{"id":1215,"date":"2018-10-03T09:39:01","date_gmt":"2018-10-03T13:39:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/?p=1215"},"modified":"2018-10-03T09:39:01","modified_gmt":"2018-10-03T13:39:01","slug":"despair-in-the-midst-of-opulence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/2018\/10\/03\/despair-in-the-midst-of-opulence\/","title":{"rendered":"Despair in The Midst of Opulence:"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI should be preaching a very stale sermon, and harping upon a very familiar moral, if I were to seize this opportunity of declaiming against art and beauty, because my lady was more wretched in this elegant apartment than many a half-starved sempstress in her dreary garret\u2026 and all the treasures that had been collected for her could have given her no pleasure but one, the pleasure of flinging them into a heap beneath her feet, and trampling upon them and destroying them in her cruel despair\u201d (Braddon 292-293).<\/span><\/p>\n

In this passage, while surrounded by her bounty of luxurious possessions, Lady Audley sulks over her hopeless situation following the discovery of her crimes. The \u201cBenvunuto Cellini carvings and the Sevres porcelain\u201d are only a few of her many exotic treasures that, as the narrator explains, suddenly do not \u201cgive her happiness.\u201d Ironically, she is more miserable in her \u201celegant apartment\u201d than \u201cmany a half-starved sempstress in her dreary garret.\u201d Lucy\u2019s distress in the company of her opulent room represents a distortion of the Victorian values and desires to have worldly treasures at their fingertips. During the Victorian era, English imperialism was on the rise, and the ownership of ornate foreign items became a new obsession. However, Braddon illustrates the possession of exotic riches in a negative light: \u201call the treasures that had been collected for her could have given her no pleasure but one, the pleasure of flinging them into a heap beneath her feet, and trampling upon them and destroying them in her cruel despair.\u201d The mere suggestion of ruin and disposal of such valuable riches would possibly shock the Victorian reader, for Lucy\u2019s displeasure represents a rejection of the esteemed upper-class life of grandeur. Furthermore, the narrator uses a sarcastic tone while describing Lady Audley\u2019s elaborate belongings. For instance, the narrator describes \u201cwealth and luxury\u201d as \u201csuch plasters\u201d and a \u201ccircle of careless pleasure-seeking creatures,\u201d which alludes to the superficiality of a seemingly desirable social status. Furthermore, this demonstrates Braddon\u2019s criticism on the materialistic values of the Victorian Society, as she suggests that happiness does not necessarily come from the enviable and lavish life of wealth and luxury.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI should be preaching a very stale sermon, and harping upon a very familiar moral, if I were to seize this opportunity of declaiming against art and beauty, because my lady was more wretched in this elegant apartment than many a half-starved sempstress in her dreary garret\u2026 and all the treasures that had been collected … Continue reading Despair in The Midst of Opulence:<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3881,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125359],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2018-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3881"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1215\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}