, \u201cAm I not a woman? And have I not been forbidden to enter the Myrtle Room? . . . Do you know so little of my half of humanity as to doubt what I should do the moment the room was discovered? My darling, as a matter of course, I should walk into it immediately\u201d (138). Despite Rosamond\u2019s admission that she has been \u201cdreadfully frightened\u201d (128), she has every intention of continuing her detective work until the mystery is solved. If Rosamond is sometimes overcome by fear or anxiety, she soon regains control of her emotions, and recognizes that \u201cthere is nothing to alarm [her], nothing (except one\u2019s own fancy) that suggests an idea of danger of any kind\u201d (263). If Collins did indeed compose his novels with \u201can invisible reader at his elbow\u201d (Lonoff 66), perhaps, in addition to her function as model reader and detective, Rosamond provides a means through which to comment on Collins\u2019s own readers by demonstrating an ideal (female) reader\u2019s response to his work. Collins thus critiques the 35 \u00a0 Victorian notion of the \u201cwoman reader,\u201d who is particularly susceptible to emotional excess, and who enjoys the excessively emotional responses provoked by sensation fiction. CONCLUSIONS Despite Collins\u2019s apparent efforts to create an uncanny atmosphere, contemporary critics of his novels argued that the secret was so overemphasized and its revelation so overdrawn as to make it anything but uncanny. In an unsigned review entitled \u201cNovels and Novelists of the Day,\u201d Alexander Smith suggested that while \u201cMr. Collins can hide a secret better than any man . . . when once the secret is discovered, when once the mystery is unravelled, his books collapse at once, their interest perishes, they are flat as conundrums to which you have the answers\u201d (Page 140-141). In his Preface to the 1861 edition of The Dead Secret, Collins acknowledges these negative evaluations of his work: \u201cI was blamed for allowing the \u2018Secret\u2019 to glimmer on the reader at an early period of the story, instead of keeping it in total darkness till the end\u201d (5). In his defence, Collins explains that he intended \u201cto let the effect of the story depend on expectation rather than surprise; believing that the reader would be all the more interested in watching the progress of \u2018Rosamond\u2019 and her husband towards the discovery of the Secret\u201d (5-6). Rather than ambushing the reader with shock and surprise, Collins manipulates the readers\u2019 tendency to anticipate subsequent events in the narrative, and teases them with false clues and vague statements, attempting to increase readers\u2019 sense of apprehension and suspense. Although we cannot know for certain the extent to which this device (the early revelation of the secret\u2019s existence) was successful, Collins does claim that, \u201c[s]o far as I am enabled to judge, from the opinions which reached me through various channels, this peculiar treatment of the narrative presented one of the special attractions of the book to a large variety of readers\u201d (6). It 36 \u00a0 is true that this assessment contradicts some reviewers\u2019 evaluation of The Dead Secret; however, not all reviewers thought of the novel as \u201ca dreary web\u201d (Oliphant 569). One anonymous reviewer of The Dead Secret in the Saturday Review seems to have appreciated (or at least understood) Collins\u2019s attempts to increase suspense: \u201cAs the secret is plainly discernible in the very opening of the book, the interest of the story hangs not upon the nature of the secret, but upon the mode in which it is discovered. The ingenuity of the author is shown in devising a great many plausible incidents, by which the searchers shall be alternately brought a step nearer to the discovery, and then removed a step from it\u201d (Page 71). He concludes: \u201c[W]e feel at the end of each chapter that we are one step nearer the end of the search, and yet the movement is so slow that it seems as if the paper would never be found\u201d (72). This reviewer highlights the torturous frustration of getting closer and closer to the discovery of the secret while the author continually creates obstacles to block the reader\u2019s progress. Although the presence of the secret is \u201cplainly discernible in the very opening of the book,\u201d as our anonymous critic points out, Collins does not reveal the exact nature of the secret, nor does he show us precisely where Sarah has hidden it until almost the end of the novel. Bearing in mind Collins\u2019s extensive manipulation of his readers to sustain interest and excitement in his narrative, if we recall Freud\u2019s assertion that authors of uncanny narratives have \u201ca peculiarly directive power over us\u201d (641), we might argue that the emotional and\/or psychological \u201cmasochism\u201d involving the enjoyment of terrifying texts is effectively a submission to the narrative and affective power of the author. The final affective component of the strange emotional mixture provoked by The Dead Secret is the unease or even shame of allowing one\u2019s emotions to be provoked and manipulated by the author of the text, beyond the bounds of self-government, and the guilty pleasures of clandestine reading. 37 \u00a0 CHAPTER THREE: MASOCHISTIC DETECTION IN A METATEXTUAL TEXT: MIXED EMOTIONAL RESPONSES TO LANGUAGE IN THE WOMAN IN WHITE (1860) The Woman in White represents in many ways a continuation of Collins\u2019s earlier work as exemplified by his earlier novel, The Dead Secret. Collins persists in his use of the homely yet uncanny setting of the \u201cdomesticated gothic,\u201d and in his manipulation of readers\u2019 emotional responses to and involvement in his narrative.34 In a 1860 letter to Collins, Charles Dickens praised The Woman in White as \u201ca very great advance on all [his] former writing,\u201d but renewed his criticism of Collins\u2019s earlier novels by commenting on Collins\u2019s tendency to \u201cgive an audience credit for nothing, which necessarily involves the forcing of points on their attention, and which [they] resent when they find it out\u201d (Bachman & Cox 627).35 What makes The Woman in White different from Collins\u2019s previous work is the way he manipulates his readers. Drawing on the work of D. A. Miller and Peter Thoms, I shall argue that in the role of detective, the reader of The Woman and White becomes both disciplinarian and transgressor. In Detection and Its Designs, Thoms argues that \u201cdetection is internalized so that the individual embodies a system of regulation, being both the oppressive law and its transgressor\u201d (6). The reader of Collins\u2019s novels is both detective and criminal: in their role of literary detective, individual characters and readers represent both the system of disciplinary regulation and the transgressors who must be disciplined. Thoms\u2019s statement complements Miller\u2019s argument in The Novel and the Police. Miller suggests that discipline functions in the Victorian novel according to class distinctions; the middle- and upper-class spheres of the sensation novel are governed by \u201can alternative power of regulation\u201d (7), which includes the amateur detective, as well as the forces of \u201cpublic opinion\u201d and \u201csocial humiliation\u201d (14). The amateur detectives of Collins\u2019s novels participate in this \u201calternative power of regulation,\u201d and by so doing they become both 38 \u00a0 disciplinarians (enforcing regulation and \u201csocial humiliation\u201d) and transgressors (engaged in socially disreputable and even criminal activities to unravel the novel\u2019s mysteries). As detectives, readers of (and characters within) the novel must endure the shame of performing deviant activities to experience the (masochistic) pleasures of solving the novel\u2019s mysteries. To enjoy the pleasure of interpreting texts, readers of and characters within the novel must also endure the frustrations of failed interpretations; detection and interpretation are thus masochistic endeavours. The rhetorical framing of Collins\u2019s narrative is suggestive of a courtroom drama with its presentation of a succession of written statements by characters in the novel. In his preface to La Femme en Blanc (1861), Collins explains that he decided on the form of the courtroom narrative following a personal experience with the proceedings of a criminal case in London: \u201cAs each [witness] rose to provide his portion of personal involvement, and as . . . each separate link was connected to the others to form an incontrovertible chain of evidence, I felt my attention was being increasingly ensnared; I could see that the same was happening to those close around me\u201d (Bachman & Cox 621).36 The masochistic qualities of detection and interpretation in The Woman in White are directly linked to Collins\u2019s use of courtroom-style narrative, in which characters provide written statements of their knowledge. The \u201censnared\u201d reader mimics the protagonists of the novel as they attempt to interpret this collection of written documents, many of which are ultimately impossible to interpret. In their introduction to The Woman in White, Maria K. Bachman and Don Richard Cox comment on \u201cthe instability of meaning and interpretation that pervades the novel\u201d (19; emphasis added). Bachman and Cox are referring to questions of insanity and identity; I shall apply their observation to the question of text and language, themes which are equally pervasive, though not so well studied.37 39 \u00a0 In The Woman in White, as in The Dead Secret, detection and interpretation are largely text- based. The problem (and the masochistic pleasure) lies in the fact that both written documents and transcripts of oral conversations are distressingly fallible, so that the pleasures of solving the novel\u2019s mysteries are inseparable from the frustrations and anxieties of struggling to make sense of inaccessible and unreliable texts. The reader of The Woman in White is encouraged to participate in the unravelling of the mysteries of the novel. In the novel\u2019s preamble, we read that \u201c[a]s the Judge might once have heard [the story], so the Reader shall hear it now\u201d (49). The reader is thus placed in the position of an honoured and experienced judge, who has been called upon to assess a narrative which \u201ctrace[s] the course of one complete series of events, by making the persons who have been most closely connected with them, at each successive state, relate their own experience, word for word\u201d (50). In a novel where extraordinary emphasis is placed on the importance of presenting evidence \u201cword for word,\u201d and where social identity and mental instability (as Bachman and Cox note) depend on the inherent reliability of such evidence, both oral language and written text are alarmingly inadequate. In The Woman in White, language is open to varying interpretations, vulnerable to prying eyes and ears as well as to distortion and forgery, and it is sometimes simply impossible to interpret. The novel also contains failures of language, and alarming absences of text. In addition to placing the reader in the position of judge, Collins draws a parallel between the reader and the fictional characters who are similarly engaged in the interpretation of text and language. He highlights the emotional stakes involved in detecting through language: many characters have highly emotional responses to both written and spoken language, and some characters are overcome by their emotional responses to text\/language. Some texts are acquired through surreptitious means, and the characters are forced to swallow their discomfort in order to 40 \u00a0 continue their masochistic detections\u2014much like the reader who must endure the discomforts (while enjoying the pleasures) of reading a sensation novel. A METATEXTUAL TEXT Sue Lonoff argues that Collins \u201csensed the potential of the novel as game\u201d (108), and suggests that he \u201cplays with the reader\u201d and \u201cplays with the text as a text\u201d (117). These comments are especially relevant to a study of The Woman in White, given the novel\u2019s reliance on and problematization of written documents and transcripts of oral conversations. There are several letters that also become part of the narrative, as well as the various statements of personal experience which make up the novel.38 The first element of the \u201cgame\u201d that Collins plays with his readers is forcing them to be always aware that they are reading and interpreting a textual document. As readers become more involved in the detection of the novel\u2019s secrets and in the frustrating yet pleasurable interpretation of the written documents presented by the novel\u2019s narrator, the reader is lured into a masochistic\u2014pleasurable and yet disagreeable and even distasteful\u2014activity. This textual awareness begins with the novel\u2019s preamble, in which Hartright explains that the narrative is composed of a series of records written by \u201cpersons who can speak to the circumstances under notice from their own knowledge\u201d (50). At the very beginning of the novel, written and spoken language are not only placed on equal standing, but are at times conflated. The multiple narrators do not write of their own experience, they \u201cspeak\u201d of it; Hartright invites the reader not to read the story, but to \u201chear it\u201d as \u201cthe Judge might once have heard it\u201d (49). Collins\u2019s attention to both written and spoken language is important, since many of the documents (on which we must rely to restore Laura Fairlie\u2019s identity) are transcriptions (albeit edited by Hartright) of conversations between characters. 41 \u00a0 As Beckwith and Reed have suggested, Marian\u2019s diary is highly self-referential, and it serves to impress upon the reader the immediacy of the text.39 In many instances, she discusses both the experiences of writing, and of re-reading what she has written. Early in her narrative, when she attempts to convince herself that Sir Percival Glyde is \u201ca very handsome and a very agreeable man,\u201d the difficulty she has in committing these words to paper reinforces our consciousness of the fact that she is writing as we are reading: \u201cThere! I have written it down, at last, and I am glad it\u2019s over\u201d (215). Collins further emphasizes Marian\u2019s diary\u2019s self-awareness by showing us that we are reading as she is reading what she has written. When we read, \u201cIt is strange to look back at this latest entry in my journal,\u201d we are forced to identify with Marian as a fellow reader, since we are reading the same text at the same time (211). We sympathise with her character\u2019s mixed emotional responses to reading and writing, which are both enjoyable and difficult or even painful (as indicated by her phrase, \u201cI\u2019m glad it\u2019s over\u201d). Fosco\u2019s confession is arguably the most self-referential because it is preceded by an extensive first-hand description of his writing process: \u201cHe wrote with great noise and rapidity, in so large and bold a hand, and with such wide spaces between the lines, that he reached the bottom of the slip in not more than two minutes certainly from the time when he started at the top. Each slip as he finished it, was paged, and tossed over his shoulder, out of his way, on the floor\u201d (586). Having finished the manuscript, Fosco \u201cread[s] the manuscript to [Hartright], with loud theatrical emphasis and profuse theatrical gesticulation\u201d (587). Following this remarkable introduction to Fosco\u2019s narrative, Collins forces the reader to wait until the following serial instalment for the Count\u2019s confession while anticipating what information might be contained in this document. The confession itself is full of theatrical asides to the reader\u2014for instance, when Fosco \u201center[s] a necessary protest, and correct[s] a lamentable error\u201d (594) concerning the use of his \u201cvast 42 \u00a0 chemical resources\u201d against Anne Catherick and Marian Halcolmbe (595). While the narratives of Hartright and Marian recognize themselves as textual documents, Fosco\u2019s confession proclaims itself as \u201ca remarkable document\u201d (604). If Collins\u2019s reader fails to notice the significance of written documents while reading the accounts of Hartright and Marian, s\/he cannot fail to perceive the importance of such documents following Fosco\u2019s (written) confession. TEXTUAL FALLIBILITY Winifred Hughes argues that, for Hartright, the \u201cfinal design\u201d of these assembled documents reflects \u201can ultimate world order\u201d (140). Hartright\u2019s perspective is based on his belief that written documents are substantial and solid proof, and Hughes is correct to reject his \u201cinterpretation\u201d by stating that \u201cthe design of the novel has not been imposed by any divine power, only by Hartright\u2019s wishful thinking; it cannot in the end be said to reflect any universal order or morality or justice\u201d (143). The second element of Collins\u2019s \u201cgame\u201d is that while he suggests to the reader that the assembled documents embody order and knowable truth, he simultaneously undermines this suggestion by emphasizing the fallibility and vulnerability of both written documents and spoken words. Throughout the novel, Collins emphasizes our reliance on textual accuracy, in particular by using the phrase \u201cword for word,\u201d and other similar phrases.40 Given their acceptance of the suggestion that the written evidence presented in the novel is dependable, characters\u2019 and readers\u2019 reliance on text proves frustrating when these texts are revealed to be unreliable (vulnerable to distortion, disappearance, and ambiguity). To enjoy the pleasure of interpreting texts, one must endure the anxieties and frustrations of attempting to extract meaning from ambiguous and distorted texts; by entrapping his readers into interpreting such documents, Collins lures them into engaging in masochistic detection. 