The politics of sympathy in the popular fiction of Mary Ward and Marie Corelli 1886 – 1908

Abstract

This thesis demonstrates that the hitherto under-recognised resurgence of sympathy in late-nineteenth-century fiction was key to the social and literary politics of Mary Ward’s and Marie Corelli’s fin-de-siècle popular fiction and to their work’s impact on readers. It argues that their popular fiction thereby provided a new democratic forum for public debate on issues of class, social reform, public morality, and cultural inclusion. The diversity of interpretations and associations of sympathy in the nineteenth century underpinned both Ward’s ethics of fellow feeling and Corelli’s concept of a bond of sympathy with readers. For both, the stimulation of sympathetic reading experiences was key. Readers were encouraged to think and feel along with fictional characters torn by ideological conflict in Ward’s dialogical fiction of ideas, while Corelli’s readers were offered validation of their political and cultural status while being enticed with an alternative fictional world of spiritual and moral uplift that was derided by critics. Extensive and original archival research in the British Newspaper Archive and elsewhere reveals how their work was received. It shows how readers, unlike many critics, took their work seriously, even when, as with Corelli’s morally controversial novels, the fiction could be seen as self-contradictory. Whether intentionally (Ward) or unintentionally (Corelli), readers were drawn into dialogue and debate with their fiction. While Ward’s novels engaged particularly the movers and shakers of the time, Corelli’s fiction was subject to widespread public debate between supporters and opponents, as recorded in the pages of local newspapers. Through this investigation a contribution is made to recent critical debates about the nature and effect of sympathy engendered through the act of reading and about the role of popular fiction in the public sphere.

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ORCID for Stephen Edwards: orcid.org/0000-0003-2755-345X

ORCID for Stephen Bygrave: orcid.org/0000-0002-7015-8474

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