Question 1

Is Lady Audley a villain?

Accepted Answer

Lady Audley is one of the most complex female characters in Victorian fiction precisely because the novel refuses to make her straightforwardly villainous. Her crimes — bigamy, attempted murder, arson — are real. But Braddon situates them within the constraints imposed on Victorian women by law and by the marriage market: Lady Audley committed bigamy because she was abandoned by her first husband and left penniless with a child; she resorted to violence because discovery meant social annihilation. The novel never excuses her crimes, but it contextualizes them in a way that makes her sympathetic even as it condemns her. Victorian readers were disturbed by Braddon's apparent admiration for her creation, and modern feminist criticism has largely vindicated that discomfort: Lady Audley is not mad, as the novel's resolution suggests, but rational within the parameters of a system that left her no legitimate options. Her 'madness' is diagnosed by men who benefit from her confinement.

Question 2

Why was Lady Audley's Secret so controversial when published?

Accepted Answer

Lady Audley's Secret was controversial for two main reasons. First, its female villain was not a monstrous figure easily separated from respectable femininity, but a beautiful, charming, socially accomplished woman who committed her crimes precisely by wielding the weapons Victorian culture assigned to women (beauty, helplessness, social grace) against the men who underestimated her. Second, Braddon appeared to enjoy Lady Audley too much — to admire her resourcefulness and her refusal to accept a system that had treated her badly. Victorian critics who praised Collins's villains rarely extended the same tolerance to Braddon's because Lady Audley's crimes were committed against patriarchal authority rather than with its consent. The novel sold enormously — it ran through eight editions in three months — which itself alarmed critics who worried about the moral influence of sensation fiction on its largely female audience.

Question 3

What is Mary Elizabeth Braddon's literary reputation today?

Accepted Answer

Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1835–1915) published more than eighty novels over a career of fifty years and was one of the most commercially successful authors of the Victorian era, but she occupied a contested position in the literary hierarchy: successful enough to be widely read and discussed, but working in the sensation genre that highbrow critics regarded as inferior to realist fiction. Her reputation declined severely in the early twentieth century when the sensation novel fell out of critical favor. The feminist literary criticism of the 1970s and 1980s began to rehabilitate her work, recognizing in Lady Audley's Secret a sophisticated critique of Victorian gender constraints. Today she is considered a central figure in the history of Victorian popular fiction and a significant precursor to both the detective novel and the psychological thriller. Lady Audley's Secret is regularly taught in university courses on Victorian fiction and on the history of crime writing.

Lady Audley's Secret Reading Order

Complete Lady Audley's Secret Book List