“‘A mixed young lady, rather’”: Melodrama, Technology, and Dis/Embodied Sensation in A Laodicean
Chapter
Abstract
As with Desperate Remedies, A Laodicean comes ready-made with a biographical anecdote that has proven useful for critics to explain (away) its melodrama and sensationalism. In his 1896 Preface Hardy observes that “[t]he writing of the tale was rendered memorable to two persons, at least, by a tedious illness of five months that laid hold of the author soon after the story was begun in a well-known magazine; during which period the narrative had to be strenuously continued by dictation to a predetermined cheerful ending.”1 This brief description is then expanded upon considerably in the Life.
Keywords
Sensational Body Disciplinary Regime Genre Expectation Ambivalent Agency Modern Spirit
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Notes
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© Richard Nemesvari 2011