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john_of_oxshott 's review for:
Lady Audley's Secret
by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
As soon as I began this novel I felt that it was a step down in quality from all the other novels I’ve read so far this year. It’s difficult to say why and I kept thinking about this even after I’d finished it. It’s not badly written. Perhaps it’s to do with my expectations as a reader.
There’s no question that the novel is a success by almost every conceivable measure. It was serialized in three different magazines (the first only partially because the magazine went out of business) before being published as a three-volume novel in 1862. It made both author and publisher a fortune and was reprinted eight times in its first three months.
It is still pleasing readers today, earning thousands of 5-star reviews, with 90% of people who rated it on Goodreads giving it at least 3 stars.
Even Henry James was a fan. “I used to follow you ardently,” he wrote in a letter to Mary Braddon in 1911. He called her novels “brilliant, lively, ingenious…” But perhaps it was the added comment that they were “destitute of a ray of sentiment” that explains why he was passionate about them and I am only lukewarm.
There is a passage early on in Volume 1 that typifies her style. It describes a meeting in the grounds of Lady Audley’s house between two of the key people who will drive the plot forward.
Most people coming across this passage in its context would probably find it unremarkable. I found it quite dull. The dialogue is not really moving the story along or giving us much of an insight into the characters. The description of the setting is only mildly atmospheric, although there is a hint of gothic charm with Phoebe seeming like an evil spirit and the house being a place “where there’s always somebody listening.” But I wanted to skip past it to find out what Phoebe wanted to talk about. Perhaps she would have something interesting to tell Luke.
It’s not until you’ve read the complete novel that you discover what a brilliant, lively and ingenious piece of writing this is. It misdirects the reader in a very clever way while dropping in a piece of information that underpins one of several plot twists that come much later, in Volume 3.
And that is Mary Braddon’s skill. All the pieces of the plot fit together perfectly but she hides the joins well, misdirecting the reader at every opportunity. You think you know what’s going on and have guessed everybody’s secrets but it’s a very cleverly constructed illusion. Even if you’ve read all the spoilers that are contained in nearly every description of the novel on the internet, you will still miss vital clues and be surprised by how the story develops.
That matters if you care about plot. However, when I’m reading a novel I find I pay very little attention to plot. I am more interested in sensations.
To me it seems ironic that Marry Braddon is called one of the foremost writers of Victorian sensation fiction because I didn’t find much sensation in this novel. I find it interesting to compare the passage above with a passage by Edith Wharton from a story called A Cup of Cold Water. Wharton is known more as a literary novelist than a writer of sensation fiction but she is not averse to a touch of melodrama now and then. In this story a young man who is taking temporary refuge in a hotel in New York overhears a woman sobbing in the room next door. When he hears the click of a pistol he can’t resist turning down the gas and peeping through the brightly-lit keyhole in the door between their two rooms.
This is a vastly superior piece of writing in my view. It has mystery and suspense. Every sentence is interesting. But, above all, the reader can imagine being in Woburn’s position, watching the woman, waiting to see what she will do next and then, when she puts the revolver to her head…
What do you do?
This passage is alive with sensation of the kind I’m looking for when I read a novel. It reminds me of two sensational moments in Crime and Punishment; one when Svidrigailov is listening in the next room when Raskolnikov is on the verge confessing his crime to Sonia and another when Dunia pulls out a gun and aims it at Svidrigailov when he is about to rape her.
It is perhaps unfair to compare Lady Audley’s Secret with Crime and Punishment. But the point is that both Edith Wharton and Fyodor Dostoevsky are much more visceral writers than Mary Braddon. They make you feel. Lady Audley’s Secret does not draw you into the moment-by-moment sensations of its characters and it does not draw you very much into their inner lives. It's too harsh to call it superficial but it seems much too dry to me and “destitute of a ray of sentiment.”
Nevertheless it’s a clever piece of work, there is some humour here and there, it’s pleasant enough to read and I quite enjoyed Volumes 2 and 3. It got better towards the end as all the pieces of the puzzle fell into place and it sped towards its final denouement.
And I’ve really got to admire a woman who can bring up eleven children, six of them her own, run two literary magazines and write more novels than anyone can count. The fact that she wrote most of them after making enough money from this one to live comfortably for the rest of her life makes her literary achievement even more astonishing. No wonder Henry James, who relied on his family's money and earned only a modest income from his books, followed her career with interest.
There’s no question that the novel is a success by almost every conceivable measure. It was serialized in three different magazines (the first only partially because the magazine went out of business) before being published as a three-volume novel in 1862. It made both author and publisher a fortune and was reprinted eight times in its first three months.
It is still pleasing readers today, earning thousands of 5-star reviews, with 90% of people who rated it on Goodreads giving it at least 3 stars.
Even Henry James was a fan. “I used to follow you ardently,” he wrote in a letter to Mary Braddon in 1911. He called her novels “brilliant, lively, ingenious…” But perhaps it was the added comment that they were “destitute of a ray of sentiment” that explains why he was passionate about them and I am only lukewarm.
