Sensation writer Mary Elizabeth Braddon makes plenty of jokes at the expense of the suburbanites reading her novels, poking fun at the interests they shared, the ambitions they nursed. Yet the suburbs function narratively in her works as places of movement, opportunity, and change. Braddon deploys the plot arc of the suburban popular novel (first discussed in chapter 3) to lift worthy heroines out of the lives into which they were born. Striving heroines begin in dusty, down-at-heel Camberwell; if they work hard, and are lucky, they are rewarded with the pleasures of upper-middle-class Richmond.