43 \u00a0 In addition to the emphasis on the accuracy of written records, the premise of The Woman in White insists on the notion that written documents function as indisputable proof. At the end of the novel, the reassertion of Laura Fairlie\u2019s identity is accomplished though the reading of \u201ca plain narrative of the conspiracy,\u201d along with \u201ca statement of the practical contradiction which facts offered to the assertion of Laura\u2019s death\u201d (608). Two of the documents in question are a \u201ccertified . . . true\u201d copy of \u201cthe evidence of [the proprietor of the livery stable\u2019s] order-book and the evidence of his driver\u201d (606). Hartright refers to these documents as \u201cthe irresistible weapon of plain fact,\u201d without ever considering the possibility of human error in noting the date or time of Laura Fairlie\u2019s journey in the order book.41 Alison Milbank suggests that \u201cthe novel is full of signs and seeming clues that fail to yield answers\u201d (68). More concretely, the novel is full of texts which refuse to offer themselves up to interpretation, and some texts that are simply unreadable. While the reader is invited to share Hartright\u2019s belief in the reliability of written documents and transcripts of spoken words by the premise of the novel, Collins challenges this belief by revealing examples of texts which are incorrect, unreliable, or simply nonexistent. The \u201cNarrative of the Doctor,\u201d a certificate of Laura Fairlie\u2019s death (414), and the \u201cNarrative of the Tombstone\u201d (415) are clearly incorrect, and by the end of the story, all the novel\u2019s major characters have agreed on this point. Other \u201cnarratives\u201d are not so obviously inaccurate, but they are not entirely reliable. Marian, Laura, and Hartright rely on Marian\u2019s diary to provide them with accurate information. Milbank argues that \u201cin a narrative full of false and misleading documents,\u201d Marian\u2019s diary is \u201can objective means of expression in a textual battle\u201d (74). At first this statement rings true, but following Marian\u2019s illness and the discovery of her diary by Fosco, the diary becomes only another example of a subjective text that is both fallible and vulnerable. At what point does Marian\u2019s 44 \u00a0 narrative cease to be reliable? At the moment when her writing becomes illegible, or before? Has Fosco in any way altered the diary entries, in addition to adding a postscript at the end? Collins implies that these questions cannot be answered, and their unanswerability calls into question the reliability of her written account. In addition to inaccurate and unreliable texts, the absence of text pervades the novel. As MacDonagh and Smith note, for example, \u201cthe evidence [of Sir Percival\u2019s forgery and illegitimacy] in a novel full of texts, is the absence of text, a gap\u201d (276). For Hartright, the discovery of this absence is both exciting and alarming: \u201cNothing! Not a vestige of the entry which recorded the marriage of Sir Felix Glyde and Cecilia Jane Elster, in the register of the church. . . . [T]here was a blank space\u2014a space evidently left because it was too narrow to contain the entry of the marriages of the two brothers, which in the copy, as in the original, occupied the top of the next page. That space told the whole story!\u201d (507-8). The evidence of Percival\u2019s forgery is not the only instance of an alarming (and yet thrilling) absence of text in the novel; other examples include Count Fosco\u2019s \u201cofficial-looking\u201d correspondence from the continent (345-46), the legal document that Sir Percival orders Laura Fairlie to sign but not to read, and the substitution of Marian\u2019s letter to Gilmore\u2019s partner for \u201ca blank sheet of note paper\u201d (361).42 In The Woman in White, a novel based on the premise that written documents are infallible, the inability to interpret text, the existence of clearly inaccurate or suspiciously unreliable texts, and the occasional absence of text, alarm and excite the novel\u2019s characters and readers. Collins\u2019s novel thus prompts masochistic or mixed emotional readerly responses. Equally alarming is the vulnerability of text to distortion, erasure, and theft, and the fact that steps taken to ensure the safety of written documents often fail. When Marian returns to her letter to the Fairlie family solicitor, which she had left in the post-bag, she discovers that \u201cthe 45 \u00a0 envelope opened on the instant, without sticking or tearing\u201d (277). She suggests as possible explanations that she \u201chad fastened it insufficiently\u201d or that \u201cthere might have been some defect in the adhesive gum\u201d; a third possibility, which Marian refuses to put into words and which we (the readers) think is the most likely, is that the letter has been opened and read by Fosco. When Marian receives a reply from the family solicitor\u2019s office, she instructs the messenger \u201cto say that I understand the letter, and that I am very much obliged\u201d (290). Even this short oral communication is vulnerable to prying ears: \u201cExactly at the moment when I was speaking those words, holding the letter open in my hand, Count Fosco turned the corner of the lane from the high road, and stood before me as if he had sprung up out of the earth.\u201d Realizing the vulnerability of correspondence left in the post-bag at Blackwater Park, Marian arranges to send two letters (one to the family solicitor, and one to Mr. Fairlie) by messenger, but the messenger is intercepted by Mrs. Fosco, and one of the letters is exchanged for a blank piece of notepaper. Marian later fears for the safety of her journal, and even her writing materials which bear traces of her words. Rather than being \u201cdistorted\u201d (321), Marian\u2019s suspicions are completely justified when we learn that Fosco \u201cobtained access\u201d to her journal \u201cby clandestine means\u201d (592).43 Throughout the novel, protagonists and antagonists are involved in a linguistic game of hide and seek, in which each side attempts to discover the written and verbal correspondence of the other, and in which no words are ever safe from prying eyes and ears. In a novel full of narrative gaps, deliberate misdirections, and unreliable textual evidence, the only possible gratification possible for a reader\/detective is what Andrea K. Henderson refers to as \u201cdeferral of gratification\u201d (8).44 Henderson argues that Romantic heroes \u201care attracted most to those people who keep them in suspense, dominate them, and even humiliate them\u201d (1-2). With The Woman in White, readers are similarly \u201cattracted\u201d to a text (or series of texts) that \u201ckeep[s] 46 \u00a0 them in suspense, dominate[s] them, and even humiliate[s] them\u201d; they are engaged in masochistic detection and interpretation, much like the characters within the novel. The Woman in White is full of scenes of frustrated interpretation and detection. The very first example of \u201cdetection\u201d consists of Marian\u2019s largely fruitless reading of her mother\u2019s letters: \u201cI have spent all the morning looking over my mother\u2019s letters; and I have made no discoveries yet. . . . I have three packets still left, and you may confidently rely on my spending the whole evening over them\u201d (88-89). Our response to Marian\u2019s lack of discoveries is echoed by Hartright\u2019s comment: \u201cHere, then, was one of my anticipations of the morning still unfulfilled\u201d (89). Marian does discover Anne Catherick\u2019s name after going through almost all of her mother\u2019s letters; however, once Hartright sees the physical similarities between Anne and Laura, the letter becomes \u201cuseless\u201d (99). Following the discovery of her name, Hartright and Marian undergo largely \u201cuseless investigations\u201d in their quest for information about Anne Catherick, which uncover more questions than answers (121).45 According to Ann Cvetkovich\u2019s analysis of sensation fiction, the genre manipulates readers\u2019 affective responses as well as their suspicions: \u201cThe readers who are excited by the sensational lure of [the novels\u2019] mysteries are provided with experiences of affect that are ultimately regulated and controlled\u201d (Mixed Feelings 7). Cvetkovich\u2019s argument overlooks the fact that not all the novel\u2019s mysteries are solved owing to the absence of adequate textual evidence. Her point concerning the regulation and control of readers\u2019 emotional responses is valid, since Collins appears to use affective responses to his novel to manipulate the manner in which his readers engage with his narrative. By forcing the reader and the characters to rely on unreliable documents, Collins provokes highly emotional responses to both reading and writing. 47 \u00a0 MIXED AFFECTIVE RESPONSES TO TEXT The sensation novel\u2019s propensity for soliciting nervous responses was of great concern to contemporary reviewers of The Woman in White. In her criticism of the then-emerging sensation genre, Margaret Oliphant was particularly concerned about \u201cfrequent and rapid recurrence of piquant situation and startling incident\u201d in serial publications (Bachman & Cox 642). Collins apparently hoped to inspire the same kinds of intensely emotional responses in his readers as we see in his characters; as D. A. Miller points out, the reader of Collins\u2019s text \u201cidentif[ies] with the nerve-wracked figures [within the novel] who carry forward the activity of our own deciphering\u201d (\u201cCage Aux Folles\u201d 110). In her examination of \u201caffectively charged scenes\u201d (\u201cGhostlier Determinations\u201d 32), Cvetkovich similarly emphasizes the physiological nature of \u201csensational responses,\u201d which she argues \u201care central to the quasi-legal procedure of uncovering the secrets that crop up everywhere in the novel. Characters are alerted to the presence of a mystery by their own bodily sensations of fear, excitement, and suspense\u201d (25). In his study of readers\u2019 responses to the sensation genre, Miller highlights the physiological elements of \u201csensation,\u201d and the fact that the genre \u201caddress[es] itself primarily to the sympathetic nervous system, where it grounds its characteristic adrenalin effects: accelerated heart rate and respiration, increased blood pressure, and the pallor resulting from vasoconstriction\u201d (\u201cCage Aux Folles\u201d 107), which, as he correctly points out, affects \u201call the novel\u2019s principal characters\u201d as well as the reader (109). For Miller, it is this physiological element of sensation novels that makes reading them masochistic (although he does not use this word): he describes them as \u201cdomineering texts, whose power is literally proved upon our pulses\u201d (107). Miller also argues that the reader accepts for fact things that are only suggested to him\/her because \u201cthey validate the sensations they make him feel\u201d (115). Pointing to the suspiciously loose seal on Marian\u2019s letter, he argues that \u201cwe take it firmly 48 \u00a0 for granted\u201d that Fosco opens and reseals the letter. I would argue instead that our uncertainty regarding the cause of the loose seal adds to our excitement, particularly given the novel\u2019s larger theme of textual uncertainty that seems both to excite and to discourage its characters. These emotional aspects of masochistic reading\u2014excitement, uncertainty, frustration\u2014complement Miller\u2019s description of the physiological domination of the genre. In The Woman in White, characters\u2019 affective responses to the evocative power of words reflect Collins\u2019s view of the relationship between the written language of the novel and the reader.46 Walter Hartright often figures as an emotionally unstable reader, which is ironic given his authorial power of control over the narrative. When Hartright reads Anne Catherick\u2019s anonymous letter, his emotional response brings him close to mental instability: \u201cThose words and the doubt which had just escaped me as to the sanity of the writer of the letter, acting together on my mind, suggested an idea, which I was literally afraid to express openly, or even to encourage secretly. I began to doubt whether my own faculties were not in danger of losing their balance\u201d (118). When he enquires about the accuracy of statements made against Sir Percival in the letter, Marian reprimands him for allowing the contents of the note to \u201cinfluence\u201d him: \u201cMr. Hartright! I hope you are not unjust enough to let that infamous letter influence you?\u201d (120). Hartright feels \u201cthe blood rush into [his] cheeks\u201d as he is overcome with shame; as Tamar Heller suggests, this anonymous letter is \u201can embarrassingly influential text for him\u201d (127). Hartright seems equally affected by written and spoken words: while eavesdropping on a conversation between Anne Catherick and Mrs. Clements, he states, \u201cThese words strung up my attention to a pitch of expectation that was almost painful\u201d (129). His description of \u201cpainful\u201d expectation represents the kind of masochistic reading in which the reader yearns to know more despite the emotional \u201cpain\u201d caused by excessive anticipation and suspense. 49 \u00a0 Hartright is not the only emotional reader in the novel. Laura Fairlie is one example of a potential woman reader who must be spared the emotional trauma of \u201csensations.