{"id":1773,"date":"2021-09-21T09:40:30","date_gmt":"2021-09-21T13:40:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/?p=1773"},"modified":"2021-09-21T09:40:30","modified_gmt":"2021-09-21T13:40:30","slug":"secrets-of-the-heart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/2021\/09\/21\/secrets-of-the-heart\/","title":{"rendered":"Secrets of the Heart"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cNobody ever remembered getting upon what is popularly called the blind side of Harcourt Talboys. He was like his own square-built, northern-fronted,\u00a0shelterless\u00a0house. There were no shady nooks in his character into which one could creep for shelter from his hard daylight. He was all daylight. He looked at everything in the same broad glare of intellectual\u00a0sunlight, and\u00a0would see no softening shadows that might alter the sharp outlines of cruel facts, subduing them to beauty. I do not know if I express what I mean, when I say that there were no curves in his character\u2014that his mind ran in straight lines, never diverging to the right or the left to round off their\u00a0pitiless\u00a0angles. With him right was right, and wrong was wrong. He had never in his merciless, conscientious life admitted the idea that circumstances might mitigate the\u00a0blackness\u00a0of wrong or weaken the force of right. He had cast off his only son because his only son had disobeyed him, and he was ready to cast off his only daughter at five minutes’ notice for the same reason.\u201d (Chapter 3)<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0This paragraph is a perfect example of how Mary Elizabeth Braddon\u00a0uses subliminal messaging in order to foreshadow\u00a0a strong parallel in defining characteristics\u00a0between characters. This also speaks to the\u00a0idea\u00a0of what is idealized or \u201ccorrect\u201d during the Victorian era.\u00a0We begin the text with a deep, agonizing description of the Audley estate, and how the complexity in both architecture and nature\u00a0creates\u00a0a\u00a0home for darkness and secrets underneath.\u00a0Whenever\u00a0a new setting\u00a0is introduced, it is not only establishing a scene, but pushing to identify\u00a0potentially revealing components\u00a0of the characters it holds.\u00a0The instance that was chosen is\u00a0right before Robert visits Harcourt Talboys, the father of the missing George Talboys.\u00a0Robert\u00a0goes to\u00a0George\u2019s\u00a0father looking for answers, not only\u00a0regarding his disappearance, but to see how his absence is affecting his father\u2019s emotional state.\u00a0By describing not only where Harcourt lives, but also using this as an opportunity to describe his emotional tendencies, Braddon is setting up the reader\u2019s expectation of how the father will respond.\u00a0Harcourt is described as sharp, and brutal. His house is described as shelterless, and completely unveiled from darkness.\u00a0There is not a single detail left\u00a0to be disregarded, and this is presented as a\u00a0cruel, incorrect way of\u00a0handling situations, such as the alienation of his son.\u00a0This\u00a0way of handling family situations is presented as unappealing, as during this time,\u00a0the secrecy\u00a0and lies were not only much more comforting to the ego, but also soothes the fear the one\u2019s reputation will be squandered.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0This is important to understanding the text\u00a0as a whole as\u00a0it aligns with the Victorian mentality regarding the emotional self\u00a0at this time. The Victorian era was a time where the self, emotions, and decisions are dissected in great deal\u00a0through creation of\u00a0countless poems\u00a0and texts.\u00a0The straightforward approach of analysis wouldn\u2019t suite the\u00a0display of\u00a0extravagant wealth and power that was allowing the people of this time to\u00a0thrive, and\u00a0can only be shown through mirroring the\u00a0extravagance\u00a0of\u00a0drama in secrecy and lies. These dramatic components create layers of a\u00a0person as a whole, aside\u00a0from just the plot.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cNobody ever remembered getting upon what is popularly called the blind side of Harcourt Talboys. He was like his own square-built, northern-fronted,\u00a0shelterless\u00a0house. There were no shady nooks in his character into which one could creep for shelter from his hard daylight. He was all daylight. He looked at everything in the same broad glare of … Continue reading Secrets of the Heart<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4769,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[169398],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2021-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1773","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\/4769"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1773\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}