Crossing Boundaries: Generic Impurity and Experimentation in Catherine Crowe’s Novels

Described as “extremely versatile” by Adeline Sergeant (1897), Catherine Crowe was also viewed by many of her eminent Victorian contemporaries as an elusive nineteenth-century novelist. They were all perplexed by the generic impurity of her writing. Although classified as “domestic”, Crowe’s novels experimented with a variety of genres, betraying in so doing a quasi-Derridean tendency to stylistic contamination. Realistic and didactic in their characterization and daily-life descriptions, they display elements of horror, terror and illicit sexuality, themes that revived pre-Victorian Gothic and anticipated the sensation school of the 1860s. And it was exactly this generic amalgam that made Crowe “one of the most popular and of course best paid” women writers of her time ("The Blackburn Standard", 1845).
This article explores some contradictions inherent in Crowe’s fiction. First of all, it examines the role that her 1840s novels – particularly "Susan Hopley" (1841) and "The Story of Lilly Dawson" (1847) – came to play in the evolution of Victorian narrative modes. More specifically, the article explores the way these texts, drawing on existing sub-genres (the Gothic, the Newgate novel, the realistic novel à la Defoe, the French roman feuilleton), laid the foundations for new forms, most notably the sensation and detective novels, which later in the century would be canonized.
A second aspect under scrutiny is the socio-professional position Crowe occupied as a popular novelist who targeted the bourgeoisie but was read by all classes. Besides foregrounding later debates on the opposition popular vs. highbrow, her cross-class production was a vehicle for spreading her surprisingly innovative ideas of class, race and gender. By reaching a composite audience still early in the century, these ideas were sown deep into her cultural milieu and influenced the works of later authors who would challenge deep-ingrained convictions and prejudices.