\u201d Marian describes her half-sister as \u201crather nervous and sensitive\u201d (78). She deliberately avoids informing Laura of the information she finds in her mother\u2019s letters because she fears Laura will be unduly upset by the mystery. This view is confirmed after Marian receives the anonymous letter from Anne Catherick: Marian tells us, \u201cThat letter . . . has so agitated and alarmed [Laura] that I have had the greatest possible difficulty in composing her\u201d (115). The author of an anonymous review in the Saturday Review suggests that The Woman in White \u201cmakes the female reader shudder\u201d (Bachman & Cox 631). This image of the emotionally vulnerable woman reader thus echoes the portrayal of female (as well as male) characters within the novel itself.47 A final emotional component of masochistic reading and detection is the shame related to textual spying and snooping. Ellen Bayuk Rosenman argues that \u201cmasochism is a negotiating tool in which pain is the price of a chosen desire that violates a moral or ideological norm. The masochist pursues a forbidden pleasure or agency but arranges to suffer for it, and therefore maintains moral credibility\u201d (24-25). Rosenman\u2019s argument is particularly compelling when applied to the reluctant performances of degrading or shameful activities such as snooping, spying, and eavesdropping in The Woman in White. Although Hartright insists that \u201cIt is miserable and sickening to descend to deceit, even of the most harmless kind\u201d (112), he and other characters in the novel must endure the \u201cmiserable\u201d discomfort of deceit, since the premise of the novel\u2019s plot is based around the discovery of secrets though the interpretation of written and spoken words. Later in the novel, Hartright rejects the possibility of adopting a disguise, despite the advantages of being unrecognizable to his enemies: \u201cthere was something so repellent to me in the idea\u2014something so meanly like the common herd of spies and informers in the 50 \u00a0 mere act of adopting a disguise\u2014that I dismissed the question from consideration, almost as soon as it had risen in my mind\u201d (483). Although Hartright shows disdain for disguise because of its association with \u201ccommon\u201d deception, he nevertheless engages in other dishonourable activities such as eavesdropping and blackmail. In Eavesdropping in the Novel from Austen to Proust, Ann Gaylin\u2019s comparison of interpretation and eavesdropping suggests that the kinds of interpretations in which the reader or \u201csecret listener\u201d engages are morally questionable (8). Since eavesdropping \u201cacts out both the urge to know and the fear of others knowing\u201d (5), sensation novel readers could experience the masochistic pleasures of delving into private secrets while fearing their own discovery (by patriarchal or parental figures) as guilty readers. When Hartright decides to listen in on a conversation between Anne Catherick and Mrs. Clements in the Limmeridge churchyard, he pauses to consider the shame of what he is about to do: \u201cAfter some little hesitation, caused by a natural reluctance to conceal myself, indispensable as that concealment was to the object in view, I had resolved on entering the porch [of the church]\u201d (129). To justify his dishonourable activities, Hartright insists on his discomfort and hesitation as \u201ca cover\u201d for the \u201cpleasure\u201d and \u201cpower\u201d of covert surveillance. Marian\u2019s first experience of eavesdropping is prefaced by an acknowledgement that \u201cit was very wrong and very discreditable to listen\u201d (248). Towards the end of her narrative, Marian must again \u201csanction the act to [her] own conscience\u201d (334), before she undertakes to eavesdrop on Fosco\u2019s highly secretive conversation with Sir Percival. Audrey Caming Fein argues that \u201cMarian\u2019s acts of deception are so contrary to her character that her physical and mental health must suffer\u201d (58). If we place Marian\u2019s experiences in the context of Rosenman\u2019s argument, we might argue that Marian\u2019s suffering serves to cover her pleasure in deception and detection. 51 \u00a0 Rosenman\u2019s examination of the relationship between suffering and \u201cforbidden pleasure[s]\u201d (24) may also be applied to our own guilty reading. Beckwith and Reed argue that reading Marian\u2019s diary amounts to snooping, since (as they point out) for a long time \u201cthe reader would have been left in doubt as to whether Marian spoke though her diary by choice or by necessity\u201d (305). Marian refers to her diary as \u201cthese private pages of mine\u201d (233), suggesting that they are not intended for public consumption. Like the characters within the novel, we too are shamefully reduced to snooping, eavesdropping, and spying. D. A. Miller connects the idea of the \u201csecret self\u201d with the privacy of reading, and argues that \u201cnovel reading takes for granted the existence of a space in which the reading subject remains safe from the surveillance, suspicion [and] reading . . . of others\u201d (\u201cCage Aux Folles\u201d 116).48 I would argue instead that, particularly when we are reading a novel whose characters are both engaged in and discovered through surveillance, the reader\u2019s fear of discovery, mingled with the discomfort of spying and snooping, is part of the mixed affective response of readers to the sensation novel. Collins plays upon the Victorian reader\u2019s fear of detection by including several scenes in which private reading or writing is discovered. A secret note to Laura which Anne Catherick hides in the sand is easily discovered by Sir Percival. When he finds Laura reading the note, he tells her, \u201cI have read it. I dug it up out of the sand two hours since, and buried it again, and wrote the word above it again, and left it ready to your hands. You can\u2019t lie yourself out of the scrape now. You saw Anne Catherick in secret yesterday; and you have got her letter in your hand at this moment. I have not caught her yet; but I have caught you\u201d (316-317). Laura is thus \u201ccaught\u201d reading what she should not; if the Victorian reader (of taboo genres such as the sensation novel) shared Laura\u2019s position of clandestine reading, s\/he might be particularly alarmed when Laura is discovered. According to Lonoff, Fosco\u2019s unexpected postscript to 52 \u00a0 Marian\u2019s diary has a similar emotional effect: its purpose is to \u201celicit apprehension\u2014fear of Fosco, fear for Marian and Laura, excitement as to what will happen next\u201d (126). Fosco\u2019s uninvited narrative, I would argue, also elicits fear of our own discovery. Audrey Caming Fein describes Fosco\u2019s postscript as a \u201chumiliating act of patriarchal authority\u201d (62); in this way, Fosco (like Percival) represents an authority figure who censures clandestine reading or writing. CONCLUSIONS The Woman in White entraps the reader into performing what prove to be nearly impossible tasks. S\/he is encouraged to participate in the unravelling of a mystery by sifting through a vast series of documents and transcripts, considering each one in the objective manner of a judge. Collins\u2019s manipulation of readers\u2019 emotional responses to the text makes their objectivity unfeasible, while his insistence on and problematization of the dependability of text places readers in the paradoxical position of having to rely on problematic sources of information and to interpret sometimes incomprehensible or absent documents. 49 At the same time, Collins emphasizes the reader\u2019s sense that s\/he is engaged in a clandestine activity, much like the characters in the novel who must endure their distaste for snooping and spying while simultaneously having to guard against their foes who are engaged in the same activities. These more subtle narrative techniques appear to have been vastly more popular than those Collins employed in his earlier work. In his anonymous review in The Times, E. S. Dallas grudgingly acknowledges that the novel\u2019s narrative structure enhances suspense, since Collins refuses to divulge any piece of information until the reader\u2019s anticipation and curiosity are sufficiently stimulated: \u201cThe affectation of ignorance in almost every page is a prime necessity of his novel, and this ignorance works up into a stimulant of curiosity\u201d (Bachman & Cox 635). 53 \u00a0 Many reviewers\u2019 comments also highlight the masochistic elements of detection in The Woman in White. Dallas reprimands \u201cthe author, who usurps a somewhat tyrannical sway over both characters and incidents\u201d (Bachman & Cox 638), and complains that throughout the novel Collins is \u201ccontinually making us feel our ignorance and throwing us at the proper moment a few crumbs of comfort\u201d (634). The anonymous critic from the Saturday Review also reluctantly admits Collins\u2019s hold over the reader: \u201cWe have spent some exciting hours over the charade, and have been at least obliged to come to [the author] in despair for the solution\u201d (Bachman & Cox 628). Hennelly argues that the \u201cpainful pleasures\u201d (89) of detection derive from the reader\u2019s realization that \u201cthere are always mysteries in extratextual life which he can never detect\u201d (103); while this may be true, I would argue that the act of reading sensation novels is inherently masochistic, or painfully pleasurable, an interpretation that is borne out by contemporary critical responses to The Woman in White. Lonoff suggests that the critics undervalued Collins\u2019s \u201cadroit manipulation of the reader\u2019s attention\u201d (56). Given Winifred Hughes\u2019s argument that ambiguity was not as appealling for the Victorians as it is for modernists, it seems likely that critics also resented Collins\u2019s authorial manipulations.50 For the Victorian reader, the contrast between the thrilling pleasure of mysteries and the ambiguities of text that pervade the novel would make for a highly masochistic reading. In Collins\u2019s novels, masochistic responses to text are produced by the interplay between the author\u2019s manipulation of readers\u2019 emotional responses and the cultural context of the sensation genre, in which reading unsavoury novels was considered distasteful and even degrading. Critics\u2019 insistence on the immorality of sensation novels was thus an integral part of the reading experience, since the guilty pleasure of reading sensation novels would have reinforced the reader\u2019s position as transgressor. 54 \u00a0 CHAPTER FOUR: CONCLUSION: KNOWLEDGE, SUFFERING, AND MASOCHISTIC DETECTION IN THE LAW AND THE LADY (1875) Robert P. Ashley points to the similarities between The Law and the Lady and The Woman in White as evidence of Collins\u2019s \u201cliterary decline into the [eighteen-]seventies\u201d (55). I would argue instead that The Law and the Lady is a significant novel, as it develops the notion of masochistic literary detection beyond its treatment in The Dead Secret and The Woman in White. Revisiting Miller\u2019s analysis of disciplinary power in the nineteenth-century novel in The Novel and the Police, and Thoms\u2019s suggestion in Detection and Its Designs that \u201cdetection is internalized so that the individual embodies a system of regulation, being both the oppressive law and its transgressor\u201d (6), I shall argue that, according to Collins, pursuing justice from outside the parameters of the law as an amateur detective is a frustrating and even masochistic task. Collins\u2019s amateur detective Valeria is both a disciplinarian and a transgressor. She resembles Anna Jones\u2019s \u201cideal\u201d sensation reader, who is both \u201cwell-disciplined and deviant\u201d in his or her enjoyment and distrust of the sensation novel (196), and prone to masochistic sentiments related to the guilty pleasures of sensational reading. In The Law and the Lady, Collins not only addresses the masochistic nature of amateur detection but also, more significantly, he explores the masochistic aspects of a desire for knowledge\u2014a desire which comprises the essence of detection and of suspenseful reading. In this concluding chapter, I shall explore the links between suffering and the desire for knowledge. After realizing that her new husband married her under a false name, Valeria disregards her husband\u2019s directive and seeks out knowledge\u2014the knowledge of her husband\u2019s secret past, and the knowledge required to prove her husband\u2019s innocence the poisoning of his first wife. By 55 \u00a0 refusing to \u201csubmit\u201d to the verdict of \u201cnot proven\u201d (which neither exonerates nor condemns the accused) or to the mental anguish of her uncertainty, Valeria substitutes suffering of one kind for another: her knowledge of her husband\u2019s past life and of the truth behind his first wife\u2019s death brings as much suffering as did her ignorance and desire to know. By both seeking and ultimately withholding knowledge (she convinces Eustace not to read his wife\u2019s suicide letter), Valeria represents the sensation genre, which is notorious for \u201cwithholding crucial pieces of knowledge\u201d (Levine 2). At the same time, Valeria\u2019s desire for knowledge mimics the sensation reader\u2019s feelings of anticipation and curiosity. Jessica Benjamin suggests that masochistic individuals \u201cparticipate in their own submission\u201d (8); like Valeria, the reader of The Law and the Lady chooses to suffer the frustration and shame and also to experience the pleasure of solving the novel\u2019s mysteries. The Law and the Lady participates in the theme of masochistic detection present in The Dead Secret and The Woman in White; at the same time, the novel develops this theme by concentrating on issues of ignorance, suspense, and the desire for knowledge. LITERARY DETECTION AS MASOCHISTIC Detection in Collins\u2019s novels is \u201cliterary\u201d in two senses: first, detection is carried out within the novel by characters who mimic the reader\u2019s activity; second, this detection often consists of interpreting written documents and transcripts of oral conversations. In Wilkie Collins and His Victorian Readers, Sue Lonoff describes Collins\u2019s \u201ctextual playfulness\u201d (127), and argues that The Law and the Lady is one of several novels in which Collins plays with different narrators and narrative techniques (127-8). Like The Dead Secret and The Woman in White, The Law and the Lady contains what Lonoff describes as \u201cinterior texts\u201d (128), or texts within the text of the novel which serve to call attention to the novel\u2019s textuality and to the characters\u2019 struggles to 56 \u00a0 interpret texts. Many such \u201cinterior texts\u201d are hidden or buried, and must first be discovered in order to be interpreted, such as the papers Valeria discovers in a secret compartment in the bottom of her husband\u2019s dressing case (24-25), the copy of Eustace Macallan\u2019s trial, which has fallen behind a bookcase in Major Fitz-David\u2019s library (93), and the fragments of Sara Macallan\u2019s suicide letter, buried in the dust-heap at Gleninch. Characters frequently remind the reader of his or her own active engagement with Collins\u2019s text. Dexter\u2019s attention to styles of narration (255) calls attention to the novel\u2019s textuality; at one point in his discussion of Valeria\u2019s investigation, he exclaims, \u201cWhat a plot for a novel!\u201d (259).51 Benjamin\u2019s preference for \u201ccheap periodical[s]\u201d and for \u201cguessing one of the weekly \u2018Enigmas\u2019 which the Editor presented to his readers\u201d (284) draws the reader\u2019s attention not only to the novel\u2019s textuality but to its function as a literary puzzle, which the reader should attempt to solve. Ann Gaylin argues that \u201cthe urge to know is not confined to the . . . detective or the spy but, rather, is universal to human experience. Some of us may wish to be detectives, but we are all readers\u201d (18). Collins\u2019s reference to literary enigmas and linguistic puzzles suggests that the detective is a reader, and vice versa. As in The Dead Secret and The Woman in White, characters in The Law and the Lady mimic the reader in scenes of masochistic reading in which the characters (like the reader) struggle to interpret (or locate) written documents. Early in the novel, Valeria (as narrator) reproduces a letter in which Major Fitz-David confirms that \u201cEustace Woodville . . . is a gentleman by birth and position\u201d (19). Valeria\u2019s interpretation is literal and simplistic: she states, \u201cIf I had written for information about [Eustace] . . . it would have been plain enough for me\u201d (19). Valeria\u2019s uncle reads the letter in quite a different manner: \u201cThere is something under the surface in connexion with Mr. Woodville, or with his family, to which Major Fitz-David is not at liberty to allude. Properly interpreted . . . that letter is a warning\u201d (20; emphasis added). This short letter 57 \u00a0 is the first \u201cinterior text\u201d within the novel, and although it is brief and seemingly to the point, different characters\/readers produce drastically different analyses of its contents and meaning. As in Collins\u2019s earlier novels, \u201cliterary\u201d detection is frustrated by ambiguous, unreliable, or absent texts. Janice Allan describes Valeria\u2019s investigation as one \u201cdominated by the undecidability of writing\u201d (53). The frustrations of interpretation manifest themselves early in the novel, as Valeria struggles to interpret her husband\u2019s wish that she refrain from looking into his past life: [T]he only words which really produced an impression on my mind were the words . . . which he had spoken to himself. He had said: \u2018Nothing, of course, or she would not be here.