"THE DEVIL IN THE HOUSE": THE CHARACTER OF LUCY IN LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET BY MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON

Abstract

Nonetheless, as he argued in his 1893 seminal treatise entitled La donna delinquente (The female offender), an unlawful and immoral inclination was a hereditary taint, which could be reassuringly detected by observing anomalous bodily and facial traits (such as a cranial asymmetry, strabismus or a deformed nose), which varied according to the different misdeeds (Lombroso and Ferrero 1895:86). [...]the essentially unfeminine nature of delinquent women was betrayed by their stereotypically masculine attributes (above all, physical strength and mental agility, despite the evident folly of their deviant behaviour) or by their likeness to wild animals or primitive creatures (the monstrous and grotesque figure of Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre is a stringent example). [...]Braddon often lingers on the hyperbolic portrayal of her character's fur coats (86), "silks and velvets" (303), expensive wardrobe (whose open doors reveal "the treasure within" [56]), "fragile teacups of turquoise china" (234), "ivory-backed hairbrushes" (56), "gilded mirrors, shimmering satin and diaphanous lace" (234). [...]the adjective "unnatural" is repeated seven times in a few lines, in order to describe her criminal behaviour and altered facial features when she conceives her arson plan to murder Robert Audley (248-249). [...]after unsettling the stereotypical figure of the angel in the house, mixing her (in)corporeal attributes with the shameful moral characteristics of the female offender, Mary Elizabeth Braddon somehow decides to provide a medical reason for Lucy's misconduct, thus reconciling her views with the assumptions of the Victorian society as well as partially validating (for obvious marketing reasons) the very values she frequently questions in her writings.

Headnote

Abstract: The idealised image of Victorian womanhood was forcefully exemplified by Coventry Patmore in his poem entitled "The Angel in the House" (2006), featuring ladies characterised by innocence, submissiveness, self-abnegation, compliance with their traditional roles of nurturers and homemakers. This paper aims at analysing the controversial character of Lucy Graham (Lady Audley) who, despite her seeming perfection, subversively undermines this very model.

Keywords: female offender, gender construction, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, sensation novel, Victorian womanhood

1. Introduction. The Angel in the House and the female offender

In his 1864 lecture entitled Lilies. Of Queen's Garden, John Ruskin (1865:90) provided his audience with a lucid and persuasive definition of the "separate [albeit complementary] characters" of gentlemen and ladies in Victorian society. In his view, male power was "active, progressive, defensive"; the mind of a man was designed "for speculation and invention; his energy for adventure, for war, and for conquest". Conversely, a true woman had to be "enduringly, incorruptively good; instinctively, infallibly wise - wise not for self-development, but for self renunciation: wise, not that she may set herself above her husband, but she may never fail from his side" (Ruskin 1865:92). While the outer world was his indisputable domain, her province was the domestic environment, "the place of Peace; the shelter, not only from all injury, but from all terror, doubt, and division" (Ruskin 1865:91). Positively excluded from the public sphere, the consecrated Vestal of the "temple of the hearth" envisioned by Ruskin closely resembled the ethereal heroine of Coventry Patmore's highly commended narrative poem, significantly entitled The Angel in the House (2006, first published in 1854). Inspired by the spotless virtues of his wife Emily, Patmore's literary creation, who was "all mildness" (Patmore 2006:18), "pure dignity, composure, ease" (20), epitomised the ideal of innocent, selfless, and submissive womanhood of the second half of the nineteenth century. In the poet's words, "Man must be pleased, but him to please/ Is woman's pleasure" (41). Apparently content in her gilded cage filled with costly commodities, the Victorian lady turned into the most precious ornament of her house: her rosy complexion, her refined garments as well as her slender, delicate body, unfit for any physical exertion, were privately exhibited in the household setting. As Thorstein Veblen (1994:90) elucidated in his essay on the leisure class, the Victorian lady was "supported in idleness by her owner. She [was] useless and expensive, and she [was] consequently valuable as evidence of pecuniary strength".

