"Lady Audley's Secret" and Roles of Women

Paper Summary:

The paper analyzes "Lady Audley's Secret" as a story based on the heightened tensions in the repressive period of the Victorian era, revolving around the dynamic of women and the roles to which they were supposed to adhere. The paper focuses on the depiction of Lady Audley and her duplicity of character. The paper relates that by writing a mystery, Braddon finds an alternative method for depicting, preserving, and satirizing the conventions of the Victorian ideal.

From the Paper:

"There are two fundamental approaches to this book: one as murder mystery and the other as Victorian novel. Against this backdrop of the original acts of Lady Audley, we initially see the makings of the general Victorian novel. The story is highly charged and controlled and concerned with conventions, and social roles, and even the acts which Lady Audley commits such as bigamy and murder are at most presented not as ghastly, horrific, or illegal, but as un-lady-like. The role of the woman in Lady Audley's secret, and character orientations towards her, manifest in the deeper unconventionality of Lady Audley that comes out as the ultimate secret that contributes to the truth that is the motivation of this book and the motivator of the characters as they seek to clarify events that have occurred as a result of the influence, actions or chicanery of Lady Audley herself, which in the end is not so much a result of unconventionality or individuality or sociopathy as a result of mental instability or as is ultimately revealed by Lady Audley's fate of institutionalization in a home."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Braddon, Mary Elizabeth. Lady Audley's Secret Penguin Classics (October 1, 1998)
• Braddon, M.E. Mary Elizabeth (1837-1915). "Lady Audley's Secret, Vol. 1 (1862): a machine-readable transcription: http://www.indiana.edu/~letrs/vwwp/braddon/lady1.html#Text
• "Lady Audley's Secret." 2007:http://www.shoppbs.org/sm-pbs-lady-audleys-secret-dvd--pi-2034455.html
• "Lady Audley's Secret." 2007: http://www.nodanw.com/shows_l/lady_audley's_secret.htm
• "Lady Audley's Secret." 2007:http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/mystery/programs/ladyaudley/full.html

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