READING: Lady Audley's Secret
For those who would like to remain unspoiled concerning the intricacies of Lady Audley's Secret, you should probably save this entry for another day.
After the first two chapters, I turned to Zach and said, "I totally know what her secret is." It's like Braddon wasn't even trying. A couple more chapters after that, though, and I was back to being not so sure about her secret. "What's the look for?" Zach asked me. "Well, it's this secret."
Lady Audley's Secret isn't a good book. I purchased it, and another book by Braddon, The Trail of the Serpent, because of how much I loved Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White, The Moonstone, and No Name. Braddon rode the wave of Collins's popularity to literary and financial success. But she's just not in his league. (Truth be told, though, Collins himself is sometimes not in his own league. The man wrote something like eleventy million novels and not all of them are winners.)
Lady Audley's Secret is a "sensation novel" -- and they were totally the rage in the 1860s. Usually crazily and intricately plotted, in a sensation novel someone was going to end up in an asylum against her (usually her more so than his) will. There was usually a murder or two, and captivating villains, and late night crazyfast carriage rides through the moors or something. Elements of the supernatural might be found, but they weren't really the focus of the story. The sensation novel helped give rise to both the mystery novel and the thriller.
A bit more history, and then back to the book. When Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White appeared in 1860 (and PS: Collins and Dickens were totally BFF, often comparing notes on how to keep one's mistress happy), London went fucking nuts over it. There were Woman in White tea cozies and wall hangings. One could find Woman in White soaps and perfumes. Entire lines of clothing were based on what the women in the novel were wearing. The Woman in White was turned into a stage play several times over and pretty much gripped most of the English-speaking world during it's tenure. I love the idea of people wandering around, smelling of Laura Fairlie as they wear poor Anne Catherick's tattered white dress all over the damn place. It's a thought that brings me comfort.
Back to Lady Audley and her (not very interesting) secret.
So, turns out, Lady Audley isn't really who she says she is. Once upon a time Lady Audley had been a woman named Lucy Graham. And Lucy Graham had one time been a woman named Helen Talboys. And Helen Talboys? Started out life as Helen Maldon.
Helen Maldon marries a guy named George Talboys. She marries him because she's kinda not so much with the provincial life, and she'd like to get out of her father's home, and she'd like to have a fairly comfortable life. And while on one hand, sure: not so much with the romance there, Lucy -- the thing is, she's living in 1860. Romance is like a unicorn almost unless you're lucky enough to get a bit in a Jane Austen novel. Marriage -- for women, anyway -- was mostly about financial security. It was tough for property to be passed on to daughters (though that was starting to change) and if you wanted a comfortable life, you had to find a man who could make that happen.
Helen Maldon thinks George Talboys will be that man.
And he is, for a bit. And then the money runs out, and things aren't as fun as they had been, and Helen, pretty rightly I think, starts asking George what his plans are to rectify this cash flow situation. George's plan, then, is to abandon Helen, go to Australia, strike it big, and then come back for her. Only he doesn't tell Helen this; instead, one night, he tells her father that he's going out for a smoke -- and that's the last anyone ever sees of him.
Men: pulling the same shit since always.
Helen, once she gets over the hurt of being abandoned (with a baby; I forgot to mention the baby), realizes that the disappearance of her husband means she's got a second chance. She leaves her baby with her father and her old life at the door, assuming the name "Lucy Graham" and striking out for greener pastures. Those greener pastures end up being the wealthy grounds of Lord Audley's estate. She bewitches him as the governess of a doctor's family, and he asks for, and receives, Lucy Graham's hand in marriage. Lady Audley née Lucy Graham née Helen Talboys née Helen Maldon finally finds the life she wants to have, with the level of financial security and excess she's been looking for.
And for a time, Helen-Helen-Lucy-Lady is happy. She's won.
On one hand, yeah, I'm not thrilled with her choices. But from a 21st-century reader's perspective, I can see why she did what she did -- and knowing what I know about women's suffrage and the options out there for women in general in the 1800s: Go on with your bad self, I want to tell her. It's not like she left her baby on the moors somewhere. And, as far as Helen-Helen-Lucy-Lady knows, George isn't coming back. Why sit stewing in a bad situation?
