Lady Audley's Secret by Elizabeth Braddon
Following Wilkie Collins’ lead in literary vogue, Mary Elizabeth Braddon became an additional authority of sensation fiction. At the time of its publication, her novel Lady Audley’s Secret was an enormous success among Victorian audiences. The sensational tale of a woman changing her social status from poverty to living in an old medieval court, while committing bigamy to get there, fascinated and appalled Victorians and their proper English ways. Braddon’s novel presents philosophical moments and demonstrates skeptical tendencies about trusting the social roles set for women. This novel uses its male protagonist to explore the ideologies behind the constructed persona of a lady—her gender, her social class, her morality—and ultimately shows that, according to Victorian culture, a woman who transgresses social norms deserves institutionalization.
Keeping with the Gothic elements of sensation fiction, the narrative frequently mentions habits of the Gothic tradition in ways that suspend the heroism of male figures. From the beginning, it establishes that Audley Court is an old, crumbling convent where priests once hid during “those cruel days when the life of a man was in danger if he was discovered to have harbored a Roman Catholic priest, or to have had mass said” (45). This line is brilliant irony because it juxtaposes a period the narrator calls “cruel” when men were considered criminals for protecting Catholic men, with one in which women are considered criminals for social climbing.
Braddon’s wry suggestion is that religious beliefs and practices are not within the jurisdiction of madness, while female mobility is. This notion questions the value of men’s actions versus women’s, and pits religion against women’s autonomy. In this case, Victorian culture might want to protect religious ideology, while Helen Maldon (also known as Lady Audley) similarly seeks to protect herself from “the bitterness of poverty” (358). How do they compare? The “cruel days” are not historical; rather, they are especially current because of the use of asylums. Men risked death to hide men for the sake of religion, yet women risked being buried alive if they sought a better lifestyle.
A majority of the plotline consists of Robert accumulating evidence to prove Lady Audley’s fraudulent behavior, despite the happiness she shares with Sir Michael Audley; the plotline itself acts as a spar between the genders and ultimately reveals it to be an uneven match. Once Robert compiles his incriminating evidence dates, facts, letters, and narratives, he confronts Sir Michael and demands that Lady Audley shares her secret. She begins her narrative with, “I must tell you the story of my life” (356), which is a literary technique, an oral tradition, and a humble move intended to gather sympathy.
A quick digression to connect the history of oral tradition, or folk literature, with this scene gives it greater significance. Stith Thompson explains that oral tradition, preceding the written word, was a form of communication for people and that “nearly all known peoples, now or in the past, have produced it” (Thompson). Just as this study looks at the origins of madness and its overlooked cultural significance, the study of two important aspects of folk literature also calls to attention their forgotten signifiers.
First, while it may be common knowledge that various forms of oral tradition existed among primitive cultures and people, it must not be overlooked that oral literature precedes the written art form of human expression. This point especially relates to women in the nineteenth century who lacked a dominant presence among literary authors. Therefore, when Lady Audley calls her secret “the story of my life” she is returning to the original form of literature—an elusive form that shirks control of a dominant power. Second, oral literature requires an audience in order to become a piece of work and effective interaction. Thompson addresses the matter of reception of folk literature among mixed groups; in this case he juxtaposes an audience with a “modern Western point of view” with the folk literature of an “other.”
An item of folk literature sometimes shows relative stability and sometimes undergoes drastic transformations. If these changes are looked at from a modern Western point of view, ethnocentric judgments can be made as to whether they are on the whole favourable or unfavourable. But it must be remembered that the folk listening to or participating in its oral literature have completely different standards from those of their interpreters. (Thompson)
Thompson’s work, in other words, helps pinpoint the issue of interpretation when it comes to the audience/listener relationship in folk literature among mixed groups. From his explanation it is understood that ethnocentric judgments are easily made when there are different standards between the speaker and the audience; I would argue the same holds true between genders when Lady Audley relays her story to Robert and Dr. Mosgrave. In relating the unfortunate events that led up to her marriage to Sir Michael Audley, Lady Audley presents a real person who faced difficult circumstances. But how her listeners—Robert and Dr. Mosgrave—react to her story is important.
