ABSTRACT
The nature of female musicians began to be substantially questioned in fiction in the 1860s, partly because of the appearance of sensation novels. These bestselling thrillers revealed masquerade where it was least expected (in the home) and depicted crisis as a series of unexpected changes and shocks. Fictional observers and Victorian readers alike were startled when characters or situations were revealed to be other than what they seemed, and this provided the "sensation." Because unravelling the mystery in these novels meant looking beneath the surface and reassigning meaning to recognizable types, sensation fiction challenged "the premises of judgement," as Nicholas Rance writes, and startled "early-Victorian sensibilities." 1 For instance, as Rance comments on the first appearance of the woman in white in Wilkie Collins's novel, Victorian moral attitudes assume that if a woman is discovered alone after midnight on the high road, she must be guilty of something (2). However, this woman is not "wild," "immodest," impatient or extravagant, and the protagonist is further perplexed because he cannot determine her social rank. 2 As all the visual, vocal and behavioral signs are confused, he is slow to respond, not knowing what attitude to take. The explanation of her identity and its strange signposting are thus the initial mysteries of the first sensation novel, The Woman in White (1860).