When the novel opens, George is on a steamer back from Australia. He's made good on his idea of raking in the dough and wants to rejoin the family he left behind. Left behind, I might add, with no news of himself at all for several years. Like, not even a "G'day, mate! Wish you were here!" postcard. George expects that Lucy'll be waiting for him with open arms and his beautiful son. He says as much to one of the passengers on the boat. And because Mary Elizabeth Braddon is skilled with the subtle foreshadowing, George says something like, "If I find that anything has happened to my wife or son, I shall fall upon the ground dead."
Best get to falling, George.
George gets into town and runs into his friend Robert Audley -- of the same Audleys whom Helen-Helen-Lucy-Lady has married into. Robert is the nephew of Lord Audley, and he and George were friends from way back. And actually, the way that Braddon writes them, they seemed more like friends (wink-wink-nudge-nudge) from way back more than just, you know, school chums. 'Course, that's not what her stated intent is; she just needs there to be a connection between George and Robert so that Robert can investigate George's second disappearance. But guys, seriously: they're fucking homos humping the butt sex like there's no tomorrow. Trust me on this.
While hanging out with Robert, George discovers that his wife has died. The woman he abandoned and then thought, "I bet she's still hanging out for me several years later." The woman to whom he lied earlier, saying, "Back in a minute, hon. Just going out for a smoke." George falls into a funk, and Robert Audley prances around like he's wearing a Mary Poppins frock as he tries to two-spoons-of-sugar George out of his depression.
I have no sympathy for George. I get why he left, and I agree that he had to. But I don't think slinking off into the night to make one's fortune is the way one should handle that situation. I don't know that Helen-Helen-Lucy-Lady would have acted any differently if he had told her he was heading out to Australia for a spell -- but if he had left a note or something, I'd have more respect for him now. Now, I just can't stop laughing at him, especially after his "I'll die over any bad news!" drama queening on the boat. Yet again: George lied.
Robert takes George to Audley Court for a change of scenery. There, a secret is revealed and again George goes missing. This throws Robert Audley into a funk, as he mopes about thinking over how much he misses his friend. During all of this, his cousin Alicia practically throws herself at him repeatedly to get him to notice and fall in love with her. However, Rob's totally Brokeback over the missing George, so he never notices her. (Again, that Brokeback stuff: totally subtext. But not really.)
Robert then deerstalkers his way around London and the surrounding areas, trying to learn Lady Audley's secret as well as the whereabouts of George. When all is finally revealed, it's pretty disappointing. Plus, Braddon wants us to feel one way -- but the fact that I am a 21st-century reader makes that difficult.
Helen-Helen-Lucy-Lady is responsible for George's second disappearance. She bonks him on the head with a pipe and sends him down a well. And yeah, I know: illegal. Whatever. She's moved on with her life after being abandoned by her husband (because again, he didn't leave a note so what the hell's she supposed to think?) and now, said husband shows up all, "I'm totally going to tell on you." For a woman in the 1800s? This could be lethal. All a woman has is her reputation, and George Talboys is threatening to ruin that for Helen-Helen-Lucy-Lady. Fair? Not so much. So while I don't necessarily want to encourage a lot of pipe/well problem solving, I totally dig why she did it.
Braddon wants Helen-Helen-Lucy-Lady to be evil, though. She's the villain, and her evil must be stopped. But I just can't find my way to seeing Helen-Helen-Lucy-Lady to be all that rotten. She's deeply uninteresting, since all she wants to do is wear furs and shop; but she's not a monster. There's a scene after one of the big reveals where Helen-Helen-Lucy-Lady cries out that she's a "MAD WOMAN!" (and yeah, totally in all caps like that; it's kinda awesome), and Robert & Co. totally want to believe that. A psychiatric doctor stops by for a quick diagnosis, though, and he says, "She's not mad. None of the things she did look like madness. They look like self-preservation." And that psychiatrist wasn't given nearly enough book time because he's totally on the money with that. She's not mad -- she just knows that as soon as her secret is revealed she's ruined in a complete and total way.
Plus, bitch loves her furs -- and won't get to wear them if she's jailed or committed.
The novel doesn't hold up as well to the passage of time as my personal sensation novel hero Wilkie Collins's do. Not just in the way society thinks about and treats women, but also just in the technical aspects of writing, too. The novel is filled with pretty gaping plot holes, and she relies too much on Dickensian instances of coincidence. She'll spend inordinate amounts of time on certain pieces of evidence, only to not have them play out at all by the end of the novel. Plus George? Never stays missing. Ultimately, these just aren't characters at all that seem worth a full-length novel. Except maybe Lady Audley -- but she needs to find a better writer.