Her story begins with Lady Audley’s childhood when she wonders about her mother’s absence. She says, “When I was a very little child I remember asking a question which it was natural enough that I should ask, God help me! I asked where my mother was” (356). Being motherless was unfortunate, but her father was at sea with the navy and left her with a caretaker who “vented her rage” upon Lady Audley due to being irregularly paid (357). Lady Audley summarizes her childhood with, “So you see that at a very early age I found out what it was to be poor” (357). Braddon emphasizes poverty as the impetus surrounding Lady Audley with dysfunction—not a physical absence of money, but cognitive turmoil caused by the human reaction to want and unfulfilled expectations that leads to emotional and psychological abuses.
Lady Audley learns her mother is in a madhouse and her reaction is that, “I had no knowledge of the different degrees of madness; and the image that haunted me was that of a distraught and violent creature, who would fall upon me and kill me if I came within her reach” (357). To her already existing sadness and degradation, Lady Audley fears the mother she missed. Included in her fear are common social associations with madness in that era—the lack of knowledge about the different degrees of mental struggle and the assumption of aggressive and unpredictable behavior. When she goes to the asylum and meets her mother, she learns the truth: that her mother is calm and lovely yet does not recognize her family.
Her “madness” had set in at Lady Audley’s birth, in a condition now understood as postpartum depression. This form of depression is real and difficult and affects more mothers than it does not. The medical and psychological branches of healthcare in Victorian England lacked an understanding of this psychological phenomenon, causing them to misdiagnose her condition as madness.
Lady Audley’s secret, or life story, continues to unfold into her adulthood when she marries George Talboys. After she explains why she marries “the rich suitor—the wandering prince” and bears a son, she admits she had the same experience as her mother: “My baby was born, and the crisis which had been fatal to my mother arose for me” (361). Lady Audley too suffers from postpartum depression and similarly lacked proper medical care and mental help. She confesses her breaking point happened when George left her in the middle of the night to seek a fortune—a desperate act—but one that made her a beggar. As she describes George, “His father was rich; his sister was living in luxury and respectability; and I, his wife, and the mother of his son, was a slave allied for ever to beggary and obscurity…At this time I think my mind first lost its balance, and for the first time I crossed that invisible line which separates reason from madness” (361). The degradation of poverty and single motherhood puts Lady Audley on the brink between sanity and insanity.
At this point in her narrative, Lady Audley explains how she changes her fate: she leaves her son with her father, changes her name, and becomes a governess for a doctor who introduces her to Sir Michael Audley. She says, “You know the rest. I came here, and you made me an offer, the acceptance of which would lift me at once into the sphere to which my ambition had pointed ever since I was a schoolgirl and heard for the first time that I was pretty” (362).
While her story seeks compassion from a sympathetic listener who might understand her struggles with poverty, postpartum depression, and abandonment, the skeptical listener will also note that Braddon gives Lady Audley threads of vanity and detachment. What this characterization does is reveal human struggles that society cannot solve, paired with the fictitious portrait of an ambitious woman who broke the confining mold of class structure. That her ambition supersedes her responsibility as a mother is frightening for readers who understand the punishments for stepping outside of the dominant culture. Braddon creates a complicated character in Lady Audley, making it difficult to judge her, yet what is inevitable for Lady Audley, as a practice of the era, is punishment.
The final judgment for Lady Audley comes from the iron fist of Robert Audley in the way he conducts the doctor-patient interview. Robert gains the confidence of Dr. Alwyn Mosgrave, a man who was “mostly confined to the treatment of mental diseases,” a suggestion of compliance with his superiors (381). They have a private interview, yet Robert “told nothing of the disappearance of George Talboys…He told nothing of the fire at the Castle Inn” (382). By keeping these more criminal details from Dr. Mosgrave, Robert is protecting her from a court of law in which a jury would determine her fate; he would rather determine it by painting and crafting her as a madwoman.
