Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Apart from the fact that Braddon was a woman novelist, both the popularity of her novels and the scandal some of them caused make Braddon's work an interesting source for the analysis of the criticism of the situation of women in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literature. This thesis aims at analysing the criticism of the situation of women in Braddon's novels throughout her career, which lasted from the 1860s to the 1910s. During these fifty years, Braddon wrote more than eighty novels belonging to various genres. The novels analysed in this thesis were selected in order to provide a broad overview of Braddon's work and include a sensation novel as well as social novels and one of her latest novels. Furthermore, one of Braddon's penny-dreadfuls written for the lower classes will be analysed as well as two of her plays, a sensation play and a social comedy. The analysis concentrates on the content of the novels and tries to explore how Braddon included contemporary issues concerning the situation of women marriage, education and work, and the roles of women in her books, and what were the issues she selected for criticism.