ABSTRACT
One of the commonest assumptions about the novel has always been that love is its primary concern. Most Victorian criticism takes it for granted that romantic interest is 'the one topic which forms the staple of most novels, and [is] a main ingredient in all'; 1 one commentator even claims that contemporary fiction is so exclusively dedicated to 'the passion of love' that the very name 'romance' has been engrossed by the term 'novel'. 2 Not all were entirely happy with this state of things; though the form had expanded to embrace 'low-life' fiction of the 1830s and 'social-purpose' novels of the 1840s and 1850s, for some mid-century observers the domination of love and marriage in the contemporary novel represented 'a serious contraction of its capabilities' .3 But for the majority of Victorian critics and novelists alike, affairs of the heart were the basic stuff of fiction, however restricting this might seem in practice. Even a writer like Elizabeth Sewell, who saw that her talents as a story-teller lay in quite other directions, felt obliged to try her hand at a 'regular novel, or a story in which love is the essential interest' ;4 such a work, like one of her later ones, is 'unquestionably a novel' because it centres on 'love affairs' .5
