“The young man was a great favorite with his uncle, and by no means despised by his pretty, gipsy-faced, light-hearted, hoydenish cousin, Miss Alicia Audley. ” (Chapter IV, 5th paragraph)
In this sentence, I noticed two couples of oppositions: “young man” and “pretty, gipsy-faced, light-hearted, hoydenish cousin” connected to the other couple “favorite”/”despised”. I might say that this is because the two cousins are not that different after all. And also, that he is better than Miss Audley because he is described by just positive adjectives, in opposition to her that thanks to the chiasmus “pretty, gipsy-faced, light-hearted, hoydenish”, she is at the same time pretty but still boyish and both cunning as a gipsy – I consider it not physically but as a trait of her personality – and light-hearted.
This simple, descriptive, and superficial language might give us the idea that there’s a bond, a connection between the two cousins. Even if he is their uncle’s favorite, she doesn’t hate him at all. The passage might also mean that she is more interested in men company than that of women but not in a sexual way, she simply doesn’t belong or fit with women’s society.
After all, this short passage may suggest two things: the first is that even if they are blood-related (cousins), there might be a sort of love affair between the two. The second thing it suggests is that they’ll become “partners in crime” for a common goal – or maybe for Miss Audley’s: she is the “gipsy-faced” after all.
To sum up, I believe that what this passage is really about is Lady Audley’s personality that differs from the others’, because even if the language is simple, at the same time it’s effective and mostly focuses on her introduction through her cousin which creates a sort of distorted image of her.
As your post touches on the relationships between cousins, I thought I’d explore the topic a little further, and discuss parallels between the two prominent cousin relationships so far. The first between Alicia Audley and Robert Audley, the second being Luke and Phoebe.
The novel is clearly spending some time exploring the relationships between cousins considering there are two pairs that we know of so far. Word choice when describing interactions between Alicia and Robert Audley often involves dialogue that evokes a sort of age or power dynamic where Robert speaks down to Alicia as his “poor little cousin; my charming, impetuous, alarming little cousin” (128). To which Alicia looks on at her cousin with a “bewildered stare” (129). When one of her suitors leaves emptyhanded, he goes on to remark that hopefully it isn’t because of “the cousin” (131).
The second relationship between cousins is a tad more prominent in page-time where Luke and Phoebe have had multiple conversations regarding their relationship, past, and intentions. Phoebe even expresses her desire to be out of her contract with Luke, fearing for her safety and less than ideal change of situation from Lady Audley’s companion to her cousin’s wife and caretaker of a local inn. I liken Luke to the character Lenny from Of Mice and Men, who is both slow and often compared to animals of brute strength similar to Luke and his many oxen-like qualities.
How these relationships will be explored further and what they may develop into for the characters remains to be seen, but by the end of the story I’m sure we’ll have a clearer idea of Braddons social commentary on the subject.