LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET by M.E. Braddon

When I joined The Classics Club, the first thing I did was go through the list on Kindle, to see which of the books were available for free or reduced fees. This is one of the great things about reading classics—many of those in the public domain are available at no cost for e-readers through the volunteers at Project Gutenberg. I figured I would load a couple of Kindle titles immediately so I didn’t waste any late night reading time, which is when I really enjoy using my Kindle. And one of the first items I loaded was M.E. Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret. Lucky for me, a night of insomnia led me to yet another unexpectedly enjoyable classic!

Lady Audley’s Secret is often described as the quintessential Victorian “sensation” novel, providing a glimpse into that tightly ordered world by examining what happens when its conventions are completely abandoned. The novel begins with the poor but beautiful Lucy Graham winning the heart of widower Lord Michael Audley. Formerly employed by the local doctor as a governess, Lucy’s life before coming to Essex is veiled in some sad mystery. Lord Audley adores spoiling his young and charming wife, hoping to make up for her past unhappiness, to the disgust of his own daughter Alicia (who happens to be about the same age as her new stepmother).

Meanwhile, back in London, presumptive heir to Lord Audley’s title barrister Robert Audley runs into a dear old friend, George Talboys, just richly returned from a gold-panning expedition to Australia, who is searching for the young and beautiful wife he abandoned in an attempt to change their dwindling fortunes. The fortunes were dwindling, I might add, because George’s father disinherited his son when he rashly chose to marry the beautiful but penniless Helen. Alas, just as George triumphantly returns to England, her death is announced in the papers, breaking his heart. But fate brings the many threads of the story together at Audley Court – until, of course, George Talboys mysteriously vanishes, and Robert is compelled to find out the meaning of his friend’s disappearance – no matter the cost to his beloved family.

I like to think of it as the Grandmother of every radio serial and soap opera ever produced –many of the motifs that pack this 300 page novel are still playing out on the airwaves and Internet today: revenge, doppelgangers, orphaned children, unscrupulous parents. I read that it was originally printed in installments, which explains why each chapter adds some information about Lucy’s past – and ends in some kind of cliffhanger. Reading it all together makes for quite a rollercoaster. The seven deadly sins get quite a workout in Lady Audley’s Secret, but as you’d expect from a Victorian novel, the heavenly virtues are also in evidence, drawing a very clear delineation of those who live within society’s boundaries, and those who live without. There’s also a healthy dose of the occult. For example, Alicia’s dog seems to have a preternatural fear of the new Lady Audley:

The Newfoundland rolled his eyes slowly round in the direction of the speaker, as if he understood every word that had been said. Lady Audley happened to enter the room at this very moment, and the animal cowered down by the side of his mistress with a suppressed grow. There was something in the manner of the dog which was, if anything, more indicative of terror than of fury; incredible as it appears that Caesar should be frightened by so fragile a creature as Lucy Audley.p. 72

I thoroughly enjoyed every frothy, overwrought minute of this novel. It was so true to its time period, yet edgy in its confrontation of social taboos. I had never even heard of Lady Audley’s Secret until, trying to expand beyond Elizabeth Gaskill, I looked up a list of female Victorian authors and found Mary Elizabeth (M.E.) Braddon. The book also appeared on the Manchester Guardian’s 1000 Books Everyone Must Read: The Definitive List. That’s a pretty bold claim for any list, and I certainly found some striking omissions (not surprisingly, the list is very English-centric), but I think it’s a fabulous resource, conveniently broken up into genre: comedy, crime, family and self, love, science fiction and fantasy, state of the nation, and war and travel. I will definitely be culling this list for more ideas for future challenges, as the recommendations so far have been outstanding.

This book counts as my 19th Century Classic for the Back to the Classics Challenge, hosted by Sarah Reads Too Much, and is my second book for The Classics Club. It was free for my Kindle, which keeps my total for that Challenge so far at $2.51. Since this is considered a crime genre classic, I am also linking it to the R.I.P. VIII Challenge, hosted by Carl V. of Stainless Steel Droppings, which started just a little bit early this year.