This power move echoes Foucault’s study, where he explains that in 1609 male second-time offenders who attempted to breach class structuring were murdered and female second-time offenders were banished. Leniency may have the appearance of mercy, yet over time it similarly paints and crafts women as the lesser and weaker gender and puts women at the mercy of men as seen in the ten-minute interview between Lady Audley and Dr. Mosgrave. His final report on her reads: There is latent insanity! Insanity which might never appear; or which might appear only once or twice in a life-time. It would be dementia in its worst phase perhaps; acute mania; but its duration would be very brief, and it would only arise under extreme mental pressure. The lady is not mad; but she has the hereditary taint in her blood. She has the cunning of madness, with the prudence of intelligence. I will tell you what she is…She is dangerous! (385)
His assessment seems an ostentatious exaggeration of his many years of experience; saying she has insanity that may never appear obfuscates a realistic diagnosis; he says cunning and intelligence make her dangerous, yet it is unclear who she threatens exactly. Extreme mental pressure is not out of the ordinary for most people, including for Robert, who suffers a type of monomania while conducting his research on Lady Audley. It is during his investigation of her that he feels pulled by a force about which he says, “is not myself; it is the hand which is beckoning me further and further upon the dark road whose end I dare not dream of” (196). The source of this hand is intentionally ambiguous to avoid associating it with the providence of God and therefore takes on characteristics of what he refers to as “the dark road.” His cousin Alicia also seems to suffer extreme mental pressure at Robert’s rejection of her love interest…most of the characters in the story reveal some type of mental frustration and secrecy that contribute to the ambiguity of what constitutes a genuine “mad person.”
While Robert is “beckoned” through his arduous trek of discovering Lady Audley’s secrets, the narrator’s voice offers an additional point of view on the fluidity of madness: Madhouses are large and only too numerous; yet surely it is strange they are not larger, when we think of how many helpless wretches must beat their brains against this hopeless persistency of the orderly outward world, as compared with the storm and tempest, the riot and confusion within:—when we remember how many minds must tremble upon the narrow boundary between reason and unreason, mad to-day and sane to-morrow, mad yesterday and sane to-day. (227)
The narrator’s philosophical digression from Robert’s task acts, anachronistically, like a stream of consciousness and brings the reader to an abstract place where sanity and insanity are ambivalent. This digression echoes Foucault’s study in Madness and Civilization, which identifies a struggle between reason and madness, in the way it juxtaposes “helpless wretches” and an “orderly outward world.” The narrator suggests all human beings teeter between reason and unreason and quips that madhouses ought to be larger. In this philosophical sense, madness becomes a social leveler and affects people equally, yet the novel returns to the power struggle—the spar between Robert and Lady Audley.
Dr. Mosgrave’s claim that Lady Audley has latent insanity that may never appear, or might appear once, does not warrant a life sentence to the madhouse. Robert’s true motives for her commitment are revealed when he reiterates multiple times his desire to protect the Audley name from disgrace. Dr. Mosgrave’s first response is, “Certainly, Mr. Audley…but you cannot expect me to assist you to condone one of the worst offences against society,” yet he follows quickly with, “I do not see adequate reasons for your suspicions; and I will do my best to help you” (385).
When Robert promises to thank him when he is better able to do so, indicating a monetary bribe, Dr. Mosgrave then describes the place that will accept Lady Audley: From the moment in which Lady Audley enters that house…her life, so far as life is made up of action and variety, will be finished. Whatever secrets she may have will be secrets for ever! Whatever crimes she may have committed she will be able to commit no more. If you were to dig a grave for her in the nearest churchyard and bury her alive in it, you could not more safely shut her from the world and all worldly associations. But as a physiologist and as an honest man I believe you could do no better service to society than by doing this; for physiology is a lie if the woman I saw ten minutes ago is a woman to be trusted at large. If she could have sprung at my throat and strangled me with her little hands, as I sat talking to her just now, she would have done it. (Braddon 386-87)
Dr. Mosgrave’s “professional” opinion adds another layer of confusion about the misunderstanding of madness and how women were vulnerable to the risk of institutionalization. His description of the asylum bears no resemblance to a medical institution, but a form of cultural punishment and confinement. He becomes a tool in the machinery of institutionalization because he carries the authority of a “doctor” to place Lady Audley in a building that carries the authority of a “service to society.” Similar to the two-doctor test presented in The Woman in White, Dr. Mosgrave’s interview is the first test; the second will take place in Belgium.