The female offender, on the other hand, forcefully diverted from the aboveoutlined paradigm of womanly perfection: she usurped the male prerogatives of action, ambition and domination; furthermore, often acting as a life-taker, she rejected her natural, instinctive functions of life-giver, homemaker and nurturer, thus transgressing the socially sanctioned boundaries of her sex. Hence, following in the steps of Charles Darwin and his evolutionary theory, Victorian criminologists, psychologists and physicians devoted their efforts to establishing that the distorted femininity of these abnormal women actually stemmed from "racial degeneration" (Pal-Lapinsky 2003:111). Cesare Lombroso, professor of hygiene and forensic medicine at the university of Turin, was convinced that women were less prone than men to violence and murderous acts, due to their inborn inertia and passive disposition. Nonetheless, as he argued in his 1893 seminal treatise entitled La donna delinquente (The female offender), an unlawful and immoral inclination was a hereditary taint, which could be reassuringly detected by observing anomalous bodily and facial traits (such as a cranial asymmetry, strabismus or a deformed nose), which varied according to the different misdeeds (Lombroso and Ferrero 1895:86). Moreover, the essentially unfeminine nature of delinquent women was betrayed by their stereotypically masculine attributes (above all, physical strength and mental agility, despite the evident folly of their deviant behaviour) or by their likeness to wild animals or primitive creatures (the monstrous and grotesque figure of Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre is a stringent example).

This clear-cut distinction between sanity and perversion, between the angel protectively sheltered in the household sphere and the diabolic female criminal undermining social stability and customary gender roles, is strikingly blurred and problematised by Mary Elizabeth Braddon in her 1862 novel entitled Lady Audley's Secret. As this essay sets out to demonstrate, through the histrionic character of Helen/Lucy/Lady Audley, the disquieting devil in the house, whose immaculate, childlike looks artfully concealed her evil-minded intentions, the writer wished to expose the limits of the male-fabricated construct of Victorian womanhood. Following some preliminary remarks on the sensation novel (the popular genre Braddon's text can be ascribed to), this paper will outline the evolution of the controversial protagonist of Lady Audley's Secret who, as it will be shown, is eventually unmasked and punished, not for her despicable immorality but, as Jan Davis Schipper (2002:10) has pointed out, merely "to satisfy conventions."

2. Sensation novels

Sensation novels were considered particularly disturbing by Victorian literary critics since they placed the most atrocious crimes in the sacred heaven of middle and upper-class domesticity (Tatum 2007:505). Besides, unlike Gothic narratives set in a remote past and in faraway countries, they featured contemporary, realistic settings, alarmingly close to the reader's experience (Zipfinger 2010:43). Even more, the conventional lady in distress, threatened by the dark villain of the tales of terror, was frequently replaced by an angel-like, seemingly harmless creature, who was actually the unexpected executor of savage acts of brutality: moral character and physical appearance were thoroughly dissociated (Talairach-Vielmas 2007:154) and, in spite of Lombroso's speculation, the mark of vice and corruption was virtually undetectable. Revolving around cases of bigamy, murder, arson and poisoning, sensation novels particularly appealed to women, offering them a safe outlet for their frustrations and innermost fantasies (Zipfinger 2010:47), as well as the possibility to blamelessly indulge in acts of "vicarious violence" (Ritchie 2006:1) and secret rebellion. The authors of these subversive plots, therefore, were often held responsible for fostering rather than warning against transgression (Schipper 2002:25), and severely censored for the growth of juvenile and female crimes (Ritchie 2006:25). Among the experts in this genre, professional women writers, who had already trespassed the limits proper to their sex by invading the realm of literature, were regarded with even greater anxiety. Mary Elizabeth Braddon, whose reputation was not above reproach (she was a former actress, romantically involved with a married man, the publisher John Maxwell), was accused of polluting youthful minds, beside lowering the cultural standards of the nation, by "making the literature of the Kitchen the favourite reading of the Drawing-room" (Fraser Rae 1865:105); her novels, dealing with "revolting topics", were dismissed as "one of the abominations of the age" (Fraser Rae 1865:104).

