The imagination becomes diseased, sentimentalism takes possession of the mind, and there is a vague unrest, a strange appetite for unwholesome mental food, which is constantly unbalancing the mind.
This translated to growing sentimentalism within society, and led to social movements calling for change, such as the abolition of the death penalty and of slavery.
Whilst in the reaction to sentimentalism authors and readers alike satirised or humiliated characters with an excess of emotion, there remained those who supported elements of the genre.