Book Review: Anthony Trollope's The Eustace Diamonds

I have no idea why I had such a hard time with the Jewel or Jewelry entry in this year’s What’s in a Name 4 Challenge, hosted again this year by Beth Fish Reads. After hemming and hawing for months, I finally settled on Kathleen Winsor’s Forever Amber, but the only copy in my library was yellowed and smelled of mildew so badly that I couldn’t leave it in my bedroom. The first couple of pages didn’t convince me I wanted to buy it for myself, so I headed back to good old Goodreads, and started searching for jewels: rubies, emeralds, sapphires (man, was I annoyed that I reviewed Garlic and Sapphires last year), peridots – you name it. Still nothing. Finally I put in diamonds, and to my surprise a Victorian classic appeared: Anthony Trollope’s The Eustace Diamonds. I believe I have read exactly one Trollope novel in my life (okay, I skimmed through Phineas Finn in college), so I thought this was a good opportunity to give Trollope another try.

Which is a very long introduction to explain why on earth I stuck with a close to 800 page novel that I really didn’t enjoy much.

Lady Lizzie Eustace is not a nice person. Trollope is determined that we understand that from the get-go. She is vain. And she is greedy. She is also beautiful, and she has a way of getting men to do what she wants them to do. She had a very rough childhood, and has been forced to make her way in the world with her feminine wiles. But don’t get all sympathetic or understanding. Because it’s very important you understand that Lizzie, despite her circumstances, despite her charm, despite her beauty, is an unsavory woman.

Lizzie is such a wanton woman that she would marry a man for money. Yes, men would later want to marry her for money, but that would be just a sensible shoring up the family fortunes. When the handsome but tubercular Sir Florian Eustace asked Lizzie to marry him because she was beautiful, that was noble. When Lizzie agreed because he was rich, that was very bad. In the end, Sir Florian underestimated his health. Certainly, he didn’t lie about it. He had come to realize that his wife was less than perfect. He found out she liked the money he had. Consumptive though he was, he died of a broken heart, realizing he had left his fortune to a woman who was impure.

And so it went, page after page after page of repetitive, pedantic sermonizing. In a nutshell, Lizzie was in possession of the diamonds, a part of the Eustace patrimony, upon Sir Florian’s untimely death, if you can consider the death of someone with late stage tuberculosis untimely. Lizzie’s son is the Eustace heir and could give the diamonds to her later on, but she’s a lousy mother and when the kid gets to majority he’s probably going to send her to live in one of the Eustace’s many barns. In the meantime, the Eustace family, through their obnoxious and supercilious lawyer, Mr. Camperdown, wants the diamonds back. This causes lots of problems, because Lucy rather likes having them. Lizzie loses Lord Fawn, the boring but titled man she wanted to marry, because Mr. Camperdown is his lawyer too, and Fawn is scared to pieces of him. Eventually Lizzie even loses the respect of the people whom she pays, which leads to the loss of the diamonds. Then she perjures herself, and loses the respect of everyone else. She finally marries the unsavory Mr. Emilus, a poor preacher who is rumored to be a Jew, which Trollope seems to see as some kind of divine retribution. Jiminy Cricket!

Oh, and Lizzie’s cousin, Frank Greystock, who thought more than once about marrying Lizzie for money (to shore up the family fortunes, you understand), winds up with the very poor, virtuous and milquetoast Lucy Morris, because that’s what happens in Victorian novels.

Clearly, Trollope fans are legion. I am willing to admit that I just don’t get it. His moralizing sent me up a tree. In my opinion, it could have been such an interesting story if Lizzie had been drawn with a finer brush. But there’s no grey (except for the aptly named lawyer Frank Greystock) in Trollope’s world, especially when it comes to women. I wondered the whole time I was reading it what Elizabeth Gaskell would have made of Lizzie, since she is the only Victorian author whose characterizations of women I have enjoyed!

Needless to say, I won’t be joining the 2012 Trollope Challenge if there is such a thing. But finally slogging through The Eustace Diamonds means I’ve finished this year’s What’s in a Name 4 Challenge! Hurray! What’s in a Name is the reading challenge that got me to start a book blog, and it’s kept my younger daughter interested in reading for the past two years, so I wouldn’t dream of missing it – or not finishing! I’m already looking forward to What’s in a Name 5 – the categories have already been announced at Beth Fish Reads. Hope you’ll be joining us!

