{"id":190,"date":"2016-02-19T23:46:13","date_gmt":"2016-02-19T23:46:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/?p=190"},"modified":"2016-02-19T23:50:07","modified_gmt":"2016-02-19T23:50:07","slug":"beast-in-the-beauty-beauty-in-the-gilded-cage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/2016\/02\/19\/beast-in-the-beauty-beauty-in-the-gilded-cage\/","title":{"rendered":"Beast in the Beauty – Beauty in the Gilded Cage"},"content":{"rendered":"

“I cannot<\/em>!” cried my lady, pushing her hair fiercely from her white forehead, and fixing her dilated eyes upon Robert Audley, “I cannot<\/em>!” Has my beauty brought me to this? Have I plotted and schemed to shield myself, and laid awake in the long deadly nights trembling to think of my dangers, for this<\/em>? I had better have given up at once, since this<\/em> was to be the end. I had better have yielded to the curse that was upon me, and given up when George Talboys first came back to England.” page 384, volume III, chapter VI<\/p>\n

Okay, there is a lot packed into this short paragraph. The italicized “cannot’s<\/em>” and “this’s<\/em>” I though at first to be signs of despair. Now, not so much.<\/p>\n

This paragraph is about Lady Audley’s reaction to the madhouse that Robert has brought her to. Robert tells her she can spend the rest of her life here in this institution and repent for all her evil ways, as “many a good and holy woman in this Catholic country freely takes upon herself.”<\/p>\n

Her repeated “I cannot!” might mean that she isn’t repentant, and will suffer the consequences of her sins in a madhouse, but in a version she didn’t know existed before her arrival here. \u00a0When she was a young girl she visited her mother in a public sanitarium, a horrid, disgusting fate she fears for herself. But, unbeknownst to her, wealthy people don’t go to those kinds of places. What if she is really saying “BONUS!!!<\/strong>“? Remember? She packed up all of those beautiful things before she left Audley Court, and I thought that was really odd at the time. If you are going to be locked away somewhere, why bring all your “stuff”. Now it has a different meaning for me.<\/p>\n

I think she’s thinking “Damn! If this<\/em> is how I will live my life; in luxury, no plotting, no scheming, or looking over my shoulder for someone to out me, no fear of being thrown out of Audley Court to be a pauper again, I should have given up my secret a long time ago!!”. In this madhouse, she has everything she always wanted; to be taken care of, to cherish her possessions, and to be left alone. She has hit a jack pot. She might be locked in, but troublesome realities and the needs of other people, are locked out. There are no men she has to perform for, and on whose affection her desired lifestyle relies. She is finally free to be herself, by herself, free to be selfish and self-absorbed, and finally free of the iron mask that weighed her down with exhausting performances for others. \u00a0She is now able to be herself, gloriously free of her manufactured identity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“I cannot!” cried my lady, pushing her hair fiercely from her white forehead, and fixing her dilated eyes upon Robert Audley, “I cannot!” Has my beauty brought me to this? Have I plotted and schemed to shield myself, and laid awake in the long deadly nights trembling to think of my dangers, for this? I … Continue reading Beast in the Beauty – Beauty in the Gilded Cage<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2604,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123782],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-190","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\/190","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\/2604"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}