Getting Lost in the Novel : Strategic Confusion in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century British Fiction

Focusing on the psychological needs that drew readers in the past – and that still draw readers today – to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novels, Amanda Auerbach reveals the conditions within readers' lives that led them to find books by authors such as Jane Austen and George Eliot so moving and meaningful.

Instances abound in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novels where characters, particularly female characters, become lost, often moved by overwhelming emotion. Amanda Auerbach delves into the impact of these scenes on the character and the reader. On one level, ''getting lost'' can realign a character''s and our own sense of self and of social situation, while more broadly these instances reflect arcs within the overall narrative, highlighting easily-missed elements, sometimes even reflecting on our own experiences while reading. The emotions that move characters most powerfully often relate to their psychological needs, which the social conditions of their lives prevent them from meeting or fully acknowledging. These episodes appear across multiple novels in multiple subgenres, including the marriage plot, the gothic novel, the Victorian bildungsroman, and the sensation novel. These episodes collectively reveal how eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British novelistic subgenres developed to help women and working-class readers covertly satisfy their psychological needs.