\u2019 If I had found out some other truth besides the truth about the name, would it have prevented me from ever returning to my husband? Was that what he meant? Did the sort of discovery that he contemplated, mean something so dreadful that it would have parted us at once and for ever? I stood by his chair in silence; and tried to find the answer to those terrible questions. (53; emphasis in original) Like Rosamond in The Dead Secret and Marian in The Woman in White, Valeria employs the methodology of a literary scholar engaged in a close reading of a text, mimicking the reader\u2019s own interpretation of the narrative. Valeria identifies a phrase that strikes her as being particularly ambiguous, and she attempts to tease out a possible meaning. Much of The Law and the Lady is taken up with textual analysis.52 In chapter XXI, Valeria analyzes Mrs. Beauly\u2019s letter to Eustace (included in the written account of Eustace\u2019s trial), which she argues \u201coffers . . . trustworthy evidence to show the state of the woman\u2019s mind when she paid her visit to Gleninch\u201d 58 \u00a0 (185). Like a critical reader, Valeria quotes from the letter to support her analysis and interprets the tone of the letter to be \u201cthe language of a woman shamelessly and furiously in love with a man\u2014not her husband\u201d (185). Valeria\u2019s analysis of the trial transcript is significant because it highlights the similarities between literary interpretation and detection. In \u201cThe Detective as Reader: Narrative and Reading Concepts in Detective Fiction,\u201d Peter H\u00fchn discusses the detective as literary interpreter: \u201cThe continual rearrangement and reinterpretation of clues is . . . the basic method of reading and understanding unfamiliar texts\u2014commonly called the \u2018hermeneutic circle,\u2019 which involves devising interpretive patterns to integrate signs and then using new signs to modify and adjust these patterns accordingly\u201d (455). Untrustworthy written documents and undecipherable textual evidence are a concern for both Valeria and the reader, since both are engaged in \u201cliterary\u201d detection; however, the unreliability of Valeria\u2019s narration makes the reader\u2019s task of solving the novel\u2019s mysteries before the final chapter both pleasurable and frustrating (and thus masochistic). It is never made clear why Valeria feels compelled to write this narrative, so we do not know what motivates her character or what her narrative biases might be.53 Whereas the \u201cevidence\u201d presented in the narrative of The Woman in White is based on carefully considered recollections and meticulous diary entries (so we are told by the narrator, Hartright), at the very end of The Law and the Lady, Collins reveals that Valeria \u201cwrite[s] from memory, unassisted by notes or diaries\u201d (399), which calls into question the reliability of her narrative. 54 Valeria\u2019s account of the trial is especially problematic: she assures the reader (and herself) that \u201cparticular care had been taken to secure a literally correct report of the evidence given by the various witnesses\u201d (124), but we soon learn that she (or rather Collins) has omitted and altered portions of the transcript.55 In The Law and the Lady, the narrator provides us with abridged and reconstructed versions of the documents 59 \u00a0 which exist in the fictional world of the novel. Collins provides the reader with only enough information to become interested in the novel\u2019s mysteries, without giving us the satisfaction of feeling as if we have access to all relevant evidence.56 If masochism consists of \u201cdeliberate pursuit of or enthusiasm for an activity that appears to be painful, frustrating, or tedious\u201d (OED), literary detection in and of The Law and the Lady is certainly a masochistic undertaking. THE DETECTIVE: DISCIPLINARIAN AND DEVIANT In Detection and Its Designs, Peter Thoms argues that \u201cdetection [in nineteenth-century fiction] is internalized so that the individual embodies a system of regulation, being both the oppressive law and its transgressor\u201d (6). Similarly, in The Novel and the Police, D. A. Miller argues that non-traditional disciplinary power leads to \u201cendless self-examination\u201d (18), so that those who pursue justice from outside the parameters of the law police themselves as well as others. The amateur detectives of Collins\u2019s novels\u2014including Valeria in The Law and the Lady\u2014participate in this \u201calternative power of regulation,\u201d and by so doing they become both disciplinarians and transgressors.57 In addition, the reader of Collins\u2019s novels is both detective and criminal: as detectives, characters and readers represent both the system of disciplinary regulation and the transgressors who must be disciplined. Finally, as Jones suggests, the reader \u201cposited by [Collins\u2019s] text\u201d (197) is both \u201cwell-conditioned to respond to the affective stimuli of the sensation novel,\u201d and \u201cdeeply suspicious\u201d of the sensation genre (197). This reader is \u201cwell- disciplined and deviant\u201d in his or her enjoyment and distrust of the sensation novel (196), and thus prone to masochistic sentiments related to the guilty pleasures of sensational reading. Miller suggests that the spheres of the middle and upper classes in Victorian fiction are governed by \u201can alternative power of regulation\u201d (7), which includes the family unit (1), the 60 \u00a0 amateur detective, and the forces of \u201cpublic opinion\u201d and \u201csocial humiliation\u201d (14). In The Law and the Lady, the law has failed to vindicate or condemn Eustace Macallan, but the forces of \u201cpublic opinion\u201d and \u201csocial humiliation\u201d judge him to be guilty. Valeria, who \u201cvow[s] to devote [her] life to the sacred object of vindicating [her] husband\u2019s innocence\u201d (Collins 183), takes on the role of amateur detective, another alternative \u201cpolicing\u201d force. Mr Playmore\u2019s comment that \u201c[t]he light which the whole machinery of the Law was unable to throw on the poisoning case at Gleninch, has been accidentally let in on it, by a Lady who refuses to listen to reason and who insists on having her own way\u201d (277), highlights the opposition between the \u201cmachinery of the Law\u201d and the amateur (woman) detective who operates outside it. Not only does Valeria work outside the institutions of the law and the police, but as a detective engaged in distasteful activities (albeit with good intentions), she also works outside of, and in opposition to, the forces of \u201cpublic opinion\u201d and \u201csocial humiliation.\u201d Anthea Trodd argues that the police (in novels and in Victorian culture generally) are associated with the \u201cworld of subterfuge and surveillance\u201d (436); indeed, the author of an unsigned article in The Times (1845) criticized the police force\u2019s use of plain-clothed officers, and argued that \u201cthere was, and always will be, something repugnant to the English mind in the bare idea of espionage\u201d (4). If the professional members of the police force are tainted by their association with \u201csubterfuge and surveillance,\u201d the amateur detective working outside the law would be even more \u201crepugnant.\u201d The anonymous author of \u201cNovels\u201d in Blackwood\u2019s Edinburgh Magazine emphasizes the distasteful and transgressive nature of detection by suggesting that one of the \u201cfaults of popular fiction\u201d is \u201cits tendency to detectivism [and] criminalism\u201d (170). In the course of the article, the writer reassures the reader that \u201cwe have no real intention . . . of carrying you back in review over your sensation novels, or waking up again your exhausted interest in those 61 \u00a0 personages, male and female, with whom you would certainly permit yourself or your family to associate only in print\u201d (170; emphasis added). However moral the motives of amateur detectives may be, their association with \u201cdetectivism\u201d and \u201ccriminalism\u201d categorizes them as disreputable and socially outcast. As a result, detection becomes masochistic: to enjoy the pleasures of solving mysteries and vindicating the innocent, the detective (and the reader) must endure the frustrations of interpreting evidence and the shame of engaging in socially unacceptable activities. Valeria\u2019s investigation recalls the unacceptable activities of Marian and Hartright in The Woman in White, as well as that of Rosamond in The Dead Secret: in all three novels, the amateur detectives place themselves in the uncomfortable and even untenable position of disciplinarian (ferreting out secrets and restoring moral order) and of transgressor (reading secret diaries, adopting disguises, eavesdropping, and spying). Collins\u2019s readers are implicated in these activities because they, too, are reading confidential documents and \u201clistening in\u201d (or \u201creading in\u201d) on private conversations. In The Law and the Lady, Valeria snoops through her husband\u2019s private papers (25), she visits Major Fitz-David under her false married name (58), and she uses her feminine influence on the Major to coax him into revealing her husband\u2019s secret. Mrs. Macallan warns Valeria that she will \u201crisk [her] reputation and [her] happiness\u201d by pursuing the legal case against Eustace (198); this warning is repeated by other characters throughout the novel. Valeria refers to the novel as her \u201cshameful confession,\u201d and includes herself in the \u201cPrayer Book category\u201d of \u201cmiserable sinners\u201d (362). This shame is the result of Valeria\u2019s association with the impropriety of detection (and of the transgression of her marriage vow to \u201csubmit\u201d to her husband\u2019s wishes), and its effect is to remind the reader of his or her own involvement in these duplicitous activities. 62 \u00a0 THE DEVIANT DETECTIVE AND THE WOMAN READER Audrey Caming Fein argues that female detectives are \u201cespecially transgressive\u201d (92).58 The author of an unsigned review of The Law and the Lady in The Examiner criticizes Valeria as a \u201cprying, vain, obstinate woman, who occasionally loses her ordinary identity, and steps out of her own character\u201d (415); perhaps the author feels Valeria\u2019s character is inconsistent because it is inconceivable that a \u201cbride and young mother\u201d (415), as he describes her, could be both the \u201cangel in the house\u201d and a worldly detective. The author goes on to disparage the \u201clow moral tone attributed to some of the female characters,\u201d calling it a \u201cblemish [which] pervades the whole story, and amounts to a libel on the female sex\u201d (415). Clearly, the shameful, disreputable nature of detective work has a negative impact on female characters.59 The \u201cespecially transgressive\u201d qualities of fictional female detectives are significant because many readers of sensation fiction were supposed to be women. For the \u201cwoman reader,\u201d Collins\u2019s fiction is arguably more masochistic, since the guilty pleasures of detection and interpretation of private secrets and criminal activities within the narratives, in addition to the guilty pleasure of reading sensation novels, were greater for Victorian women. Critics of popular fiction played on the Victorian stereotype of the \u201cwoman reader,\u201d a woman who loves tales of terror and excitement but who is unable to control her emotional responses.60 As we saw earlier, they argued that certain kinds of books \u201ccould arouse a female\u2019s sexual impulses, drain her vital energies, damage her mental and reproductive health, divorce her attention from her maternal and domestic duties, undermine her self-control, and rot her mind, leading to ruination\u201d (Golden 22). If we compare these \u201csymptoms\u201d to Valeria\u2019s physical and emotional responses to reading, we see that she represents, in many respects, a stereotypically emotional and excitable woman reader.61 When Valeria reads a letter from Benjamin containing the news that the fragments of 63 \u00a0 Sara Macallan\u2019s letter have been found, she is \u201cobliged to wait and let [her] overpowering agitation subside, before [she] could read any more\u201d (374). This is a scene of masochistic reading, much like the passage in The Dead Secret in which Sarah hides the letter containing the secret in the Myrtle Room, reading it over before hiding it in a drawer. Sara Macallan\u2019s letter is so emotionally distressing that it causes a physical reaction, but Valeria\u2019s desire to know its contents is so great that she chooses to endure the physical (and emotional) suffering of reading. Valeria\u2019s reading (as part of her investigation) is also masochistic in part because it is transgressive.62 As Lisa Marie Dresner points out, in the course of the novel, Valeria comes up against a series of individuals who represent \u201cvarious institutions of patriarchy\u201d (37) in their criticism of her investigation. Eustace Macallan\u2019s character recalls Mr. Orridge (a doctor) and Mr. Frankland (Rosamond\u2019s husband), who attempt to curtail Rosamond\u2019s enthusiasm for detection in The Dead Secret. When Valeria revisits her desire to know more about her husband\u2019s past life, he tells her, \u201cI thought we had agreed, Valeria, not to return to that subject again. . . . You only distress yourself and distress me\u201d (45). Here, Eustace seems to be concerned that Valeria will be unable to handle this emotional \u201cdistress.\u201d Later, he seems more interested in curailing Valeria\u2019s rampant curiosity: \u201cIf you could control your curiosity . . . we might live happily enough. I thought I had married a woman who was superior to the vulgar failings of her sex\u201d (54). In these two passages, Eustace alludes to the Victorian assumption of women\u2019s susceptibility to \u201cvulgar\u201d curiosity and emotional over-excitement. Benjamin, Mr. Playmore, Major Fitz-David, and her uncle (the Vicar) also represent patriarchal authorities who attempt to dissuade Valeria from pursuing knowledge of Eustace\u2019s past. 63 Benjamin begs her to \u201cdo nothing rash\u201d (51), and declares that \u201cthe new generation is beyond [his] fathoming\u201d (117). Major Fitz-David warns Valeria, \u201cIf you have any doubt about 64 \u00a0 your capacity to sustain a shock which will strike you to the soul, for God\u2019s sake give up the idea of finding out your husband\u2019s secret!\u201d (75). Valeria\u2019s uncle declares that \u201c[t]he poor thing\u2019s troubles have turned her brain\u201d (120). He disapproves of her proposal to analyze the transcript of Eustace\u2019s trial, saying that it is \u201c[n]ice reading for a young woman\u201d and that that she \u201cwill be wanting a batch of nasty French novels next\u201d (121). This last passage makes an explicit connection between certain kinds of reading and detection: both are \u201cnasty\u201d in the sense of being socially unacceptable, and thus unsuitable for \u201ca young woman.\u201d As in The Dead Secret and The Woman in White, male critics in The Law and the Lady are unable to persuade the female protagonist to give up her investigation. Valeria describes how she \u201cfelt [her]self blush for [her] own headstrong resistance\u201d (284), but she is not ashamed enough to abandon her investigation. She suggests that her obstinate personality is to blame for her shameful rejection of sound (male) advice: \u201c[M]y husband\u2019s terrible warning . . . produced no deterrent effect on my mind: it only stimulated my resolution to discover what he was hiding from me\u201d (55). Her claim that she has no inkling of \u201chow other women might have acted in [her] place\u201d might be a subtle joke on the part of Collins, since, in The Dead Secret, when Rosamond\u2019s husband inquires if she plans to search the supposedly haunted sections of their mansion in Cornwall, she exclaims, \u201cAm I not a woman?