Wives and Daughters: Accessible Victorian

Like so many American public high school graduates, my knowledge of Victorian literature can basically be summed up in one word: Dickens. I have nothing against Charles Dickens. A Tale of Two Cities is a classic for a reason: it’s a really great story of love and lust and revenge, once you get past the archaic writing style. But one thing I remember hating about Dickens’ writing was the pathetic characterizations of women. Lucy Manette fainted at every important juncture of her life. Nell Trent’s saccharine persona induced nausea. The female villains were more interesting: both Madame DeFarge and Miss Havisham are iconic baddies, but only Miss Havisham can claim any kind of complexity. So when I saw SRC task 20.3, which required reading a Victorian era novel, I decided that expanding my definition of “Victorian literature” might be the key to actually enjoying the task.

Enter Elizabeth Gaskell, like her friend Dickens a writer who was originally published in serial format. Looking through the reviews, I settled on her last novel, Wives and Daughters, because I liked the descriptions of the female characters – words like “feisty,” “scandalous,” “conniving,” and “imperious” sounded promising. Again, by going outside of my comfort zone I have been rewarded.

Wives and Daughters is the story of Molly Gibson, the motherless daughter of a well-respected country doctor. When Molly becomes the object of affection of one of her father’s medical students, her father decides that he needs a woman in the house to manage the proprieties. So he marries Hyacinth (Clare) Fitzpatrick, a widow who was once the governess of the local lord’s children. Mr. Gibson considers her a very good match because she has a daughter, Cynthia, who is just a bit older than Molly. However, Molly’s one previous interaction with the doctor’s new wife indicates that her character is less caring and generous than it appears on first glance.

Gaskell puts the day-to-day life of women at the forefront of Wives and Daughters, and the detailed descriptions of their routines, chores and meetings provide a kind of social history of the period. A tremendous amount of time was spent on chores; even more seems to have been spent on communications, either in person or by letter. It’s clear from the book that people considered making visits and providing interesting conversation both a virtue and a duty. But what really struck me was how the detailing of those daily routines could say so much about the power structure of Victorian society. For example, I was surprised by the complete lack of independence that young women had within the family structure. Molly’s new stepmother could keep her from paying a visit to a desperately sick friend, just so that she didn’t have to go unaccompanied on one of her visits. I can’t even imagine asking my daughter to change plans unless an emergency presented itself – my how times have changed.

Molly’s interactions with other characters illustrate her position within the hierarchical structure of the town. Being a Victorian novel, a lot of this information comes in discussions of the suitability of potential mates. Squire Hamley and his wife initially consider Molly an unsuitable match for their treasured sons, although they come to love her like a daughter. Mr. Preston, who oversees Lord Hollingford’s properties, represents a poor match for Cynthia, despite her lack of wealth, as her social-climbing mother counts on her beauty to provide an advantageous marriage. Second son Roger Hamley cannot consider marriage to any woman until he finds employment, as the family estate is entailed to his older brother, Osborne. Osborne, for his part, keeps his marriage to a French Catholic woman of modest means a secret, to avoid being disinherited.

Boundaries are less rigid than they appear at first however – Gaskell’s characters both struggle with and reshape the boundaries, although the likeable characters do so out of virtue and the less likeable out of conceit.

Perhaps I found this book so appealing because of the well-developed and complex female characters, something I have not found in other Victorian novels I have read. Molly, the book’s heroine, is certainly virtuous, but not syrupy. Like other great female characters, she has flaws, pride and self-consciousness among them. She quickly opens her mouth to defend the people she loves, even at the risk of being rude. She knows what she should do, and Gaskell portrays her struggle to do it in a very powerful way. In contrast, her step-sister Cynthia is the most interesting and enigmatic figure in the book – she is absolutely aware of her own faults, and conscious and respectful of Molly’s sweet and naïve nature. She sees everyone – including herself – exactly as they are. In the hands of a clumsier writer, Cynthia might have been a “bad” character used to emphasize Molly’s “goodness.” But Gaskell exhibits a deep understanding of the pressures on women to make their way in a society designed by and for men. Through Cynthia, Gaskell provides a dispassionate look at the position of women in Victorian society, and chronicles someone who played the hand she was dealt extremely well, according to the mores of the time.

I really liked this book. One discovery of my summer reading seems to be a growing affinity for female authors, regardless of their culture or time period. I am growing more demanding in my expectations of portrayals of women, maybe because I have a better idea of how really difficult it is to be one than I did when I was younger. Another gift for expanding my reading horizons.