{"id":164,"date":"2016-02-17T16:57:31","date_gmt":"2016-02-17T16:57:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/?p=164"},"modified":"2016-02-17T16:58:33","modified_gmt":"2016-02-17T16:58:33","slug":"the-troubles-of-victorian-marriages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/2016\/02\/17\/the-troubles-of-victorian-marriages\/","title":{"rendered":"The Troubles of Victorian Marriages"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201che [Sir Michael Audley] remembered the sick, half-shuddering sensation of regret and disappointment that had come over him then\u2026. I do not believe that Sir Michael Audley had ever really<\/em> believed in his wife.\u201d (p. 299)<\/span><\/p>\n

When I read this passage, I initially thought that Sir Michael Audley\u2019s skepticism of his marriage arose from the book\u2019s recurring theme: distrust\u00a0of\u00a0women. After all, the narrator urged us to not consider women the weaker sex, but \u201cthe stronger sex, the noisier, the more preserving, the more self-assertive sex.\u201d (p. 178) Not only are they the more aggressive sex, but our narrator spoke of the power of beauty, insinuating that it taught Lady Audley \u201cto be selfish and cruel\u2026 cold-hearted and capricious, greedy of admiration.\u201d (p. 252) Along these lines, Sir Michael Audley had every right to suspect that his marriage would prove too go to be true. After all, he married someone not only of the stronger sex, but with physical qualities suspected of bringing out a women’s cruel\u00a0qualities.\u00a0<\/span>However, I do not think that Braddon\u2019s trying to make the claim that women are as sinister\u00a0and vain as Lady Audley comes across in this novel. Through this story, I believe Braddon is instead critiquing marriage practices of the Victorian era.<\/p>\n

The most prominent marriage practice in this novel is marrying outside of one\u2019s class. We see it when Lady Audley married George Talboys, then again between Lady Audley and Michael Audley. In both cases, Lady Audley is marrying up a class. However, we also see the other side of this, with Robert Audley\u2019s refusal to marry Alicia Audley. In this case, Robert Audley would have married up a class. Entering a marriage where the woman is the breadwinner would not appeal to man, as it would challenge his role as the head\u2019s household. The prospect of Robert marrying his cousin is unsurprising, as marriages within wealthy families had been a common practice then.<\/span><\/p>\n

Through this novel Braddon could be making a case to not consider class when marrying. She has supported this argument by demonstrating that when money and class are the primary reasons for marrying, genuine love is unlikely to form. Lady Audley stated herself that she only loved Sir Michael because he \u201celevated\u201d her \u201cto a position that he [George Talboys] could never have given me.\u201d (p. 299) Along these lines, Sir Michael Audley\u2019s \u201csensation of regret and disappoint that had come over him\u201d when he proposed to Lady Audley makes sense. Deep down, he may have held a suspicion that marrying outside of the family or his class would not work out. Always suspecting that she married him only for his position, Sir Michael found himself in a marriage without love and trust. In this way, I believe Braddon has used her characters to critique the vanity and selfishness that characterized Victorian era marriages. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201che [Sir Michael Audley] remembered the sick, half-shuddering sensation of regret and disappointment that had come over him then\u2026. I do not believe that Sir Michael Audley had ever really believed in his wife.\u201d (p. 299) When I read this passage, I initially thought that Sir Michael Audley\u2019s skepticism of his marriage arose from the … Continue reading The Troubles of Victorian Marriages<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1818,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123782],"tags":[123796,123784,123783,1220,123793,123797,123795],"class_list":["post-164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2016-blog-post","tag-elitism","tag-lady-audley","tag-lady-audleys-secret","tag-marriage","tag-sir-michael-robert","tag-victorian-family","tag-victorian-marriage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164","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\/1818"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}