{"id":2471,"date":"2023-09-28T20:53:47","date_gmt":"2023-09-29T00:53:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/?p=2471"},"modified":"2023-09-28T20:53:47","modified_gmt":"2023-09-29T00:53:47","slug":"helens-deception","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/2023\/09\/28\/helens-deception\/","title":{"rendered":"Helen’s Deception"},"content":{"rendered":"

For this second blog post, I focused on Lady Audley\u2019s secret and this quote, \u201c\u2018Do you know my dear Miss Graham\u2019 said Ms. Dawson, \u2018I think you ought to consider yourself a remarkably lucky girl.\u2019 The governess lifted her head from its stooping attitude and stared wonderingly at her employer, shaking back a shower of curls. They were the most wonderful curls in the world-soft and feathery, always floating away from her face and making a pale halo round her head\u2026\u201d (Chapter 1, pg 13)<\/span><\/p>\n

When we first began reading this novel, I thought nothing was amiss with this quote; after all, Ms. Dawson is just complimenting her on how lucky she is that Sir Michael Audley is interested in her, when he could pick any other woman. Then I thought that Lucy\u2019s confusion, highlighted by the \u201c…Stared wonderingly at her employer\u201d was due to her surprise that he seemingly wants to be with her. Now, with hindsight and having finished the story, while it could be true that Lucy (previously known as Helen Talboys) is surprised and doesn\u2019t know what to do with Michael Audley\u2019s desire, she is also wondering briefly why anyone would think she was lucky. After all, from Lucy\u2019s perspective she isn\u2019t very fortunate: her husband George left her to travel to find fortune overseas, leaving her with a young boy and in poverty. Her situation became so dire that she had to fake her death and assume a new identity after his abandonment. The second part of the quote draws attention to her looks: at first glance, the line, \u201cThey were the most wonderful curls in the world-soft and feathery, always floating away from her face and making a pale halo round her head\u201d seems like a description to illustrate why Michael is attracted to her. The knowledge that Lucy has been lying about her identity and falsely using her childlike appearance to disguise the fact that she is this ambitious, cunning woman changes the interpretation of this reference. Throughout the text, she constantly seems to act angelic, even going as so far as to use words like \u201cfloating\u201d and \u201chalo\u201d which further emphasizes her protected image of innocence . This is extremely ironic, as she is the exact opposite in reality because of her multiple deceptions throughout the story. These lines accurately foreshadow what occurs in the rest of the book. When we did the first discussion in class, even without the future knowledge of Lucy\u2019s past, it was evident that she was hiding something, that the narrator was drawing our attention to her looks for a reason, and that it was not just a random description to add images to the lines.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For this second blog post, I focused on Lady Audley\u2019s secret and this quote, \u201c\u2018Do you know my dear Miss Graham\u2019 said Ms. Dawson, \u2018I think you ought to consider yourself a remarkably lucky girl.\u2019 The governess lifted her head from its stooping attitude and stared wonderingly at her employer, shaking back a shower of … Continue reading Helen’s Deception<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5340,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[169399],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2023-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2471","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\/5340"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2471\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}