After the first two chapters, I turned to Zach and said, "I totally know what her secret is." It's like Braddon wasn't even trying. A couple more chapters after that, though, and I was back to being not so sure about her secret. "What's the look for?" Zach asked me. "Well, it's this secret."
Lady Audley's Secret isn't a good book. I purchased it, and another book by Braddon, The Trail of the Serpent, because of how much I loved Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White, The Moonstone, and No Name. Braddon rode the wave of Collins's popularity to literary and financial success. But she's just not in his league. (Truth be told, though, Collins himself is sometimes not in his own league. The man wrote something like eleventy million novels and not all of them are winners.)
Lady Audley's Secret is a "sensation novel" -- and they were totally the rage in the 1860s. Usually crazily and intricately plotted, in a sensation novel someone was going to end up in an asylum against her (usually her more so than his) will. There was usually a murder or two, and captivating villains, and late night crazyfast carriage rides through the moors or something. Elements of the supernatural might be found, but they weren't really the focus of the story. The sensation novel helped give rise to both the mystery novel and the thriller.
A bit more history, and then back to the book. When Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White appeared in 1860 (and PS: Collins and Dickens were totally BFF, often comparing notes on how to keep one's mistress happy), London went fucking nuts over it. There were Woman in White tea cozies and wall hangings. One could find Woman in White soaps and perfumes. Entire lines of clothing were based on what the women in the novel were wearing. The Woman in White was turned into a stage play several times over and pretty much gripped most of the English-speaking world during it's tenure. I love the idea of people wandering around, smelling of Laura Fairlie as they wear poor Anne Catherick's tattered white dress all over the damn place. It's a thought that brings me comfort.
Back to Lady Audley and her (not very interesting) secret.
So, turns out, Lady Audley isn't really who she says she is. Once upon a time Lady Audley had been a woman named Lucy Graham. And Lucy Graham had one time been a woman named Helen Talboys. And Helen Talboys? Started out life as Helen Maldon.
Helen Maldon marries a guy named George Talboys. She marries him because she's kinda not so much with the provincial life, and she'd like to get out of her father's home, and she'd like to have a fairly comfortable life. And while on one hand, sure: not so much with the romance there, Lucy -- the thing is, she's living in 1860. Romance is like a unicorn almost unless you're lucky enough to get a bit in a Jane Austen novel. Marriage -- for women, anyway -- was mostly about financial security. It was tough for property to be passed on to daughters (though that was starting to change) and if you wanted a comfortable life, you had to find a man who could make that happen.
Helen Maldon thinks George Talboys will be that man.
And he is, for a bit. And then the money runs out, and things aren't as fun as they had been, and Helen, pretty rightly I think, starts asking George what his plans are to rectify this cash flow situation. George's plan, then, is to abandon Helen, go to Australia, strike it big, and then come back for her. Only he doesn't tell Helen this; instead, one night, he tells her father that he's going out for a smoke -- and that's the last anyone ever sees of him.
Men: pulling the same shit since always.
Helen, once she gets over the hurt of being abandoned (with a baby; I forgot to mention the baby), realizes that the disappearance of her husband means she's got a second chance. She leaves her baby with her father and her old life at the door, assuming the name "Lucy Graham" and striking out for greener pastures. Those greener pastures end up being the wealthy grounds of Lord Audley's estate. She bewitches him as the governess of a doctor's family, and he asks for, and receives, Lucy Graham's hand in marriage. Lady Audley née Lucy Graham née Helen Talboys née Helen Maldon finally finds the life she wants to have, with the level of financial security and excess she's been looking for.
And for a time, Helen-Helen-Lucy-Lady is happy. She's won.
On one hand, yeah, I'm not thrilled with her choices. But from a 21st-century reader's perspective, I can see why she did what she did -- and knowing what I know about women's suffrage and the options out there for women in general in the 1800s: Go on with your bad self, I want to tell her. It's not like she left her baby on the moors somewhere. And, as far as Helen-Helen-Lucy-Lady knows, George isn't coming back. Why sit stewing in a bad situation?
When the novel opens, George is on a steamer back from Australia. He's made good on his idea of raking in the dough and wants to rejoin the family he left behind. Left behind, I might add, with no news of himself at all for several years. Like, not even a "G'day, mate! Wish you were here!" postcard. George expects that Lucy'll be waiting for him with open arms and his beautiful son. He says as much to one of the passengers on the boat. And because Mary Elizabeth Braddon is skilled with the subtle foreshadowing, George says something like, "If I find that anything has happened to my wife or son, I shall fall upon the ground dead."