\u201d (138), suggesting that it is in women\u2019s nature to be excessively curious. KNOWLEDGE, IGNORANCE, SUFFERING Valeria\u2019s curiosity and desire to solve the mystery are greater than her shame at being a (woman) detective. In Serious Pleasures of Suspense, Levine emphasizes the \u201canxious delay between the excitement of conjecture and the appearance of more certain knowledge,\u201d which 65 \u00a0 functions in Victorian literature (6). It is this \u201canxious delay\u201d which makes anticipation and suspense masochistic. Collins connects anticipation with the desire to know, which is the essence of detection and of suspenseful reading. In The Law and the Lady, knowledge brings as much suffering as ignorance and the desire to know. J. M. Allan suggests that \u201cthe thematic preoccupations and formal considerations of nineteenth-century detective fiction\u201d are characterized by \u201ca new emphasis on the unknowable or strange that comes to be figured as mystery\u201d (45). In her quest for knowledge and her ultimate withholding of knowledge (she convinces Eustace not to read his first wife\u2019s suicide letter) Valeria represents the sensation genre, which is notorious for \u201cwithholding crucial pieces of knowledge\u201d (Levine 2).64 Collins emphasizes the theme of knowledge, ignorance, and suffering by alluding to the biblical story of Adam and Eve.65 In her discussion of Collins\u2019s allusions to the story of Adam and Eve, Lonoff argues that the \u201cmajor theme\u201d of The Law and the Lady is \u201cdisobedience\u2014or rather, the paradoxical nature of a woman\u2019s disobedience. . . . [D]isobedience places this devoted wife in an ambiguous position, and instead of choosing between knowledge and duty, she resorts to a form of deceit\u201d (149). Kathleen O\u2019Fallon compares several of Collins\u2019s heroines with Eve: \u201cthe most important of Collins\u2019s heroines are fallen in the sense that they are the daughters of Eve, postlapsarian women with minds of their own and the strength of character to insist they be allowed to use them. They share with Eve the activity of mind and assertiveness that causes her to taste the fruit of forbidden knowledge\u201d (228). The comparison of Valeria to Eve highlights the theme of ignorance and (the desire for) knowledge: \u201cEve was, after all, the first bride to make a mistake. She disobeyed the law of God and her husband by refusing to be kept in ignorance\u201d (233). 66 \u00a0 The belief that \u201cignorance is bliss\u201d and that knowledge can only bring suffering is held by the same characters who represent the patriarchal critics of detection and emotionally evocative reading. Eustace Macallan\u2019s advice to Valeria establishes a direct link between happiness and (lack of) knowledge: to frighten her away from potentially dangerous knowledge, he tells her, \u201cif you ever discover what I am now keeping from your knowledge\u2014from that moment you live a life of torture; your tranquillity is gone. Your days will be days of terror; your nights will be full of horrid dreams\u2014through no fault of mine, mind!\u201d (54). Eustace maintains his belief in the benefits of ignorance even after Valeria discovers his secret, and assures him of her loyalty: \u201cAs long as you were ignorant [of my past], the possibilities of happiness were always within our reach\u201d (106). When Valeria has at last obtained proof of her husband\u2019s innocence in the poisoning of Sara Macallan, Eustace agrees not to read his first wife\u2019s suicide letter, believing he will be happier if he remains in ignorance\u2014a belief which Valeria encourages.66 Valeria\u2019s response to the notion that ignorance brings happiness and knowledge brings despair is to feel that the suspense of curiosity and anticipation, fuelled by ignorance, is \u201csimply unendurable\u201d (47).67 Even after Valeria is finally convinced to give up her investigations, she still longs to unravel the mystery: \u201cI still felt secret longings, in those dangerous moments when I was left to myself, to know whether the search for the torn letter had, or had not, taken place. What wayward creatures we are! With everything that a woman could want to make her happy, I was ready to put that happiness in peril, rather than remain ignorant of what was going on at Gleninch!\u201d (373-74). In this passage, it is the desire for knowledge (rather than its pursuit through detection) that is \u201cwayward,\u201d or transgressive. Towards the end of the novel, it seems clear that the suffering of having knowledge is preferable to the suffering of ignorance. From the onset of her investigation, Valeria decides that 67 \u00a0 anything is better than the psychological anguish of ignorance and suspense: \u201cI left [Mrs. Macallan\u2019s] house, positively resolved, come what might of it, to discover the secret which the mother and son were hiding from me\u201d (43; emphasis added). As Lonoff suggests, \u201cValeria gains knowledge of Eustace\u2019s past at the temporary cost of her domestic bliss, but her fall is fortunate, in that it enables her to save her marriage and her husband\u2019s peace of mind\u201d (135). Once Valeria has read the contents of Eustace\u2019s first wife\u2019s suicide letter, she reflects on the knowledge she has gained: \u201cI had devoted my life to the attainment of one object; and that object I had gained. There, on the table before me, lay the triumphant vindication of my husband\u2019s innocence; and . . . my one hope was that he might never see it! My one desire was to hide it from the public view!\u201d (395) Despite her horror at the contents of Sara Macallan\u2019s suicide letter, Valeria\u2019s suffering ironically makes possible the peace of mind she enjoys at the end of the novel. DOMINATION AND SUBMISSION: A QUESTION OF AGENCY Because Valeria ultimately gives up her investigation to return to the domestic sphere as wife and mother, Lonoff argues that Valeria\u2019s \u201crebellion ends in submission\u201d (167). Similarly, Audrey Caming Fein compares Valeria to Rosamond in The Dead Secret, and argues that the fact that both women are \u201cpunished\u201d for their \u201cdisobedience\u201d to their husbands indicates \u201cCollins\u2019s ultimate validation of traditional gender roles\u201d (83). In fact, submission is a major theme of The Law and the Lady. The novel begins with \u201csubjection,\u201d as Valeria\u2019s uncle reads the end of the Marriage Service of the Church of England: \u201cFor after this manner in the old time the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their own husbands; even as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord\u201d (7). Lonoff and O\u2019Fallon point to this passage in relation to the theme of disobedience, but the theme of submission is equally 68 \u00a0 prevalent in The Law and the Lady, particularly since Collins makes frequent use of the word \u201csubmit,\u201d especially with reference to the legal verdict of \u201cnot proven.\u201d 68 Once Valeria discovers that her husband was tried for the murder of his first wife, she argues that \u201c[as] dreadful as the discovery had been, I would rather have made it, and suffer under it, as I was suffering now, than to have been kept in the dark\u201d (98). Collins emphasizes the fact that Valeria chooses her suffering (or at least, chooses between two kinds of suffering\u2014ignorance or knowledge); the question is, does the reader choose his or her own suffering, or is s\/he entrapped by Collins\u2019s narratives? As we have seen, Jones defines readerly affect as \u201cthe control a novel exerts over its reader\u201d (205), and argues that all narratives are masochistic to some degree (210).69 In addition to \u201cwithholding knowledge\u201d (Levine 2), authors of sensation fiction have \u201ca peculiarly directive power over us\u201d (Freud, \u201cUncanny\u201d 641). The author of an unsigned review of The Law and the Lady in the Saturday Review argues that Collins \u201cwins his audience . . . by the promise of telling them a secret, but when they are caught he does not quite so quickly let them go\u201d (Page 203). To what extent, then, does a sensation author such as Collins have the power to provoke and control particular emotional responses in their readers through the use of suspense, ambiguity, and characters whose detective work mimics that of the readers themselves? Ellen Rosenman argues that the masochist \u201cpursues a forbidden pleasure or agency but arranges to suffer for it, and therefore maintains moral credibility\u201d (23-24). According to this argument, the masochist chooses to suffer as \u201ca cover\u201d (24) for the pleasure of acting as detectives\u2014a transgressive activity in which the reader is implicated.70 Collins may direct his readers\u2019 emotional responses once they begin to read, but the choice to begin reading is theirs. Gregory Forter makes a similar observation in his study of the \u201chard-boiled\u201d detective novel. He 69 \u00a0 writes, \u201c[T]he end-pleasure of narrative meaning is replaced by a pleasure in the ravishing image of an irrepressibly murderous violence. . . . [W]e solicit [this violence], call it into being, submit to it, not just as the condition but as the very convulsiveness of an utterly in(sub)ordinate enjoyment\u201d (1; emphasis added). Although there are considerable differences between \u201chard- boiled\u201d detective novels and Victorian sensation fiction, the thrilling and yet frustrating activity of attempting to solve a mystery when the author has no intention of allowing the reader to discover the solution to the mystery a moment too soon is common to both genres. In both the detective story and the sensation novel, the reader \u201csolicit[s]\u201d and \u201csubmit[s] to\u201d the masochistic pleasure of the text. In the first chapter of this study, I avoided focusing on definitions of masochism that emphasized its role in sexual fantasies; I would like to bring sex back into the equation as a possible avenue for further study. Might it be possible to think of masochism\u2014particularly metaphorical or psychological masochism\u2014as a kind of auto-erotism or masturbation? Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick suggests that \u201cin the context of hierarchically oppressive relations between genders and between sexualities, masturbation can seem to offer\u2014not least as an analogy to writing\u2014a reservoir of potentially utopian metaphors and energies for independence, self- possession, and a rapture that may owe relatively little to political or interpersonal abjection\u201d (821). Given the separate spheres gender ideology of the Victorian period, reading illicit literature for the heterogeneous combination of emotions that the act of reading produces seems like the kind of auto-eroticism that Sedgwick associates with \u201cindependence, self-possession, and . . . rapture.\u201d Masochistic reading is about the conscious choice to engage in a transgressive, frustrating, frightening, shameful, yet pleasurable activity. 70 \u00a0 NOTES TO CHAPTER ONE 1 Although it can be argued that there is little in Collins\u2019s novels that could be defined as \u201crealist\u201d in the sense of \u201crealist fiction,\u201d Collins frequently emphasized the plausibility of the events in his novels. In his preface to the 1860 three-volume edition of The Woman in White, Collins maintains that he has filled the story with \u201chundreds of little \u2018connecting links,\u2019 of trifling value in themselves, but of the utmost importance in maintaining the smoothness, the reality, and the probability of the entire narrative\u201d (Bachman & Cox 619). In 1865, Henry James commented on the domestication of the gothic: \u201cTo Mr. Collins belongs the credit of having introduced into fiction those more mysterious of mysteries, the mysteries that are at our own doors . . . And there is no doubt that these were infinitely the more terrible\u201d (quoted in Taylor 1). The sensation novel brought the frightening aspects of the gothic to readers\u2019 \u201cown doors.\u201d 2 For the purposes of my argument, I am using the word critic to mean \u201cOne who pronounces judgement on any thing or person; esp. one who passes severe or unfavourable judgement,\u201d rather than \u201cOne skilful in judging of the qualities and merits of literary or artistic works\u201d (Oxford English Dictionary Online). I shall clarify further what I mean by \u201ccritic\u201d or \u201copponent\u201d later in this introduction, when I discuss the context of the sensation novel\u2019s development and early reception. 3 My basic definition of masochistic reading is reading which produces mixed emotional responses (both positive and negative); I will provide a more detailed explanation later in this introductory chapter. 4 For instance, the minor mystery of Fosco\u2019s \u201cofficial-looking\u201d correspondence (Collins 345-46) in The Woman in White is never resolved. See note 41. 5 Here, I give a brief summary of the kinds of critical responses provoked by the emergence of the sensation novel, and by its predecessor, the gothic novel. I will provide a more substantial account of the historical context of the sensation novel and its reception later in this introductory chapter. 6 See \u201cThe Archbishop of York on Works of Fiction,\u201d The Times 25019, Column A (2 Nov 1864), 9. See Alexander. Bain, The Emotions and the Will (London: John W Parker & Son, West Strand, 1859), Electronic reproduction, PsycBooks EBook Collection (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2005); see also Nicholas Dames, \u201cWave-Theories and Affective Physiologies: The Cognitive Strain in Victorian Novel Theories,\u201d Victorian Studies 42.6 (Winter 2004), 206-216. See Margaret Oliphant, \u201cNovels,\u201d Blackwood\u2019s Edinburgh Magazine 623.102 (September 1867), 257-280, and \u201cSensation Novels,\u201d Blackwood's Magazine 91 (May 1962), 564-84. 7 By \u201cpleasurable sensation\u201d I mean a positive emotional response. 8 The only two studies which associate detection and masochism are Gregory Forter\u2019s \u201cCriminal Pleasures, Pleasurable Crime\u201d (Style 29.3) and Peter Thoms\u2019s chapter on \u201cAuthority and Submission in The Hound of the Baskervilles,\u201d in Detection and Its Designs: Narrative and Power in 19th-Century Detective Fiction. 9 Andrea K. Henderson\u2019s recent work, Romanticism and the Painful Pleasures of Modern Life, is similarly useful for my project because she focuses mainly on the socio-economic nature of masochistic desire, rather than solely on its sexual component (although she considers this element as well). She notes that \u201cthe desire of . . . heroes and heroines of Romantic literature would seem to be precisely for the painful nonsatisfaction of desire: they are attracted most to those people who keep them in suspense, dominate them, and even humiliate them\u201d (1-2). Although she refers here to characters rather than readers, her concept of the \u201cpainful nonsatisfaction of desire\u201d and her emphasis on suspense, domination, and humiliation are useful for the establishment of a definition of masochism that does not depend on sexual relations or psychoanalytic theory. Henderson discusses the \u201csuspenseful, sublime pleasures of self-abnegation\u201d of speculative consumerism, in which \u201cthe consumer develops obsessive attachment to idealized objects of desire that are imagined to be capable of providing infinite satisfaction even as they withhold that satisfaction\u201d (5, 23). Although Henderson\u2019s study is mainly concerned with the Romantic period and the \u201cthe political and economic origins and repercussions of the Romantic fascination of individual desire\u201d (6), her study highlights the importance of suspense to what she calls the \u201cdeferral of gratification\u201d (8), which is integral to the sensation genre. The novels of Wilkie Collins encourage a different kind of speculation from what Henderson 71 \u00a0 describes: the detection of hidden secrets, the revelation of which is repeatedly deferred (and occasionally, though rarely, deferred indefinitely). 