Lady Audley’s Secret - Is Lady Audley Mad? :: Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Mary Elizabeth Braddons Lady Audleys Secret - Is Lady Audley imbalanced?Mary Elizabeth Braddons Lady Audleys Secret was published in 1861 and was a boastful success a best-seller that sold over one million copies in book form. The protagonist, Helen Maldon - also known as Helen Talboys, Lucy Graham and Lady Audley - is a poor new beautiful woman when she marries the dragoon George Talboys, but his notes only lasts for one year of luxury. When he no longer is able to offer her the life she always wanted - and now has got used to - she becomes unwarranted and depressed, and George Talboys leaves the country to dig for gold in order to make his young wife with her new-born baby happy again. Not long after her economise has sailed for Australia, Helen Talboys decides she has had enough of the boring life she leads with her father and child and wants to try to scram for herself the things she lacks. She sees an opportunity to start over and she grabs it she leaves her child, chang es her name and goes out as a governess. When the wealthy Sir Michael Audley proposes, she accepts and goes from the life as governess to the life of a Lady. The Lady Audley that we light to know is a woman who is sure of what she wants and will not permit anyone stop her, which in the book is described as the acts of a madwoman. exclusively is Lady Audley really insane or simply too intriguing and sure of herself for the Victorian era? Was insanity simply the label participation attached to distaff assertion, ambition, self-interest and outrage? In order to talk of the question of Lady Audleys madness, we must first understand the Victorian ideas and beliefs regarding insanity. mania was believed more common among women than among men and doctors and psychiatrists debated the reason for this. A common captivate was that women were more vulnerable to insanity than men because of the instability of their reproductive clay (Showalter, p 55), which interfered with their emot ional control. That female insanity was linked with the biological crises of the female life cycle - puberty, pregnancy, childbirth and menopause - during which the female mind was attenuate and the symptoms of insanity could emerge, was a common belief (Showalter, p 55). It should be historied that the medical professions were strictly for men and no doubt were all these theories make up by men, with little experience of menstruation, pregnancy or menopause.