1/6 I’m interested in Braddon’s use of pop religious & psych discourses to address social issues in dialogue w/readers. Thread considers how “Joshua Haggard’s Daughter” dramatizes the implications of the new physio-psych on debates abt determinism & freewill [D&FW] #VPFAReligion

2/6 & applies them to anxieties around reading sensation fiction.

Religious & psych discourses were intertwined in C19 (& earlier). Joshua Haggard is a follower of John Wesley, whose writings on D&FW directly respond to David Hartley’s determinist associationist psychology.

3/6 Braddon uses same discourse to broach D&FW: Joshua saves Oswald’s life, interfering w/providence? Joshua marries Cynthia (a teen), saying she was sent by God, but family & friends think it’s a free choice (& sexual). Joshua murders Oswald, but presents with a mental illness.

4/6 Physio & associationist psych believe experience = psych development. But what is experience? Is novel reading experience? Can novels = psych development?

Conservative critique of sensation fiction = it provides bad examples of ways-to-be in the world (bad experiences).

5/6 Oswald’s idea of love is modeled on Goethe’s “Sorrows of Werther,” which he reads to Cynthia to communicate his love. She feels desire in return, modeled on the fictional narrative. As Oswald reads story out loud, Braddon’s narrative & Goethe’s narrative collapse into one.

6/6 Did reading affect their psych development? Can sensation fiction affect readers’ potential psych development? Novel’s ending is inconclusive, inviting dialogue.

Framed through pop religious & psych discourses, Braddon invites readers to consider repercussions of reading.