10 For instance, while Jessica Benjamin questions the tendency to associate domination with masculinity and submission with femininity, she is ultimately focused on domination as a relationship between the genders, and does not ever take gender out of the equation. In her psychoanalytic feminist exploration of the relationship between masochism and the gothic heroine, Michelle Mass\u00e9 argues that the gothic is based on a \u201cpremise of domination\u201d (9), and defines masochism as \u201cthe learned behaviour of the oppressed\u201d (45). She argues that the appeal of the gothic novel is that it functions as a \u201c[m]asochistic fantasy\u201d which allows the spectator to shift herself from the position of one who passively submits to one who controls and directs the infliction of pain (47). Although Marianne Noble\u2019s approach to masochism differs from Mass\u00e9\u2019s in that it is not psychoanalytic in nature, both authors regard the masochism associated with women\u2019s literature as a strategy to resist physical, cultural, or other forms of oppression. In addition, both authors connect masochism with female sexuality; for instance, Noble argues that \u201cviolent images and tropes [in American sentimental literature] serve as the language of erotic [female] desire\u201d (13). 11 Reader-response theory is also important to discussions of detective fiction and the uncanny; I will return to these theoretical perspectives in the course of this introductory chapter. 12 Early attempts to account for mixed emotional responses to literature (and theatre) include Aristotle\u2019s Poetics and Longinus\u2019s On the Sublime; later examinations of mixed emotional responses to literature include John Aikin and Anna Laetitia Aikin Barbauld\u2019s essay \u201cOn the Pleasure Derived from Objects of Terror\u201d (1775), which suggests that readers will suffer the \u201cpain of suspense\u201d to quench their \u201cirresistible desire of satisfying curiosity\u201d (123). Although Aikin and Barbauld\u2019s basic premise\u2014that \u201cthe pain of suspense, and the irresistible desire of satisfying curiosity, when once raised, will account for our eagerness to go quite through an adventure, though we suffer actual pain during the whole course of it\u201d (123\u2014is useful for this project, I would argue that their analysis is somewhat simplistic. They suggest that \u201cWe rather chuse to suffer the smart pang of a violent emotion than the uneasy craving of an unsatisfied desire\u201d (123); it is my contention that Collins\u2019s novels aim to make the reader suffer both the \u201csmart pang[s] of . . . violent emotion\u201d and the \u201cuneasy craving[s] of . . . unsatisfied desire[s].\u201d 13 The Oxford World\u2019s Classics edition of A Philosophical Enquiry, which I will be using, is based on the second edition of Burke\u2019s text, published in 1759. 14 Burke focuses mainly on fear, pleasure, and sympathy; he does discuss emotions such as guilt, shame, curiosity, anticipation, or anxiety\u2014all of which are important to my discussion of masochism. 15 According to Todorov\u2019s schema of terror genres, the fantastic exists in a space between the uncanny (which does not include supernatural elements) and the marvellous (which does include supernatural elements). If it is not clear to the reader whether the strange occurrences in a narrative are supernatural, the story is either fantastic-uncanny or fantastic-marvellous, based on what the reader determines to be the case once s\/he has finished reading. If s\/he continues to hesitate between these two interpretations, the narrative is purely fantastic. A narrative of \u201cevents [is] related which may be readily accounted for by the laws of reason, but which [is] . . . incredible, extraordinary, shocking, singular, disturbing or unexpected,\u201d provoking in both the characters and the reader \u201ca reaction similar to that which works of the fantastic have made familiar,\u201d is not fantastic because there is no hesitation; it is simply uncanny (46). I would argue that, according to Todorov\u2019s schema, the sensation novel lies between the uncanny and fantastic-uncanny genres. 16 The difference between the sensation novel and the detective story is that the former is arguably designed to create anxiety and the latter is designed to relieve anxiety. The explanation for this apparent contradiction is the conventionality of the detective genre: experienced readers recognize the various conventions of the detective genre in each detective story they read, so that \u201cthe recognition of the pattern is reassuring and free of stress\u201d (Dove 24). In contrast, the hallmarks of Collins\u2019s novels are ambiguity and impossibilities of interpretation. According to Dove, although the reader engages passively in attempting to discover who done it, s\/he is not an active participant in the detection around which the genre is centred. However true this may be for contemporary readers of detective stories, Dove\u2019s argument does not apply to the works of Wilkie Collins. If Collins uses elements of what we now refer to as detective fiction, his readers would not have been experienced in the \u201cmodes\u201d of detective fiction because the genre was then in its infancy. The certainty of recognizing generic conventions did not exist. Dove and Thoms are not the only scholars who have identified the metatextual aspect of detective fiction. In his essay on \u201cThe Typology of Detective Fiction,\u201d Todorov points out that the narrator of a detective story will often 72 \u00a0 acknowledge in some way that s\/he is \u201cwriting a book\u201d (45); similarly, S. E. Sweeney argues that \u201call detective stories refer, if only obliquely, to their own fictionality and their own interpretation\u201d (3). 17 Bain was not the only Victorian who theorized about what Dames refers to as the \u201cpsychological process[es] of novel reading [and] novel consumption\u201d (Physiology 3). In The Physiology of the Novel, Dames identifies a group of men and women, literary critics and \u201cmen of science,\u201d whose collective writings make up a pre-Jamesean theory of the novel, which focused on \u201ca processual, affective, reader-centred methodology\u201d of Victorian novel consumption (10). In the course of his introduction, Dames identifies a point that is central to my project: as scholars, we cannot know how most Victorians read and responded to novels, but \u201cwe can know how they were thought to have read,\u201d that is, how Victorians thought Victorian readers read (7). It is not my intention to use actual reader experiences (which are impossible to reproduce) to establish my argument that Collins\u2019s novels elicit masochistic or mixed emotional readerly responses; instead, my focus is on contemporary assessments of Collins\u2019s novels by Victorian reviewers and critics (and by Collins himself), and how the novels themselves solicit particular kinds of emotional responses. 18 Bain states, \u201cIn such cases the shock of suffering is accompanied with certain collaterals of an opposite nature; and it may also be so arranged that the pain may be just enough to stimulate a copious wave of agreeable emotion. . . . But it is in the sympathetic terrors that the sting of pain is extracted, and only the pleasurable stimulus left behind. In proportion as the reality of evil is removed far from ourselves, we are at liberty to join in the excitement produced by the expression of fear\u201d (91-92) 19 Of course, women were not alone in enjoying the clandestine pleasures of \u201csensational\u201d reading. The author of an 1867 article entitled \u201cNovels\u201d begins with an ubi sunt lament for the time when \u201c[m]en did not snatch the guilty volume out of sight when any innocent creature drew nigh, or mature women lock up the book with which they condescended to amuse themselves\u201d (257). This passage suggests that men, too, enjoyed the taboo nature of \u201cguilty volume[s]\u201d, and even the \u201cpaternalistic surveillance\u201d (Flint 4) that accompanied the act of reading them. 20 Of the studies that do not focus entirely on Wilkie Collins, there are a number in which his novels feature prominently. Many of these studies focus particularly on the sensation genre and the various contexts in which it became popular; examples include Pykett\u2019s general introduction The Sensation Novel from The Woman in White to The Moonstone, Hughes\u2019s The Maniac in the Cellar, Rance\u2019s Wilkie Collins and Other Sensation Novelists, and Harrison and Fantina\u2019s Victorian Sensations. Others, such as Milbank\u2019s Daughters of the House, place some of Collins\u2019s works within the larger context of Victorian literature. There are also several collections of essays employing a variety of critical perspectives on the works of Wilkie Collins, such as Wilkie Collins: Contemporary Critical Essays, edited by Pykett, Wilkie Collins to the Forefront, edited by Smith and Terry, and the more recent Reality\u2019s Dark Light, edited by Bachman and Cox, as well as Mangham\u2019s Wilkie Collins: Interdisciplinary Essays. NOTES TO CHAPTER TWO 21 It ran twenty-three weeks, from 3 January to 18 June, in the 1857 volume of Dickens\u2019s weekly periodical Household Words, and was subsequently issued in book format. 22 This constitutes the appeal of the gothic novel according to Michelle Mass\u00e9 (47). 23 For a further discussion of Jones\u2019s argument, see chapter one. 24 See chapter one. 25 Although the sensation genre was in its infancy at the time Collins wrote The Dead Secret, his readers would have been very familiar with its predecessor, the gothic genre, and its conventions). 26 The Dead Secret is saturated with domestic scenes turned gothic by \u201cdim light\u201d or \u201cgeneral obscurity\u201d (13). For instance, Porthgenna Tower has the \u201cfeudal look\u201d common to earlier gothic novels; all that remains of the original, \u201cstrongly fortified\u201d edifice is a \u201cruinous wall\u201d and a \u201cheavy, low tower\u201d (Collins, Dead 58, 29). The most gothic area of the Porthgenna estate is the location of the secret\u2014the uninhabited north side of the mansion. Evidently long-uninhabited, bordered by a \u201cweedy, deserted garden,\u201d spotted with broken and dust-covered windows and shutters, and embellished by \u201cuntrained ivy [and] rank vegetation growing in fissures of the stone-work\u201d and 73 \u00a0 \u201cfestoons of spiders' webs,\u201d this part of Porthgenna Tower provides a stark contrast to the rest of the building (30- 31). 27 Given her superstitious nature and her \u201cunnatural\u201d appearance\u2014her unnaturally grey hair, her \u201clarge, startled, black eyes,\u201d and her habit of \u201cwhisper[ing] affrightedly to herself\u201d\u2014it seems safe to say that she is a decidedly uncanny individual, and that her presence contributes to the generally uncanny atmosphere of Porthgenna Tower (Collins 12, 13). By refusing to provide an explanation for Sarah\u2019s odd appearance until almost the end of the novel, Collins enhances the uncanny aspect of this character. 28 In The Passions; or Mind and Matter (1848), John Gideon Millingen argues that \u201cIn woman, the concentration of her feelings . . . adds to their intensity; and like a smouldering fire that has at last got vent, her passions, when no longer trammelled by conventional propriety, burst forth in unquenchable violence. Insanity frequently offers a sad proof of this fact\u201d (169). 29 I use the word \u201csensational\u201d here to mean \u201caiming at violently exciting effects\u201d (OED) 30 The term actualization comes from reader-response theory; according to Wolfgang Iser, the process of \u201cactualization\u201d (106) consists of the interaction between the author\u2019s creation and the reader\u2019s reception, which make up the text. This concept is discussed in slightly more detail in chapter one of this thesis. 31 Catherine Moreland is the principle character of Austen\u2019s Northanger Abbey (1818). 32 In Images of the Woman Reader in Victorian British and American Fiction, Catherine J. Golden maintains that \u201c[t]he tropes of consumption and addiction can be seen as a logical extension of the biological and medical arguments [against reading],\u201d and that \u201c[o]pponents feared that the practice of turning to fiction for pleasure or escape from the realities of domestic live was in itself addictive\u201d (36). 33 The potential \u201cchastisement\u201d for readers of sensation novels might have consisted of a verbal reprimand, or of confiscation of the novel in question. In The Woman Reader 1837-1914, Kate Flint suggests that numerous accounts of reading in the Victorian period contained \u201cprohibitions, warnings, and censorships\u201d (209). According to her research, \u201c[s]ome of these controls [over what was, or was not, considered suitable reading] were generically determined, demonstrating, especially, the distrust of novels\u201d (201). In some cases, male relatives \u201ccould impose their taste through pointed teasing [of women\u2019s reading materials]\u201d (202). NOTES TO CHAPTER THREE 34 There has been considerable scholarly work done on the gothic elements of The Woman in White. See Bernstein\u2019s \u201cReading Blackwater Park: Gothicism, Narrative, and Ideology in The Woman in White,\u201d Griffin\u2019s \u201cThe Yellow Mask, the Black Robe, and the Woman in White: Wilkie Collins, Anti-Catholic Discourse, and the Sensation Novel,\u201d Fu\u2019s \u201cRe-Imag(in)ing (Fe)male Subjectivities in The Woman in White,\u201d and Hendershot\u2019s \u201cA Sensation Novel's Appropriation of the Terror-Gothic: Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White.\u201d 35 Although Collins\u2019s strategy of the secret apparent from the onset of the story succeeded in maintaining readerly interest, his approach to The Woman in White indicates that he took heed of reviewers\u2019 comments, and used alternative narrative strategies to heighten readers\u2019 mixed emotional (or masochistic) responses to the novel. 36 La Femme en Blanc, a French edition of The Woman in White for which Collins wrote a new preface, was published in 1861. 