Throughout my reading of Lady Audley’s Secret, I have constantly questioned whether or not I consider Lady Audley to be a dynamic character. As I have mentioned before, the trope of a femme fatale is nothing new within Victorian literature. Even a semi-sympathetic mad woman had existed before this novel was published (see Jane Eyre). As I read the passage assigned in class today, found on pg. 346, I once again found myself questioning this dynamism. This passage and the text surrounding it prodded me into a position. Lady Audley is, quite possibly, a unique and dynamic character even when other femme fatale characters exist.
This passage has more to do with Sir Michael’s emotions surrounding the revelation that his wife is a formerly married fraud and attempted murderess. He is disappointed and references back to the foreshadowing tinge of regret he felt when he first proposed to Lady Audley (pg. 346). This can be considered a criticism of Victorian marriage customs (as I suggested in class and one of my colleagues “borrowed” from me on this blog) it made me revisit my own interpretation of Lady Audley and the larger societal implications of her character. Immediately after we learn of Sir Michael’s disappointment, Lady Audley offers her own defense. Her actions are a necessity because men had failed her starting with her alcoholic father. George Talboys “allied a helpless girl to poverty” and “had left her no protector… a slave allied for ever to beggary and obscurity” (pg. 347). In this regard, no matter how materialistic or superficial, men had failed to fulfill their obligations to her thus necessitating the resulting actions. In order to provide for herself, she needed to stage her death and marry another wealthy man. The only factor mitigating this sympathetic situation, as my female colleagues pointed out, was her abandonment of her own child.
So why does this matter to anyone but myself? This is possibly a literary criticism of feminine Victorian norms. A man, George Talboys, could abandon his entire family, but the matriarch, Lady Audley, could not escape the situation alive without ruining her reputation or neglecting her responsibility. Instead, she decided to stage her death. Furthermore, she is a sympathetic product of her environment. Without a (sane) mother, she was forced to endure an alcoholic father followed by a fruitless marriage doomed to failure. Short of outright advocating for divorce, I think the unsavory aspects of the situation (Georgy’s abandonment) are purposefully meant to stymie this claim; this text seems to criticize the inability to afford women any sort of option out after a marriage is conducted. The irony is that now Sir Michael has a way out of his betrothal to Lady Audley due to her bigamy. Still, he is not so much a victim of deception as he is to his own impulse and disregard for gut feelings.