In ten minutes he determines Lady Audley’s condition as well as her judgement, without acknowledging the story of her life. Earlier he describes her as having the cunning of madness with the prudence of intelligence, which sounds like the description of a shrewd business person, scientist, mathematician, actor, designer—or doctor—any creative person that may have cunning madness and prudent intelligence yet fits into society. He also admits that wrongly committing a person to a madhouse is one of the worst offences in society yet agrees to help Robert. This scene reveals that loyalties fall “up”; the doctor’s loyalties are to the Audley estate, not to Lady Audley, and she is defenseless.
Furthermore, Dr. Mosgrave is quite familiar with the maison de santé in Belgium, from his description of it he has sent patients there for decades. He states that Robert can do no better service to society than to prevent Lady Audley from being trusted at large. “Society” is a key phrase here and must be considered in terms of the Audley name and Dr. Mosgrave’s reputation. These were male dominated factions of society that could easily confiscate any power Lady Audley utilized on her own. As Dr. Mosgrave states, the maison de santé will safely shut her away from the world and all worldly associations; she will disappear, leaving the men’s gentility intact.
The last moment we see Lady Audley’s character is her delivery to the Belgian madhouse, a distance of roughly 400 miles from Audley Court, in a chapter appropriately titled “Buried Alive.” The narrator declares that “[Robert] had been her judge; and he was now her gaoler [jailer]” (387). Robert replies, when asked where he is taking her, “To a place in which you will have ample leisure to repent the past, Mrs. Talboys” (391). Robert now takes on the persona of the hidden Catholic Priest mentioned in the beginning of the novel, only that as a lawyer he can hide in society in plain sight. He delivers her to the asylum building, which is described as “a great mansion of grey stone, with several long ranges of windows, many of which were dimly lighted, and looked out like the pale eyes of weary watchers upon the darkness of the night” (391).
Braddon’s imagery makes the scene dark, bleak, and hopeless as the building “reflects and exposes the complex negotiation of national and local ideologies,” as stated earlier in Newman’s article. While the giant structure of Lowood that Jane enters in Jane Eyre reflects “dominance and authority” this maison de santé reflects “functionality and economy.” Keeping in mind its location in Belgium, the structure suggests a darker, more secretive ideology than that of the school. The windows, while appearing to give the inmates access to the outside world, reveal the fading light illuminating the women within the structure who are segregated from society and doomed to nonexistence.
Robert tells Lady Audley, “Your name is Madame Taylor here…I do not think you would wish to be known by your real name” (395). The title change from Lady to Madame is regional in the move from England to Belgium and the surname change to Taylor removes any evidence of her married names: Talboys and Audley. Ultimately, the name changes reveal Robert’s power to win the spar with Lady Audley and the patriarchy’s rejection of a designing, intelligent, “criminal” woman.
Although Robert heroically restores honor to Audley Court as a home and solves the problem of George Talboys’ “murder,” the novel casts a shadow over all of Robert’s heroisms by leaving us with one lingering question: does Lady Audley’s punishment match her crime? From a modern sensibility, no, it does not; except in its upholding of Victorian norms. From a different perspective, Lady Audley becomes the misdiagnosed, mistreated, vulnerable woman who is silenced and buried alive. She would have been more fairly treated as a criminal with her sanity intact. This problem persists when men call women crazy in order to defend themselves.
By insulting women’s intelligence, it insinuates they can be easily controlled. Braddon’s narrative reads true to its sensation fiction genre, yet it shows us nuances of feminism hidden beneath a plotline that admonishes the patriarchy.
Jane Eyre, The Woman in White, and Lady Audley’s Secret feature confinement as a cultural punishment for women who challenge men in authority. This confinement is the physical manifestation of weakness and loss of power as demonstrated by the fictional women’s losses of voice as seen with Bertha Mason, the lack of character (with the use of the color white and interchangeability) as seen with Laura Fairlie and Anne Catherick, and lack of power in society or in the civic space as seen with Lady Audley.
Without assuming the authors’ intentions, these novels demonstrate anxieties surrounding the power struggle between men in authority and marginalized women. The genre of sensation fiction buffers the authors’ potentially forward-thinking views among a morally conservative audience. They may expressly touch upon the reconfiguration of literature to further expose patriarchal dominance, the twentieth and twenty-first centuries will return to Victorian and sensation fiction and continue that reconfiguration in a genre known as neo-Victorianism.