37 The explicit textuality of The Woman in White has not gone unnoticed in scholarly studies of Collins\u2019s works. The focus of Tamar Heller\u2019s book, Dead Secrets: Wilkie Collins and the Female Gothic, is on the image of \u201cburied writing\u201d (1), which is \u201caffiliated with a thematic of secrecy, transgression, and illegitimacy\u201d (2). She argues that both Fosco and Hartright can be read as examples of male editorial power, and like many scholars, Heller suggests that Anne Catherick is a blank page or \u201cpalimpsest on which are inscribed the traces of symbolic meanings that encompass not only gender but also class and history itself\u201d (119). In her eagerness to use \u201cburied writing\u201d and writing in general as metaphors through which to engage in a Marxist-feminist analysis of The Woman in White, Heller largely overlooks the importance of writing or text in its non-metaphorical sense, which is the focus of this 74 \u00a0 study. Another important study is Gwendolyn MacDonagh and Jonathan Smith\u2019s essay, \u201cFill Up All the Gaps: Narrative and Illegitimacy in The Woman in White,\u201d which emphasizes the connections between narrative, writing, identity, and illegitimacy. In particular, MacDonagh and Smith highlight the similarities between the novel\u2019s two villains\u2014Percival and Fosco\u2014and the two author figures\u2014Hartright and Collins: \u201cAs a person who fills blank spaces with writing because gaps expose his identity, Percival is a writer, a constructor of narratives. His villainy, then, links him not only with Fosco, who toward the end of the novel constructs a narrative in similar fashion, but also with both Walter Hartright and Collins himself, for all four men collect and arrange documents and fill up gaps with writing\u201d (275). MacDonagh and Smith\u2019s reading, in which distinctions between heroism and villainy collapse, is directly relevant to this chapter, which will further develop the problematic nature of writing and language. In Walter M. Kendrick\u2019s article \u201cThe Sensationalism of The Woman in White,\u201d the author argues that the novel \u201cderives its sensations from the tricks with its own nature as a text\u201d (34). Kendrick briefly points out that the trust in the transparency of text comes out of \u201cthe faith of mid-Victorian realism\u201d; Collins participates in the realist genre (albeit in a limited manner) by emphasizing the plausibility of his sensation(al) narrative. Kendrick contends that The Woman in White \u201cviolates\u201d this realistic \u201cfaith,\u201d because it plays on sensational themes and yet demands to be read \u201cas if it were realistic\u201d (22). This chapter will further develop Kendrick\u2019s arguments by examining the novel\u2019s dependence on the objective, truthful nature of text, which Collins endorses (by emphasizing detection\u2019s dependence on the accuracy of written documents) and problematizes (by revealing the vulnerability and unreliability of texts in the novel). That identity in The Woman in White is both falsified and proven\/reasserted through written documents and spoken statements suggests that realism\u2019s trust in the transparency of text is tenuous at best. 38 Since there are so many letters in the novel, I will limit my comments to a few of particular significance. We are almost always given a description of the letter being delivered before we are able to read its contents. The first example in the novel is the anonymous letter from Anne Catherick, which is hand delivered and \u201caddressed, in a strange handwriting, to Miss Fairlie\u201d (115). We see the letter pass on its way to the addressee, and later we hear from Marian the contents of the letter: \u201cThat letter is an anonymous letter\u2014a vile attempt to injure Sir Percival Glyde in my sister\u2019s estimation. It has . . . agitated and alarmed her\u201d (115). It is only once we are acquainted with the mystery surrounding the letter and with the disturbing effect it has had on Laura Fairlie that we are allowed to read the contents. The letter returns again when Hartright accuses Anne Catherick of writing the letter (134-139), and yet again when Marian informs Mr. Gilmore of its existence (151). If we compare Anne\u2019s letter to Mrs. Catherick\u2019s correspondence with Marian, we see that the latter is similarly preceded by an extended discussion in which Sir Percival politely but firmly insists that Marian write to request an account from \u201cthe mother of [Anne Catherick] to ask for her testimony in support of the explanation which I have just offered to you\u201d (164). The arrival of Mrs. Catherick\u2019s reply is described by Hartright as \u201can event\u201d (168), which ascribes more importance of the letter than its brief contents might otherwise suggest. As with Anne Catherick\u2019s letter, we hear about Mrs. Catherick\u2019s correspondence much later in the novel, when Marian reminds us that \u201cher note is still in my possession, the note in answer to that letter about her unhappy daughter which Sir Percival obliged me to write\u201d (233). In both cases, multiple references to the same letter reinforce the reader\u2019s appreciation of the textual nature of the document. Mrs. Catherick\u2019s second letter (this time, addressed to Hartright) is not prefaced by any extended discussion of its author or its contents; her efforts to disguise her authorship of the letter have the somewhat ironic consequence of drawing more attention to the document. She writes, \u201cAny attempted reference to this letter will be quite useless\u2014I am determined not to acknowledge having written it\u201d (536). As with her daughter\u2019s earlier anonymous letter, Mrs. Catherick\u2019s communication with Hartright draws attention to itself as a written object by denying its own authorship. 39 Beckwith and Reed argue that diaries are \u201cimmersed in their own present: the author is writing\u201d (303). While this is true, I would argue that Marian\u2019s diary is not the only self-referential narrative in the novel. Not long into Hartright\u2019s initial narrative, he breaks off to make a comment about how his writing affects him physically: \u201cOne word! The little familiar word that is on everybody\u2019s lips, every hour in the day. Oh me! and I tremble, now, when I write it\u201d (66). If Hartright\u2019s aim in assembling the narratives and documents which make up the novel is merely to inform the reader of all necessary facts pertinent to the re-establishing of Laura\u2019s identity, this statement can have no practical purpose. If we read this passage as part of Collins\u2019s sustained attempt to force the reader\u2019s recognition of the narrative as a textual document, however, it does serve a purpose. 39 As with Marian\u2019s diary Hartright\u2019s narrative manipulates the reader\u2019s mixed emotional responses to the text, since s\/he experiences the thrilling pleasure of reading this sensation(al) text and sympathizes with Hartright\u2019s frightful reaction to writing. Other statements of personal experience, in which the narrative voice is taken up by various individuals, are still more self-conscious than Hartright\u2019s narrative. The account given by Mr. Gilmore, the Fairlie family solicitor, is 75 \u00a0 bookended by explanations of how he came to be writing. He begins with a statement that is more than adequate, given that Hartright\u2019s preamble to the narrative as a whole is sufficient to explain the way the narrative alternates between various voices: \u201cI write these lines at the request of my friend, Mr. Walter Hartright. They are intended to convey a description of certain events which seriously affected Miss Fairlie\u2019s interests, and which took place after the period of Mr. Hartright\u2019s departure from Limmeridge House\u2026.\u201d (159). Having finished his account, Gilmore again refers to his part in the overall narrative project of the novel: \u201cMy personal share in the events of the family story extends no farther than the point which I have just reached. Other pens than mine will describe the strange circumstances which are now shortly to follow\u201d (190). 40 Following Hartright\u2019s first meeting with Anne Catherick, he recounts his experiences as exactly as possible: \u201cI at once related the circumstances under which I had met the woman in which, exactly as they had occurred; and I repeated what she had said to me about Mrs. Fairlie and Limmeridge House, word for word\u201d (78). Much later in the novel, when Laura explains to Marian how she found Anne Catherick\u2019s note in the sand, she regretfully admits that she can only recall the general contents of the letter: \u201cIn substance I can [remember it], Marian. It was very short. You would have remembered it, word for word\u201d (315). Although Laura is revealed to be a somewhat unreliable source of information, her comments bolster our confidence in Marian\u2019s reliability: Marian would have \u201cremembered it, word for word.\u201d Shortly after this conversation, Marian overhears an important conversation between Sir Percival and Count Fosco, and again insists on her ability to memorize the exchange of words exactly as it occurred: \u201cThat sentence of the Count\u2019s was the first which my attention was ready enough to master, exactly as it was spoken. From this point, with certain breaks and interruptions, my whole interest fixed breathlessly on the conversation; and I followed it word for word\u201d (338). One assumes, then, if she could follow the conversation \u201cword for word\u201d at the time it took place, that she has recorded it with similar accuracy in her diary. We should note, however, that this is only an assumption, and it is undermined by Marian\u2019s admission of \u201ccertain breaks and interruptions\u201d in her concentration. A final example of this insistence on the accuracy of transcription is Hartright\u2019s inclusion of Mrs. Catherick\u2019s anonymous letter: before Hartright explains the contents of the letter, he asserts \u201cI copy it exactly, word for word\u201d (525). Like Marian in the previous example, Hartright employs a redundancy of expression, using both the word \u201cexactly\u201d and the phrase \u201cword for word\u201d to insist on the accuracy of his account. That Hartright includes both phrases, which have essentially the same meaning, indicates the importance of textual accuracy in the novel. 41 Another document presented at the hearing at the end of the novel is a letter from Sir Percival, noting the date of Laura\u2019s arrival in London. This document is obtained after Hartright entraps Fosco into providing a \u201cproof\u201d of Laura\u2019s identity. Fosco\u2019s response is more a question than an answer: \u201cYou call a letter from my late lamented friend, informing me of the day and hour of his wife\u2019s arrival in London, written, signed, and dated by himself, a proof, I suppose?\u201d (584). Given that Hartright has already proven to us that Sir Percival forged his parent\u2019s marriage registration, can we really trust a letter \u201cwritten, signed, and dated\u201d by him? Fosco\u2019s manner of response, in only \u201csuppose[ing]\u201d that this letter will constitute \u201cproof,\u201d further calls into question Hartright\u2019s assumption that written documents are both infallible and trustworthy. Earlier in the novel, Collins alludes to the Book of Life as infallible documentary evidence: \u201cIf the recording angel had come down from heaven to confirm [Marian], and had opened his book to my mortal eyes, the recording angel would not have convinced me\u201d (120). Hartright includes this biblical allusion in his commentary to indicate that not even the most convincing proof, the Book of Life, would convince him of the impeccability of Sir Percival\u2019s character; that he denies this metaphorical written proof, helps to undermine the belief in the infallibility of text that the Book of Life embodies represents. 42 Much earlier in the novel, Marian describes Count Fosco\u2019s \u201ccorrespondence with people on the Continent,\u201d most of which \u201chave all sorts of odd stamps on them,\u201d and one of which has \u201ca huge, official-looking seal on it\u201d (345- 346). Marian cannot reconcile her interpretation of these envelopes, that Fosco must be \u201cin correspondence with his government,\u201d with her earlier assumption that Fosco \u201cmay be a political exile\u201d (246). This mystery is never resolved with absolute certainty; as the novel progresses, we suspect that Fosco is a spy for his own government, but because neither Marian nor the reader is ever able to read these letters, we are left with an absence of text which simultaneously frustrates and intrigues, even after the narrative has ended. Another examples in the novel of \u201cunreadable\u201d texts is the legal document that Laura Fairlie is almost forced to sign without having read its contents. Like Fosco\u2019s official-looking letters, we can assume that the document contains a text which might be in some way revealing, but Collins prevents us from ever accessing this text. A final example of a disturbing absence of text is the substitution of Marian\u2019s letter to Gilmore\u2019s partner for \u201ca blank sheet of note paper,\u201d which suggests to the recipient\u2019s \u201crestless legal mind that the letter had been tampered with\u201d (361). Because we are privy to all of 76 \u00a0 Marian\u2019s efforts to ensure that the letter would reach its destination without being discovered or destroyed, this particular absence of text is arguably the most alarming. 43 We should note, however, that Fosco is both a criminal and a victim where eavesdropping and snooping are concerned. His conversation with Sir Percival, which Fosco postpones until \u201cthe light is out of that window, and . . . I have had one little look at the rooms on each side of the library, and a peep at the staircase as well,\u201d is recorded by Marian in her diary despite all precautions taken (334). 44 Audrey Caming Fein argues that Collins follows the \u201cfair-play rule,\u201d in which the detective or protagonist shares with the reader all the information and clues s\/he discovers as soon as they become known, and that this structure gives Collins\u2019s narrative \u201ccredibility\u201d (42). In fact, both Collins and his in-text stand-in Hartright maintain authorial power by deliberately withholding information. Hartright denies the reader certain information which he deems to be irrelevant to our inquiry; of course, we have no way of knowing whether this information is irrelevant unless we are able to judge for ourselves. Collins deliberately withholds essential information so as to create narrative gaps which the reader is compelled to fill, to the extent that Perkins and Donaghy argue that the relationship between the reader and narrator is one of \u201cnarrative secrecy\u201d (394). It is not until the end of the novel that we are able to fill these gaps: \u201cthe narrative that Fosco writes itself fills in the crucial gap in Walter\u2019s case for re-establishing Laura\u2019s identity . . . . This gap in turn results from other textual and narrative gaps [such as] Marian\u2019s illness and resulting break in her diary entries\u201d (MacDonagh and Smith 278). By withholding information and enforcing \u201cnarrative secrecy,\u201d Collins increases readerly suspicion, adding to his readers\u2019 mixed emotional responses to his text. Perkins and Donaghy argue that \u201cevery narrative in the novel\u201d is characterized by a \u201chermeneutics of suspicion and surveillance\u201d (392); Hennelly makes a similar argument in suggesting that the reader of The Woman in White comes to suspect everyone and everything (98). Collins takes advantage of the readerly suspicion he creates by including suggestive and ultimately misleading instances of foreshadowing. Alison Milbank points out that Collins\u2019s ominous description of the lake at Blackwater Park is a red herring too, since nothing of significance ever transpires there (68). When Hartright first meets Mrs. Vesey at Limmeridge House, his description of her is highly suggestive: \u201cSurely a mild, a compliant, an unutterably tranquil and harmless old lady? But enough, perhaps, for the present, of Mrs. Vesey\u201d (88). Hartright\u2019s attempt to convince himself that Mrs. Vesey is \u201charmless\u201d makes us suspect her of being the opposite, but this suspicion is never realised. Hartright\u2019s initial interpretation of Sir Percival\u2019s secret as the \u201ccommon, too common, story of a man\u2019s treachery and a woman\u2019s frailty\u201d (471) has a similar effect: by leading the reader\u2019s suspicions in an erroneous direction, Collins increases our surprise when the real \u201csecret\u201d is discovered. More importantly, given the novel\u2019s problematization of the reader\u2019s reliance on written documents and transcripts, Collins\u2019s attempts at misdirection make us question our own logic, as well as that of the novel\u2019s characters on whom we rely to provide us with accurate, \u201cword for word\u201d accounts of their experiences. The fact that we continue to detect and interpret in the hope of solving the novel\u2019s mysteries suggests that the frustrations and anxieties of detection and interpretation are still pleasurable to some degree; this combination of pleasure, anxiety, frustration, and other negative emotions is the masochistic affective response I seek to study. Earlier in the novel, Marian has a premonition that Laura\u2019s marriage will be prevented: \u201cA persistent idea has been forcing itself on my attention, ever since last night, that something will yet happen to prevent the marriage\u201d (217). At this point in the novel, we trust Marian\u2019s intuition and interpretation of events; her \u201cpersistent idea\u201d leads us to anticipate that some event or circumstance will delay if not stop the wedding. Like Hartright\u2019s suspicion of Mrs. Vesey, and his interpretation of Percival\u2019s secret, Marian\u2019s premonition is designed to mislead the reader. D. A. Miller argues that although the reader is supposedly placed in the position of both judge and jury at the onset of the novel, \u201cnothing could be less judicial, or judicious, than the actual hermeneutical practice of the reader of this novel whose technology of nervous stimulation . . . has him repeatedly jumping to unproven conclusions\u201d (114). U. C. Knoepflmacher makes a similar argument: \u201cwe become engaged in the narrative, not as impartial and objective judges but as subjective participants in a mystery\u201d (62). Whether readers jump to conclusions, or are simply left to wallow in their inability to interpret the various textual documents that make up the novel, Miller\u2019s observation indirectly points out that the very format of the novel, in which the reader is asked to judge the veracity and plausibility of the narrative, is itself a misdirection. 