The Fall of Victorian Heavenly Family: Female Villains in Wilkie Collins’s Armadale (1866) and Louisa May Alcott’s Behind A Mask (1866)

The Victorian era in the history of English culture is primarily famous for emphasizing happiness in family life and women as angels in the house. This paradisiacal vision of the family was apparent in literature, without a doubt, as it was portrayed, encouraged, and polished in novels by the authors of the earlier and middle parts of the Victorian era. However, by the end of the middle of the century, Wilkie Collins’s novels started a tradition in literature called the “sensation novels.” This genre collapsed the view of angelic women in the house: Intrigues, murders, poisoning, ambition, and all the evil were unleashed in the society. Scandals revealed the darkest sides of the “heavenly” Victorian family. This article compares the novels Armadale by Collins and Behind A Mask by Alcott regarding their creation of evil women villains, style, and attitude toward the corruption in the Victorian family, marriage, and class issues. In sensation novels, the transgressive nature of self-assertive heroines challenged the conventional portrayal of women; sensation heroines were criminals, madwomen, and domestic fiends. Therefore, the core of the family, the woman, was portrayed as evil, and the families of Victorian society were in danger.