**Beethoven’s 7th Symphony plays in the background**<\/p>\n
‘”Can I ever forget it?” he thought; “can I ever forget his blank white face as he sat opposite to me at the coffee-house, with the Times newspaper in his hand? There are some crimes that can never be atoned for, and this is one of them. If I could bring George Talboys to life to-morrow, I could never heal that horrible heart-wound; I could never make him the man he was before he read that printed lie”‘<\/em> (377).<\/p>\n This is an important flashback<\/strong> in the story, and it really makes one consider\u00a0the scene that occurred earlier in the novel.\u00a0However, before referencing the earlier instance, it is important to cite repetition and binaries. The word “forget” appears twice and this is important because Robert doesn’t know if he can actually forget what has occurred, concerning his good friend, George. In addition, the binary “I could” vs\u00a0“I could never” comes into play, indicating that, if Robert were able to bring George back to life, he most certainly would do so, but he would never be able to assuage the pain created by Helen’s “death.” Again, readers are shown that Robert really does care about George – whether this a romantic type of affection, or so forth.<\/p>\n In\u00a0contrast to the time this scene actually occurred (p. 39), this flashback is understood differently by the reader, mainly because we now know what Lady Audley (AKA Helen) has done (when we previously had no idea) and, truly, that her entire life is a lie<\/strong>. This is an important passage because it highlights Lady Audley as a determined\u00a0character, making\u00a0readers think about her\u00a0circumstance, and everything that she has experienced. Now readers have an understanding of her as a character: at first, she was\u00a0Helen Maldon, daughter to a drunk. She ends up marrying a man named George because he had quite a lot of money. However, because George married someone of a low social and financial background, he was disinherited.\u00a0After George goes to Australia, Helen becomes Lucy Graham and works as a governess. Later on, she becomes Sir Michael’s wife (and a bigamist). Clearly, this passage alone brings back the theme of “madness” and what it means to be a sane individual. Lady Audley\u00a0enters a\u00a0slow journey into madness through all of her decisions.\u00a0Aside from abandoning her child, she doesn’t seem to show any emotions for the problems that she is concocting (such as leaving a horrible heart-wound<\/strong> on George).<\/p>\n This may be crazy, but if George were still alive, do you think Robert would explain the entire truth to George – let him know that Helen only married him for his money? Maybe, instead of George being completely crestfallen – and depressed – he would become infuriated, and find a way to “get back” at Helen. What if George actually is alive?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" **Beethoven’s 7th Symphony plays in the background** ‘”Can I ever forget it?” he thought; “can I ever forget his blank white face as he sat opposite to me at the coffee-house, with the Times newspaper in his hand? There are some crimes that can never be atoned for, and this is one of them. If … Continue reading Volume III: Chapter VI – Buried Alive<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2975,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123782],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-177","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\/177","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\/2975"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}