45 Following Laura\u2019s meeting with Anne, both we and the novel\u2019s characters are disappointed yet again, since we are unable to discover Sir Percival\u2019s secret: \u201cThe one thing certain was, that we had failed again on the brink of discovery\u2014failed utterly and irretrievably, unless Anne Catherick kept her appointment at the boat-house, for the 77 \u00a0 next day\u201d (301). To our great disappointment, Laura and Anne never meet again. What Collins (and Hartright) neglect to inform us is that we would have \u201cfailed\u201d even if Anne and Laura had met, since we discover at the end of the novel that Anne never knew the details of Percival\u2019s secret. 46 In A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757), Burke argues that, when reading, sensations of fear and pleasure are achieved through sympathetic characters and, more significantly, through the evocative power of words: \u201cwe take an extraordinary part in the passions of others . . . we are easily affected and brought into sympathy by any tokens which are shewn [sic] of them; and there are no tokens which can express all the circumstances of most passions so fully as words\u201d (158). 47 The similarities between Laura and Anne extend to their emotional vulnerability to language. In Anne\u2019s case, we see the power of words both to calm and alarm. When Hartright discovers Anne cleaning the tombstone of the late Mrs. Fairlie, he is able to overcome her initial reaction of alarm with language: \u201cSlowly, the purpose of my words seemed to force its way through the confusion and agitation of her mind\u201d (134). In the ensuing conversation between Anne and Hartright, we learn that Anne\u2019s continuing devotion to the memory of Mrs. Fairlie is based largely on the kindness she expressed through language: after recounting Mrs. Fairlie\u2019s kind remarks, Anne muses, \u201cI suppose I remember them because they were kind\u201d (135). Despite the evidence of the power of language over Anne\u2019s mental state, Hartright does not initially realize that he must choose his words carefully; one misspoken sentence \u201cliterally petrified her\u201d (137). Following her alarm, Hartright finally realises the power of language over her, and uses it to pacify her: \u201cI spoke distinctly, so that Anne Catherick might hear and understand me: and I saw that the words and their meaning had reached her\u201d (140). Anne is also susceptible to the evocative power of written language: at the Todd\u2019s farm, she suffers an \u201cattack\u201d of faintness, which Mrs. Todd connects \u201cwith something [Anne] was reading\u201d (145). Surprisingly, even Marian Halcombe is vulnerable to uneasy emotional responses to words (as opposed to actual experiences). She suggests that Anne Catherick\u2019s letter might have had an undue influence on her opinion of Sir Percival, although she is not sure: \u201cDoes that letter of Anne Catherick\u2019s still leave a lurking distrust in my mind, in spite of Sir Percival\u2019s explanation, and of the proof in my possession of the truth of it? I cannot account for the state of my own feelings\u201d (212). Here, Marian refers to two letters: the anonymous letter from Anne Catherick, which has led Marian to suspect Percival of some unnamed wrongdoing, and the letter she receives from Mrs. Catherick, which supposedly acts as \u201cproof\u201d of Percival\u2019s account of his connection with the Cathericks. Marian is particularly alarmed by absence of text, or rather spoken words. At one point in the novel, she believes a conversation between Fosco and Percival to \u201cbe of . . . importance to both [Laura and I] to know what they were saying to each other at that moment\u2014and not one word of it could, by any possibility, reach my ears\u201d (292). She is so agitated by her inability to interpret their words, that she paces about, \u201ctill the oppression of [her] suspense half maddened [her].\u201d D. A. Miller argues that Marian \u201cliterally writes herself into a fever\u201d (\u201cCage Aux Folles\u201d 109), following the \u201cfeverish strain and excitement of all [her] faculties\u201d while eavesdropping on Fosco and Percival\u2019s conversation (Collins 350). The evocative power of both written and spoken words incapacitates her; we do not hear from Marian in her own voice again during the remainder of the novel. 48 The notion of the \u201csecret self\u201d is raised a few times in The Woman in White. Marian, while contemplating the inscrutable Mrs. Fosco\u2019s character, wonders \u201c[h]ow far she is really reformed or deteriorated in her secret self\u201d since her marriage to the Count (239). Much later in the novel, Pesca applies the notion of the secret self to refugees like himself: \u201cLaugh at [the refugee], distrust him, open your eyes in wonder at that secret self which smoulders in him . . . but judge [him] not!\u201d (569-570). 49 Peter H\u00fchn argues that readers of and detectives in hard-boiled detective novels have lost faith that meaning can eventually be restored that there is an \u201cobjective truth\u201d (466); in The Woman in White, Collins appears to anticipate the pessimistic and cynical ideological position of later detective fiction. 50 Hughes argument is as follows: \u201cFaced with unprecedented change, the Victorians were looking for solutions; ambiguity did not have the same attraction for them as it has for us\u201d (14). 78 \u00a0 NOTES TO CHAPTER FOUR 51 For discussions of Dexter as an authorial figure, see Cothran 204-6 and Lonoff 116. 52 Indeed, Chapters XI (\u201cThe Story of the Trial: The Preliminaries\u201d) to XX (\u201cThe End of the Trial) constitute an extended reading and analysis of Eustace Macallan\u2019s trial. 53 Valeria admits at the outset to omitting the title-page of the trial, because it \u201cholds up to public ignominy of [her] husband\u2019s name\u201d (124); she also paraphrases the Indictment against the Prisoner because she cannot bring herself to \u201ccopy the uncouth language . . . in which [her] husband was solemnly and falsely accused of poisoning his first wife\u201d (125). However else Valeria\u2019s narration may be biased, it is clearly biased in favour of her husband. 54 Collins has her include embarrassing moments, such as when she tears out pages of the trial \u201cwhich contained the speech for the prosecution\u201d and tramples them under her feet (179), but he does not have her include the entirety of certain conversations, such as the one between her and Mrs. Macallan, of which Valeria \u201conly present[s] a brief abstract\u201d (201). These inconsistencies call into question Valeria\u2019s reliability as a narrator; although they could also be used as evidence of Collins\u2019s waning writing skills. 55 At the end of chapter XI, Valeria suggests that the Report of the Trial \u201cresolved itself . . . into three great Questions\u201d (126); it is unclear if the trial was originally presented according to these three questions, or if someone\u2014either Valeria (as narrator) or the writer of the trial transcript\u2014has rearranged the trial proceedings to fit into this format. 56 Jacobson suggests that Playmore\u2019s \u201cnervous footnotes\u201d (121) call into question the entirety and reliability of the suicide letter, the reconstruction of which Valeria records second-hand (by the time the letter is recovered she is no longer directing the investigation). 57 As discussed in chapter 3. 58 Fein suggests that the talents and skills required of detectives are seen as unfeminine (unbecoming in women), in addition to being disreputable and distasteful. Karin Kay Jacobson makes the same point when she quotes Michelle Slung\u2019s introduction to Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective, who argues that snooping, spying, and the like were \u201cantithetical to what was considered proper feminine breeding\u201d in the Victorian period (Jacobson 32). Anthea Trodd, who argues that the police detective and the lady have opposing relationships to \u201cthe sanctuary of the home,\u201d since the former is an \u201cintruder\u201d of the domestic sanctuary, whereas the latter is its representative (435). The detective and the lady are thus antithetical figures; as a result, a woman detective is a paradoxical and problematic figure. In \u201cImproper\u201d Feminine: The Women's Sensation Novel and the New Woman Writing, Lyn Pykett distinguishes between the \u201cproper feminine\u201d (or \u201cangel in the house\u201d) and the \u201cimproper feminine\u201d (the \u201cdomestic ideal\u2019s dangerous other\u201d) (24). Collins\u2019s Valeria is one such \u201cimproper feminine\u201d figure, as she quits the domestic sphere to engage in an extra-legal investigation, and by doing so \u201crisk[s her] reputation and [her] happiness\u201d (Collins 198). 59 Valeria is not the only woman who compromises her reputation by engaging in shameful activities: the landlady who discovers that Valeria married her husband under a false name informs Valeria that she has \u201cdegraded [her]self as a gentlewoman\u201d and \u201cforfeited [her] own self-respect\u201d (39) by following Mrs. Macallan \u201cevery step of the way to her own door\u201d (40). 60 According to this description, Valeria is characteristically feminine, since she is susceptible to excessive emotional responses, particularly when her curiosity is aroused: \u201cI must have been more or less than woman if . . . my curiosity had not been wrought to the highest pitch, by the extraordinary conduct of my husband\u2019s mother when Eustace presented me to her. What was the secret of her despising him, and pitying me? . . . The foremost interest of my life was not the interest of penetrating these mysteries. Walk? I was in such a fever of expectation that I felt as if I could have walked to the world\u2019s end, if I could only keep my husband by my side, and question him on the way!\u201d (30). Valeria\u2019s \u201cfever of expectation\u201d is likely a metaphorical description of her emotional state; in other passages, Valeria\u2019s emotional responses have physical symptoms. When Major Fitz-David informs Valeria that a clue to her husband\u2019s secret is located in his library, she states that \u201cMy head began to swim; my heart throbbed violently. I tried to speak; it was in vain; the effort almost choked me\u201d (73). She becomes so over-excited that she is unable to stand and must sit down. She has a similar reaction to her emotionally-charged interview with Dexter: 79 \u00a0 \u201cIt was not until some hours after I had left him, that I really began to feel how my nerves had been tried by all that I had seen and heard, during my visit at his house. I started at the slightest noises; I dreamed of dreadful things; I was ready to cry without reason, at one moment, and to fly into a passion without reason, at another\u201d (261). In fact, it takes several days before Valeria is \u201crestored to [her] customary health\u201d (262). At the very end of the novel, she attributes \u201cthose signs of exhaustion which have surprised my medical attendant\u201d to \u201cAnxiety and Suspense\u201d (410). Collins\u2019s capitalization of these two terms emphasizes their significance: the mental and physical effects of anxiety and suspense\u2014the very affective responses he seems to want to provoke in his readers\u2014are not to be taken lightly. 61 Ariel and Dexter could also be seen as emotional readers. Valeria describes Dexter as having \u201can over-excited imagination\u201d (222), and Ariel\u2019s \u201cgreat delight\u201d is to listen to Dexter tell stories. As Dexter informs Valeria, \u201cI puzzle her to the verge of distraction; and the more I confuse her, the better she likes the story\u201d (213). For a further discussion of Ariel as a woman reader, see Jacobson 108-11. 62 Transgression, and the guilt experienced by the transgressor, are essential components of masochism generally, and of my definition of masochistic detection (in which readers\/detectives occupy the positions of both transgressor and disciplinarian). For instance, Freud\u2019s conception of masochism in \u201cThe Economic Problem of Masochism\u201d depends on the association of guilt with punishment. Similarly, Rosenman defines masochism as \u201ca negotiating tool in which pain is not the price of a chosen desire that violates a moral or ideological norm\u201d (23). For an extended discussion of transgression and masochism, see chapter one. 63 One character who attempts to stop Valeria from pursuing her investigation cannot rightly be described as \u201cpatriarchal\u201d: according to Sue Lonoff, Catherine Macallan (Valeria\u2019s mother-in-law) also represents \u201cthe righteous, restraining forc[e] of society, law, and convention\u201d (166). 64 No\u00ebl Carroll argues that \u201c[a]ll narratives might be thought to involve the desire to know\u2014the desire to know at least the outcome of the interaction of the forces made salient in the plot\u201d (5) 65 He also does so by repeating the words \u201cknowledge\u201d (or \u201cknow\u201d) and \u201cignorance\u201d throughout the novel. 66 A number of scholars have discussed Eustace\u2019s problematic gendered position here. Although in the beginning of the novel he functions as a patriarchal authority, towards the end of the novel his character becomes increasingly effeminate. As Jenny Bourne Taylor suggests in her introduction to The Law and the Lady, he is \u201cunable to uphold the codes of patriarchal authority\u201d and \u201ccollapses into a ridiculous parody of masculinity in attempting to do so\u201d (xiv). Eustace is not the only character whose gender is ambiguous, however; the character of Miserrimus Dexter has often been described as an androgynous figure, \u201ca chaotic mixture of male and female gender characteristics\u201d (O\u2019Fallon 232). Finally, in her article on questions of gender in The Law and the Lady, O\u2019Fallon suggests that the conflict between Valeria and Eustace is \u201cembodied\u201d by Valeria herself: \u201cThe masculine Valeria is determined to carry out her quest for knowledge, but the feminine Valeria desires love and family stability\u201d (234). 67 In fact, Valeria uses the word \u201cunendurable\u201d multiple times (48; 54). 68 For instance, Eustace tells Valeria that after \u201cthe greatest lawyers\u201d failed to vindicate him, \u201cwe can only submit [to the verdict]\u201d (107). Valeria states repeatedly that she \u201crefuse[s] to submit to the Scotch Verdict\u201d (240) and to \u201cthe opinion of the Scotch Jury\u201d (241). She also \u201csubmit[s]\u201d to Mrs. Macallen\u2019s refusal to reveal Eustace\u2019s secret, and to Dexter\u2019s summons in the form of a whistle (43, 228). Towards the end of the novel, Valeria gives up her investigation (312), and is then in the position of having to submit to the decision of Mr. Playmore \u201cto go on or give up\u201d (369). 69 See chapter one. 70 Similarly, In the introduction to his book The Mastery of Submission (which contains the analysis of Freud\u2019s essay on masochism), Noyes emphasizes that the \u201ccontrolled\u201d environment of the masochistic fantasy, in which \u201cthe masochist makes sure that the person who administers the beatings knows the rules of the game and when to stop\u201d (4), suggests to us that masochism is a genre complete with conventions and audience expectations. 80 \u00a0 BIBLIOGRAPHY Aikin, John and Anna Laetitia Aikin Barbauld. \u201cOn the Pleasure Derived from Objects of Terror.\u201d Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose. Second Ed. London: J. Johnson, 1775. Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Gale Group. Web. Allan, Janice. 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