3. The character of Lucy in Lady Audley's Secret

Lady Audley's Secret is probably Braddon's most renowned novel. It tells the story of an enchanting twenty-year-old governess, Lucy Graham, who temporarily succeeds in climbing the social ladder by tying the knot with Lord Audley, a wealthy and distinguished elderly man. Lucy's real name is Helen and she already has a husband, the dragoon George Talboys, disinherited by his father for marrying below his station. A few months after the birth of their child, George had unexpectedly deserted his wife, looking for better opportunities in Australia. Three years later, he had returned a rich man, only to find out that his spouse had mysteriously passed away. Despite appearances, Helen was still alive: weary of her misery, she had abandoned her son and changed her identity to Lucy, thus beginning a new life. The plot unfolds following the strenuous efforts on the part of Robert Audley (Lord Audley's nephew, beside being George Talboys' best friend) to prove that Lucy Graham/Lady Audley is actually Helen Talboys, and therefore a bigamist and a vile impostor. After attempting to murder her first husband and setting fire to the inn where Robert is lodged, maddened Lucy is eventually unmasked and confined in a mental institution in Belgium, where she quietly dies a year later.

A former governess - in herself, a problematic borderline figure between social classes, constantly shifting from the public to the domestic domain (Wetzel 1994:80) - Lady Audley is introduced on stage playing the part of the quintessential Victorian icon. She is endowed with a delicate, almost "fragile figure" (Braddon 2007:43); "the innocence and candour of an infant" beam in her charming and cheerful face and "shine out of her large and liquid blue eyes" (43). Her golden ringlets gleam in the sunlight and make a "pale halo round her head" (9). She seems so pure that she "might have served as a model for a mediaeval saint" (171) while other times, she is compared to "a Madonna in an Italian Picture" (207). Fond of her piano, "happy as a child surrounded by new and costly toys" (43), this "babyfied little creature" (111) feels a strong aversion to reading and studying, while she enjoys society and being admired. Once settled into Lord Audley's lavish mansion, she immediately establishes herself "as the belle of the country, pleased with her high position and her handsome house; with every caprice gratified, every whim indulged" (43).

Nevertheless, the artificial (and therefore disquieting) fabrication of this model angel in the house is clearly stated in the very first pages of the novel, even before uncovering Lucy's secret past: Lord Audley's unexpected marriage proposal, which she explicitly accepts on the grounds of "the advantages of such an alliance", is bluntly and unromantically described by the aging patriarch as "a bargain" (Braddon 2007:11). As Jan Davis Schipper elucidates (2002:5), given the economical dependence of Victorian women on fathers, husbands, or even employers, many girls resorted to the conscious construction of an idealised self in order to secure the protection of an affluent spouse, ending up trapped in asymmetrical relationships which the scholar defines as "legalized prostitution". Lured by the prospect of a wealthy life, newly-acquired Lucy willingly accepts to be considered an ornament in Lord Audley's "Aladdin's palace" (234). She is associated with and surrounded by dazzling and high-priced commodities that, while perfectly framing her beauty (the woman's only asset), at the same time seem to suffocate her. Consequently, Braddon often lingers on the hyperbolic portrayal of her character's fur coats (86), "silks and velvets" (303), expensive wardrobe (whose open doors reveal "the treasure within" [56]), "fragile teacups of turquoise china" (234), "ivory-backed hairbrushes" (56), "gilded mirrors, shimmering satin and diaphanous lace" (234). Yet, the atmosphere in the lady's apartments is stifling, "almost oppressive from the rich odours of perfume bottles whose gold stoppers have not been replaced" (56). As the writer seems to imply, dualism and ambiguity are not just expressed through her devious villainess; they pervade the very core of Victorian society: the domestic hearth.

Lucy's many-sided personality and her distorted nature, hidden behind a façade of seeming perfection, are hinted at throughout the narrative. Her image is symbolically multiplied into the many women reflected in the mirrored walls of her stately home. Her meaningfully unfinished portrait by a painter belonging to the fleshy school of artists discloses what is not normally "perceived by common eyes" (58), namely the devil behind the angel:

No one but a pre-Raphaelite would have so exaggerated every attribute of that delicate face as to give a lurid lightness to the blonde complexion, and a strange sinister light to the deep blue eyes. No one but a pre-Raphaelite could have given to that pretty pouting mouth the hard and almost wicked look it had in the portrait. It was so like and yet so unlike. ...My lady, in his portrait of her, had something of the aspect of a beautiful fiend. Her crimson dress, exaggerated like all the rest in this strange picture, hung about her in folds that looked like flames. (57)

