Secrecy and Disclosure in Victorian Fiction

This book argues that the works of writers such as Charlotte Bronte, William Makepeace Thackeray, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, and Arthur Conan Doyle reflect a distinctly Victorian obsession with the veiling and unveiling of information. This study offers convincing evidence that secrecy and duplicity, in contrast to the Victorian period's emphasis on honesty and earnestness, emerged in response to the social pressures of class, gender, monarchy, and empire, and were key factors in producing both the subjectivity and the sociality that we now recognize as Victorian.