“Hence forth you must seem to me no longer a woman; a guilty woman with a heart which in is worse wickedness has yes some latent power to suffer and feel; I look upon you henceforth as the demoniac incarnation of some evil principle.” (Page 340)
In this passage Robert is accusing to Lady Audley and saying she is no longer a woman. For all Robert’s hatred of women (Page 208), his largest insult is that she is no longer a woman. Later on the same page Lady Audley says, she is a madwoman. This seems to imply that she is separate and different from other woman. Lady Audley is deceitful in her guise as a woman. Her beautiful face, golden hair, and childlike disposition is all veiling who she really is. Lady Audley is set up to be a perfect woman, a loving wife and the center of societal attention, only to later be revealed as a madwoman.
“When the lovely fairy of the ball-room re-enters her dressing-room after the nights long revelry, and throws aside her voluminous Burnous and her faded bouquet, and drops her mask; and like another Cinderella loses the glass-slipper, by whose glitter she has been distinguished, and falls back into her rags and dirt,” (Page 331). Roberts frustrations with woman could be centered around this false for front. Womanly perfection is only a disguised to be taken off in the private of later. This seems to echo Victorian times. At the time, England was ruled by a queen who created rules about propriety that symbolized womanly strength. In this constricting time, everyone was were not as they were, and were not the face they put on in society. The image of woman that the Victorian times created like a mask to be worn on the outside but always needing to be taken off. Lady Audley is a good example of this society pressure and her character shows the ways in which someone could hide.
I like the points brought up in this blog post. When reading this, my mind wandered to the thoughts of gender equality and male domination in some ways. As we have discussed many times in class, Robert has a pure hatred for females in general. This quote mentioned above connects extremely well to the idea being laid out here. Reading this passage, I also thought of a few lines from the novel that play a role as well with the topic of Robert hating women, especially Lady Audley. “I should still hold her as the most detestable and despicable of her sex–the most pitiless and calculating of human creatures” (266.) He has so much disgust for women and clearly states it in numerous ways throughout the novel.
Going off that last sentence, Therese, Lady Audley is also a good example of how societal pressure shows the ways in which it can bring the worst out of you. Yes, I agree that Robert insults her in this way because of the way because of the fact that she is a manipulative “creature” underneath this almost angelic mask she wears. However, I think that there are several instances in which Robert Audley’s judgments towards her reveal her true self. However, is it possible that Robert’s repeated insults towards Lady Audley are somehow influencing the way that we view her character in the book? Have we, as readers, become more skeptical of Lady Audley’s persona precisely because of Robert’s numerous judgments and insults towards her?
Adding on, another quote that proves Robert’s intense hatred for women is when he says rather blatantly, ‘I hate women.’ (208) Going back to our class discussions regarding ‘The Age of Reform’, I think that a lot of Robert’s uneasiness on his opinion of women is due to the changing roles of women in society and drastic changes in law as well as social mobility. The idea that the role and the place of a woman is no longer a ‘sure thing’ in that women were beginning to have rights and start speaking their minds was a shocking novelty. Earlier on in the book when it says, ‘Surely a pretty woman never looks prettier than when making tea.’, would have been an opinion that was perhaps going out of style. Especially coming from an affluent background, Robert would have found a woman who was more capable than just looking pretty and making a cup of tea incredibly unusual and could have heightened his ‘hate’ for women. Women no longer needed to rely so fully on men and I think that this intimidated Robert.