Lady Audley's Secret

Lady Audley’s Secret is an exemplary work of the Sensation genre. It provokes debate, and challenges the ideals of the Victorian era by challenging the titular secret; is Lady Audley really mad? In the 19th-century, insanity and madness was defined by the men of medicine to be inherent to the female sex through the "instability of their reproductive system" (Showalter, 1987, p55), such that the natural biological courses of a women’s life weakened her mind and allowed these uncensored repressed symptoms to manifest. However this definition was not confined to the psychological, Susan Bernstein (1997, 82) asserts that the failure to adhere to the set societal standards was tantamount to insanity and that any manifestations of such deviance
Braddon establishes this conflicting identity through the symbolism of the pre-Raphaelite portrait of Lady Audley. The angelic imagery Braddon achieves through depiction of “feathery masses of ringlets with every glimmer of gold” and “delicate face as to give a lurid lightness to the blonde complexion” is one of beauty that subscribes perfectly to the passive and diminutive Victorian ideal of a woman. Moreover, the use of “gold” emphasises the value placed on the features that contribute to the fulfilment of this idea. Yet, there is an ominous duality to the portrait; something “sinister” captured by the artist. Braddon’s choice of language alludes to a threat, positioning Victorian readers to consider that Lady Audley is not all that she seems, and that the very standards of Victorian womanhood can literally mask ominous intentions. Moreover, as the depiction progresses, this masked deviance emerges overtly through the hellfire imagery of the crimson dress that “hung about her in folds that looked like flames”. It therefore becomes ironic that Lady Audley can conform to the roles of both the villain and the innocent ideal woman, thus linking madness with power in the image of a