A skilled actress, at ease in any part she performs, Lucy even recommends her maidservant Phoebe (who, notwithstanding a peculiar lack of colour in her face, actually resembles her mistress) to use cosmetics, in order to artfully improve her looks and effectively transform her appearance: "you are like me [...] with a bottle of hair dye, such as we see advertised in the papers, and a pot of rouge, you'd be as good-looking as I any day" (47). Over and over again, Lady Audley is compared to a deceitful enchantress, an "amber-haired siren" (224), "an angry mermaid" (255), the chimerical creature joining human and animal traits "who got poor old Ulysses into trouble" (30). Her unwomanly physical strength is highlighted when she manages to throw George Talboys into a well, in the vain attempt to rid herself of the burden of her first family (it should not pass unnoticed that, in a most unmotherly fashion, she had already forsaken her son). Finally, the adjective "unnatural" is repeated seven times in a few lines, in order to describe her criminal behaviour and altered facial features when she conceives her arson plan to murder Robert Audley (248-249).

As Nancy Knowles and Katherine Hall (2012:46) have underlined, the plot of Lady Audley's Secret "has two structural moments, destabilizing and stabilizing." Hence, after unsettling the stereotypical figure of the angel in the house, mixing her (in)corporeal attributes with the shameful moral characteristics of the female offender, Mary Elizabeth Braddon somehow decides to provide a medical reason for Lucy's misconduct, thus reconciling her views with the assumptions of the Victorian society as well as partially validating (for obvious marketing reasons) the very values she frequently questions in her writings. Even if her physician, Dr. Mosgrave, is not fully persuaded by Lucy's explanation (given her deliberation and coolness in carrying out her schemes), the woman claims she has inherited the taint of madness from her mother and, for this reason, she cannot be held entirely liable for her actions. Moreover, she is not even technically guilty of any major offence, since George Talboys miraculously survived the fall and Robert Audley escaped from the fire. According to Jan Davis Schipper (2002:52), ascribing madness to women who rejected conventions was a powerful instrument often employed by men to exercise social control and to re-assert traditional gender prerogatives. It reassuringly denied the possibility that the weaker sex could intentionally perform acts of violence, prompted by rage, passion or even selfdefence.

Playing her last part (that of the mentally deranged, insidious other), Braddon's devil is "buried alive" (303) in a madhouse, meaningfully located in a foreign country, more suitable to her snake-like personality and infectious disposition than healthy Britain: in Belgium, "the sibilant French syllables hiss through her teeth as she utters them, and seem better fitted to her mood and to herself than the familiar English she has spoken hitherto" (310). Even Lucy's dreams of social ascent are turned into nightmares in the mental asylum and, once more, commodities signify the dreadful change: her "costly mirrors" are replaced with "wretched mockeries of burnished tin", and instead of the precious drapery and elaborate furniture adorning Lord Audley's mansion, she is surrounded by "the faded splendour of shabby velvet, and tarnished gilding, and polished wood" (309). Incidentally, before leaving to Belgium, she had tried to hide vases of Sèvres and Dresden, jewels, and golden drinking cups among the folds of her dresses, carefully packed in her trunk: "her mercenary soul hankered greedily after the costly and beautiful things of which she had been mistress" (304).

In the end, disclosing Lady Audley's secret also triggers the emblematic development of Robert Audley into a responsible and respectable Victorian gentleman, embodying all the virtues listed by John Ruskin in the above-quoted lecture. At the beginning of the novel, "Bob" is an idle, un-English, feminised barrister, who "has never either had a brief, or tried to get a brief, or even wished to have a brief' (27) in his life. He wastes his time reading French novels and smoking Turkish tobacco in his German pipe. As the story proceeds, however, the improvised detective undergoes an impressive transformation, while striving to preserve the social boundaries of sex and class: he dramatically changes his lifestyle and eventually marries George Talboy's sister Clara, an authentic angel in the house.

4. Conclusion. Lady Audley 's Secret between acceptance and challenge

Mary Elizabeth Braddon concludes Lady Audley's Secret with a slightly moralistic remark, which captivates the sympathy of the most severe and uncompromising reader: "I hope no one will take objection to my story because the end of it leaves the good people all happy and at peace" (355). Nonetheless, through the ambiguous character of Lucy, the charming, attractive, clever, cunning fallen angel in the house, she unquestionably succeeded in challenging one of the central assumptions of patriarchal power: the fabrication of Victorian womanhood.

References

References

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