ABSTRACT
This chapter offers literature scholars, healthcare practitioners, and readers in general a new insight into experiences of mental ill-health and its consequences on individuals through the exploration of the fictional yet universal stories of characters populating sensation novels. Wilkie Collins and Mary Elizabeth Braddon contributed to this by portraying characters whose social circumstances, not least in terms of their personal relationship to home, contributed to their mental suffering and, to some extent, even helped explain it. Wilkie Collins's and Mary Elizabeth Braddon's works of fiction have served both purposes of helping readers make sense of mental conditions they either experienced themselves or witnessed loved ones experience, and of moulding readers perceptions of them, for better or for worse. The author have shown that both Braddon and Collins present examples of such extremes in their novels. Both of the female characters are described throughout the novels as extremely unhappy yet unable or unwilling to change their situation.
