| Budget Amount *help |
¥3,490,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,100,000、Indirect Cost: ¥390,000)
Fiscal Year 2007: ¥1,690,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,300,000、Indirect Cost: ¥390,000)
Fiscal Year 2006: ¥1,800,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,800,000)
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| Research Abstract |
This research aims to investigate into the novels of Mary Braddon and Mrs. Wood in terms of their two distinct characteristics: not only a detective story but the novel of adultery. The latter theme is presented by heroine's act of transgression.
As to the aspect of adultery in the sensation novel, it is noteworthy that there is a close relationship between Mrs. Wood's East Lynne and Hogarth's Marriage A-la-mode in that both have three things in common: first, imbalanced marriage combining the aristocracy (old blood) and the bourgeoisie (the parvenu), second, the Don Juan figure tempting the wife into transgression, and lastly, the doomed adulterous couple. All of them in one way or another jeopardized the institution of marriage.
By contrast, concerning the detective elements of the sensation genre, it is of special significance that both Braddon and Wood more often than not make use of detectives, whether professional or amateur, to indicate that the detective figure is indispensable b
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ecause such crimes as bigamy, arson, or murder are committed to be solved in fine. It is striking that the novel of that mode focuses upon the most trivial details, as if to pave the way for Holmes. These details, enlarged by "Holmesian" magnifying glasses, assume all the more the status of supremacy because of their potential power of solving the mysteries.
Based on Tanner's argument, this research has also brought into question the problem of the unfaithful wife or the adulterous woman. According to Tanner, Western literature in general has treated the problem of adultery through two different modes: the one is called the strategy of the New Testament, in which the woman taken in adultery is not punished but forgiven; the other is called the Old Testament law which severely punish the woman in question. Dickens's three heroines -Mrs. Dombey, Lady Dedlock, and Mrs. Bounderby- are given absolution and blessings in spite of their palpable gesture of adultery, so are Lady Isabel of East Lynne and the titular heroine of Aurora Floyd. However, Aurora's "subversiveness" is manifested by her assertion that she is not forgiven by Christ but does forgive herself in her own right. Less
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