The Sympathy of Suspense: Gaskell and Braddon’s Slow and Fast Sensation Fiction in Family Magazines

Abstract

In this essay, I argue that the cliff-hanger excitement of sensation fiction may be overstated, and thus we should consider other affective ways that installments could draw readers back to the periodical in which they were published. After analyzing the use of suspense at the end of installments in Gaskell’s A Dark Night’s Work (1863) and Braddon’s Eleanor’s Victory (1863), I contend that sympathy constitutes a large part of the affective experience of reading serialized sensation novels, slowing down the pace of what has been thought of as a very fast genre.