Lady Audley’s Secret is a novel written in 1861 by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. It is no doubt a novel of many elements. Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s sensational novel Lady Audley’s Secret presents the astonishing and cynical notion the sort of surprise at the fictional company one is keeping, or at the view of the world it is central to a whole genre of fiction. It best fits under the category of melodrama of sensational genre, and the genre of mystery.
The novel was originally produced in three volumes along with a serialized magazine version and, later, a single volume edition. The novel, Lady Audley’s Secret is closely associated to the street literature and newspaper accounts of real crimes. The crimes in this work of fiction are concealed, masked and secret. The term melodrama has come to be applied to any play with romantic plot in which an author manipulates events to act on the emotions of the audience without regard for character development or logic.
Everything that Lady Audley does in this novel seems calculated. Unlike violent stories of the past in which a criminal kills for the sake of killing, Lady Audley is brilliant in bigamy, arson, and murder; The nature of her crimes reflect a general fear of intimate and buried violence, suggesting a growing anxiety about being threatened from within. Her moves are all calculated and planned keeping in mind the consequences also. Murders and robberies spring from a specific social context. Murders in Victorian melodramas are often the result of elaborate plans to conceal identity, right a wrong or improve social status.
The novel opens with the marriage of a beautiful, blonde orphan Lucy Graham, to a widower Sir Michael Audley. Braddon presents Sir Michael and Lucy Audley’s relationship as a foundationally deceptive relationship that eventually leads to their separation. Lucy, a governess for the doctor Mr. Dawson, was married to George Talboys who was not able to offer her the life she always wanted, she becomes angry and depressed as George has to leave for Australia to earn fortune.
Eventually she sees an opportunity to start over and she grabs it, for the sake she leaves her child, changes her name and goes out as a governess. When the wealthy Sir Michael Audley proposes, she accepts and goes from the life as governess to the life of a Lady, afterwards discussed how George returns along with Robert, Sir Michael’s nephew. After seeing the potrait George disappeared and Robert begins to find clues suspects to the involvement of Lady Audley, and he slowly begins to collect evidence against her.
On searching the possession of George, he find a book with a note written by George’s wife that matches Lady Audley’s handwriting. This further proved to Robert that Lady Audley was a liar and was involved in George’s disappearance. After a series of confrontation with Robert, Lucy confesses about her past life and also confesses to Robert that she killed George by pushing him down a well in the garden.
In the novel The Lady Audley that we get to know is a woman who is sure of what she wants and will not let anyone stop her, which in the book is described as the acts of a madwoman. But is Lady Audley really insane or too ambitious and confident about herself? To discuss the following question we may say that Lady Audley is indeed a criminal; it is all about the Victorian society, where a woman was dependent on her husband for financial support.
Not being allowed to take responsibility for her own life, Lucy’s anger turns to criminality: left without a husband, without money and in complete misery she turned to a life of deception because it was the only way she thought she could bring happiness back into her life. She is quite aware of the fact that knows ultimate fate depends upon her marriage and possibly for this purpose, she is determined to marry a wealthy man. Her actions are inexcusable, but we can understand what lies behind them.
She is independent and goes after what she wants, regardless of whom she might hurt and she admits that she cares for no one except herself. When she finds herself in a frantic situation, she does not act desperate. She seems very intelligent and cool when executing the things she feels necessary to protect herself: bigamy, murder and arson. Another question that arises is “was Lady Audley mad?” as spoken by her “…the hidden taint I had sucked in with my mother’s milk. He did not know that it was possible to drive me mad” (Braddon, p-588).
When Robert admitted her to the Mad House, the belief that madness could be inherited from mothers to daughters and that because of this eventually would go mad drove her to extremes. One big influence on Lucy Graham was being told that her mother had gone insane after giving birth to her, and if she had never found out about this, perhaps her life would not have been as tragic as it was. Since the beliefs of the time were that insanity was hereditary, she was just waiting for the madness to show.
The belief that insanity was inheritable can also be seen in Doctor Mosgrave’s opinion on Lady Audley “The lady is not mad; but she has the hereditary taint in her blood. She possesses the craftiness of madness, with the prudence of intelligence. “I will tell you what she is, Mr. Audley. She is dangerous!” (Braddon, p 570).
Everything Lady Audley does is perfectly calculated and she always has an answer for and a way out of everything. She is not crazy, she is cruel. She is as a cold-hearted and manipulating person, but tries to justify all her evils by saying that she is mad and only uses madness as an excuse for her cold, calculated actions. All her striving was for money and status to raise from poor to rich can be understood.
A reader of Lady Audley’s Secret might notice upon concluding the novel that the reader knows very little about the characters at hand. Instead of being fully developed into people who are easy to relate to, the characters in this novel are used more as symbols that are moved in order to bring attention to social or moral problems.
Lady Audley is nothing more than a representation of the threatening woman figure trying to make changes in this world. Reading and analyzing in detail we may found that it mostly evokes a fear of women’s independence and sexuality. Lady Audley’s ability to control the men in her life makes her a devilish figure. When she attempts to convince Sir Michael that Robert is insane with no proof and just her innocent looks, she is portraying the fears of many people in Victorian society a woman with power is dangerous.
In this novel, crimes logically emerge from an environment in which social status is valued above everything. Crimes committed to improving social status usually focus around a man or woman with a past. Married to a man three times her age, Lady Audley would raise anyone’s eyebrows, yet she successfully ensnares Sir Michael and very nearly achieves her ambitions. Lady Audley’s cunning bigamy and eventual murder represent the mid-Victorian fear of a wicked woman whose manipulative sexuality allows her to pursue dreams of wealth, social status, and power
Concluding to the above discussion Lady Audley – Lucy Graham is a criminal and cannot actually be referred as a madwoman, and a more suitable place for her to spend her last days would have been a prison and not an asylum. I do not think that there are any real instances of insanity or madness in the novel, since there are acts of desperation carried out to prevent from finding out her secrets. Braddon clearly presents deception as a controlling force in the relationships within this novel. Throughout the novel she explores the main characters’ experiences with deceit and how it affects them personally. Braddon examines the idea that the true nature of people can never really be known.
The novel comes to an end with a triumph of good over evil, but at the same time suggests unsettlingly that this victory occurs so satisfyingly only in melodramas. By exploring the elements of both melodrama and mystery, it becomes clear that Lady Audley’s Secret fits into both. Using these genres, Braddon was able to create a successful novel of her time that incorporated both reader emotion and Victorian culture.
REFERENCES
- Braddon, M.E. Mary Elizabeth (1837-1915), Lady Audley’s Secret, http://www.indiana.edu/~letrs/vwwp/braddon/lady1.html
- Elizebeth Braddon, (1861), Lady Audley’s Secret, Vol. 1.
