\u201c\u201cNo more dependence, no more drudgery, no more humiliations,\u201d she said; \u201cevery trace of the old life melted away \u2013 every clue to identity buried and forgotten \u2014 except these, except these\u201d\u201d (Braddon 17).<\/p>\n
I found this sentence most strange because it shows Lucy\u2019s main motive for marrying Sir Michael is not out of love or to be rich, but rather to escape her \u201cold life.\u201d Escaping from something and erasing it implies that it has a negative association. However, it then opens up the questions of, what is Lucy escaping from? Why does she want her \u201cold life melted away?\u201d It\u2019s also interesting that these are her thoughts contemplating if she should marry Sir Michael or not because they\u2019re all aimed towards finding safety in a sheltered nest. Since Lucy uses words such as, \u201cevery trace\u201d and \u201cevery clue\u201d it is apparent that she has something to hide from her \u201cold life.\u201d Therefore, it seems as if Lucy wants to find safety from her secret past. By marrying Sir Michael she would find safety from whatever she is running from or escaping by taking on his name. Therefore she would have a new literal identity. Lucy Graham would become Lady Audley. Lucy even stated that herself as a reason to marry Sir Michael\u2014\u201cidentity buried and forgotten.\u201d She then goes on to say, \u201cexcept these, except these.\u201d Which brings up the question of what is she talking about? What are these things? Why are they so important to keep if they could risk her identity and secret?<\/p>\n
This sentence is related to the whole of the novel so far in that the words \u201cevery trace\u201d \u201cevery clue\u201d and \u201cidentity buried and forgotten\u201d suggest that there is something suspicious about Lucy\u2019s behavior. Her exterior is seen as \u201clovely and innocent\u201d (Braddon 13) whereas her interior, which is expressed in this sentence, is more complex and dishonest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201c\u201cNo more dependence, no more drudgery, no more humiliations,\u201d she said; \u201cevery trace of the old life melted away \u2013 every clue to identity buried and forgotten \u2014 except these, except these\u201d\u201d (Braddon 17). I found this sentence most strange because it shows Lucy\u2019s main motive for marrying Sir Michael is not out of love … Continue reading Motives for marrying Sir Michael…?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3624,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123801],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2017-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606","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\/3624"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}