Alienated Heroines in Basil, Lady Audley’s Secret, and East Lynne: A Jaeggian Reading

While the term ‘alienation’ is frequently mentioned in criticism of sensation fiction, there is a lack of a stringent definition of this term. This article aims to address this gap with a focused examination of the depiction of alienation in three sensation novels, Lady Audley’s Secret (1862) by M. E. Braddon, East Lynne (1861) by Mrs Henry Wood, and Basil (1852) by Wilkie Collins. Borrowing a critical framework from contemporary philosopher Rahel Jaeggi, the article sees alienation as an obstructed relation of ‘appropriation’. According to Jaeggi, to appropriate is, briefly, to take oneself and one’s world at one’s own command. The relation of appropriation bespeaks a more profound relationship between the self and the world than ownership. Previous studies of sensation heroines often associate their alienation with their desires for material property. With Jaeggi’s critical framework, however, this article moves forward by identifying a parallel between the heroines’ troubled desires for material possessions and their problematic relationships in life. Through a Jaeggian lens, all three texts illustrate the heroines’ dispossession of the self and dispossession of property as profoundly, even structurally, linked. A Jaeggian reading of the novels also provides new insights into the genre’s ideological function, particularly in relation to the limited social roles and precarious hold on the material world faced by ambitious Victorian women.