The Insane Illness In 'Lady Audley's Secret'

One might think that, for a woman of the Victorian era, a life of a happiness is automatically attained once she has successfully courted herself a financially secure and socially respectable husband. However, it is questionable how safe and secure a woman can be in her life after marriage. For one, her rights are legally transferred to her spouse, essentially giving him control over her life. Moreover, with divorce being an act that is socially shunned, there wasn’t any way to get out of an unhappy marriage without making big sacrifices. For the woman, that is. Men, on the other hand, had the ability to call their wives mad and, especially if someone in her family had a history of madness, she’d be out of his life and locked away in an instant. With the Victorian society’s newfound understanding and obsession with the concept of madness, no woman was truly safe from the imprisonment of the insane asylum.
Despite the apparent power of calling someone “mad” during the Victorian era, the term is thrown
As she was writing for an audience of her time, she would not have been taken as seriously if she had written about the injustices committed against a morally sound character. Instead, she uses a complex character filled with faults to tactfully convey the problems surrounding the stigma of madness. Lady Audley might have been a cunning and selfish woman, but she was not crazy. Yet, under a man’s orders, she died as a madwoman. Not only had madness become highly overused in Victorian society, but it had become a tool used against