Best get to falling, George.
George gets into town and runs into his friend Robert Audley -- of the same Audleys whom Helen-Helen-Lucy-Lady has married into. Robert is the nephew of Lord Audley, and he and George were friends from way back. And actually, the way that Braddon writes them, they seemed more like friends (wink-wink-nudge-nudge) from way back more than just, you know, school chums. 'Course, that's not what her stated intent is; she just needs there to be a connection between George and Robert so that Robert can investigate George's second disappearance. But guys, seriously: they're fucking homos humping the butt sex like there's no tomorrow. Trust me on this.
While hanging out with Robert, George discovers that his wife has died. The woman he abandoned and then thought, "I bet she's still hanging out for me several years later." The woman to whom he lied earlier, saying, "Back in a minute, hon. Just going out for a smoke." George falls into a funk, and Robert Audley prances around like he's wearing a Mary Poppins frock as he tries to two-spoons-of-sugar George out of his depression.
I have no sympathy for George. I get why he left, and I agree that he had to. But I don't think slinking off into the night to make one's fortune is the way one should handle that situation. I don't know that Helen-Helen-Lucy-Lady would have acted any differently if he had told her he was heading out to Australia for a spell -- but if he had left a note or something, I'd have more respect for him now. Now, I just can't stop laughing at him, especially after his "I'll die over any bad news!" drama queening on the boat. Yet again: George lied.
Robert takes George to Audley Court for a change of scenery. There, a secret is revealed and again George goes missing. This throws Robert Audley into a funk, as he mopes about thinking over how much he misses his friend. During all of this, his cousin Alicia practically throws herself at him repeatedly to get him to notice and fall in love with her. However, Rob's totally Brokeback over the missing George, so he never notices her. (Again, that Brokeback stuff: totally subtext. But not really.)
Robert then deerstalkers his way around London and the surrounding areas, trying to learn Lady Audley's secret as well as the whereabouts of George. When all is finally revealed, it's pretty disappointing. Plus, Braddon wants us to feel one way -- but the fact that I am a 21st-century reader makes that difficult.
Helen-Helen-Lucy-Lady is responsible for George's second disappearance. She bonks him on the head with a pipe and sends him down a well. And yeah, I know: illegal. Whatever. She's moved on with her life after being abandoned by her husband (because again, he didn't leave a note so what the hell's she supposed to think?) and now, said husband shows up all, "I'm totally going to tell on you." For a woman in the 1800s? This could be lethal. All a woman has is her reputation, and George Talboys is threatening to ruin that for Helen-Helen-Lucy-Lady. Fair? Not so much. So while I don't necessarily want to encourage a lot of pipe/well problem solving, I totally dig why she did it.
Braddon wants Helen-Helen-Lucy-Lady to be evil, though. She's the villain, and her evil must be stopped. But I just can't find my way to seeing Helen-Helen-Lucy-Lady to be all that rotten. She's deeply uninteresting, since all she wants to do is wear furs and shop; but she's not a monster. There's a scene after one of the big reveals where Helen-Helen-Lucy-Lady cries out that she's a "MAD WOMAN!" (and yeah, totally in all caps like that; it's kinda awesome), and Robert & Co. totally want to believe that. A psychiatric doctor stops by for a quick diagnosis, though, and he says, "She's not mad. None of the things she did look like madness. They look like self-preservation." And that psychiatrist wasn't given nearly enough book time because he's totally on the money with that. She's not mad -- she just knows that as soon as her secret is revealed she's ruined in a complete and total way.
Plus, bitch loves her furs -- and won't get to wear them if she's jailed or committed.
The novel doesn't hold up as well to the passage of time as my personal sensation novel hero Wilkie Collins's do. Not just in the way society thinks about and treats women, but also just in the technical aspects of writing, too. The novel is filled with pretty gaping plot holes, and she relies too much on Dickensian instances of coincidence. She'll spend inordinate amounts of time on certain pieces of evidence, only to not have them play out at all by the end of the novel. Plus George? Never stays missing. Ultimately, these just aren't characters at all that seem worth a full-length novel. Except maybe Lady Audley -- but she needs to find a better writer.
posted by Mike at 8:24 AM
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