\u201cLook at marriages! Who is to say which shall be the one judicious selection out of the nine hundred and ninety-nine mistakes? Who shall decide from the first aspect of the slimy creature, which is to be the one eel out of the colossal bag of snakes?\u201d (page 205)<\/p>\n
This short passage, upon a deeper examination, is uniquely illuminating regarding the role of marriage in the novel. In a novel rife with references to bigamy and implications about Lady Audley\u2019s honesty and sexuality, the passage poses\u00a0yet another question about the role marriage played in Victorian society. Marriage was tied to standing at the time, but Robert points out that, when considered in a certain light, marriage as an institution is really quite ridiculous. Its very existence is predicated on the notion that a successful pairing\u00a0can be found on such ludicrous grounds as the sheer luck needed to pick the right one out of nine hundred and ninety-nine.<\/p>\n
Additionally, as we discussed in class today, prominent individuals of the time bemoaned the \u201cgumming up\u201d of the marriage market and even suggested the \u201csurplus\u201d amount of women be exported to other countries. If there really were that many potential spouses, and they were living in a rigidly constructed society that did its best to inhibit mobility and force matches of convenience, the odds of any couple truly working in any meaningful way were very slim.<\/p>\n
This understanding of marriage then, when combined with the logical consequences of the Victorian contradiction that we discussed in class, allows for Lady Audley\u2019s character to take on insidious undertones. Society at that time was obsessed with the face and first appearances, and on that count Lady Audley\u2019s supposedly stunning looks would serve her well, a fact that ties in nicely with Robert\u2019s observation of marriage being influenced by the \u201cfirst aspect.\u201d It also puts forth\u00a0Lady Audley, and her marriage, as a perfect representation of the idyllic public facade that Victorian society sought to promote. At the same time, the institution of marriage, or at the very least the desecration of it, can be seen as the root of the novel\u2019s intrigue. After all, the disappearance and potential murder of George Talboys is strongly suggested to be the work of Lady Audley. If this is the case, her marriage to Robert\u2019s uncle and Robert’s friendship with George put Mr. Talboys in danger, leaving us to wonder if Lady Audley really is nothing more than one of the \u201ccolossal bag of snakes.\u201d In any case, she certainly seems to be a \u201cslimy creature.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cLook at marriages! Who is to say which shall be the one judicious selection out of the nine hundred and ninety-nine mistakes? Who shall decide from the first aspect of the slimy creature, which is to be the one eel out of the colossal bag of snakes?\u201d (page 205) This short passage, upon a deeper … Continue reading Lady Audley, Slimy?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2179,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123782],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2016-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128","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\/2179"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}