There is a passage early on in Volume 1 that typifies her style. It describes a meeting in the grounds of Lady Audley’s house between two of the key people who will drive the plot forward.
A man, who was sitting on the broken wood-work of the well, started as the lady’s-maid came out of the dim shade of the limes and stood before him among the weeds and brushwood.
I have said before that this was a neglected spot; it lay in the midst of a low shrubbery, hidden away from the rest of the gardens, and only visible from the garret windows at the back of the west wing.
“Why, Phoebe,” said the man, shutting a clasp-knife with which he had been stripping the bark from a blackthorn stake, “you came upon me so still and sudden, that I thought you was an evil spirit. I’ve come across through the fields, and come in here at the gate agen the moat, and I was taking a rest before I came up to the house to ask if you was come back.”
“I can see the well from my bedroom window, Luke,” Phoebe answered, pointing to an open lattice in one of the gables. “I saw you sitting here, and came down to have a chat; it’s better talking out here than in the house, where there’s always somebody listening.”
Most people coming across this passage in its context would probably find it unremarkable. I found it quite dull. The dialogue is not really moving the story along or giving us much of an insight into the characters. The description of the setting is only mildly atmospheric, although there is a hint of gothic charm with Phoebe seeming like an evil spirit and the house being a place “where there’s always somebody listening.” But I wanted to skip past it to find out what Phoebe wanted to talk about. Perhaps she would have something interesting to tell Luke.
It’s not until you’ve read the complete novel that you discover what a brilliant, lively and ingenious piece of writing this is. It misdirects the reader in a very clever way while dropping in a piece of information that underpins one of several plot twists that come much later, in Volume 3.
And that is Mary Braddon’s skill. All the pieces of the plot fit together perfectly but she hides the joins well, misdirecting the reader at every opportunity. You think you know what’s going on and have guessed everybody’s secrets but it’s a very cleverly constructed illusion. Even if you’ve read all the spoilers that are contained in nearly every description of the novel on the internet, you will still miss vital clues and be surprised by how the story develops.
That matters if you care about plot. However, when I’m reading a novel I find I pay very little attention to plot. I am more interested in sensations.
To me it seems ironic that Marry Braddon is called one of the foremost writers of Victorian sensation fiction because I didn’t find much sensation in this novel. I find it interesting to compare the passage above with a passage by Edith Wharton from a story called A Cup of Cold Water. Wharton is known more as a literary novelist than a writer of sensation fiction but she is not averse to a touch of melodrama now and then. In this story a young man who is taking temporary refuge in a hotel in New York overhears a woman sobbing in the room next door. When he hears the click of a pistol he can’t resist turning down the gas and peeping through the brightly-lit keyhole in the door between their two rooms.
After a moment or two of adjustment, during which he seemed to himself to be breathing like a steam-engine, he discerned a room like his own, with the same dressing-table flanked by gas-fixtures, and the same table in the window. This table was directly in his line of vision; and beside it stood a woman with a small revolver in her hands. The lights being behind her, Woburn could only infer her youth from her slender silhouette and the nimbus of fair hair defining her head. Her dress seemed dark and simple, and on a chair under one of the gas-jets lay a jacket edged with cheap fur and a small traveling-bag. He could not see the other end of the room, but something in her manner told him that she was alone. At length she put the revolver down and took up a letter that lay on the table. She drew the letter from its envelope and read it over two or three times; then she put it back, sealing the envelope, and placing it conspicuously against the mirror of the dressing-table.
There was so grave a significance in this dumb-show that Woburn felt sure that her next act would be to return to the table and take up the revolver; but he had not reckoned on the vanity of woman. After putting the letter in place she still lingered at the mirror, standing a little sideways, so that he could now see her face, which was distinctly pretty, but of a small and unelastic mold, inadequate to the expression of the larger emotions. For some moments she continued to study herself with the expression of a child looking at a playmate who has been scolded; then she turned to the table and lifted the revolver to her forehead.
This is a vastly superior piece of writing in my view. It has mystery and suspense. Every sentence is interesting. But, above all, the reader can imagine being in Woburn’s position, watching the woman, waiting to see what she will do next and then, when she puts the revolver to her head…
What do you do?
This passage is alive with sensation of the kind I’m looking for when I read a novel. It reminds me of two sensational moments in Crime and Punishment; one when Svidrigailov is listening in the next room when Raskolnikov is on the verge confessing his crime to Sonia and another when Dunia pulls out a gun and aims it at Svidrigailov when he is about to rape her.
It is perhaps unfair to compare Lady Audley’s Secret with Crime and Punishment. But the point is that both Edith Wharton and Fyodor Dostoevsky are much more visceral writers than Mary Braddon. They make you feel. Lady Audley’s Secret does not draw you into the moment-by-moment sensations of its characters and it does not draw you very much into their inner lives. It's too harsh to call it superficial but it seems much too dry to me and “destitute of a ray of sentiment.”
Nevertheless it’s a clever piece of work, there is some humour here and there, it’s pleasant enough to read and I quite enjoyed Volumes 2 and 3. It got better towards the end as all the pieces of the puzzle fell into place and it sped towards its final denouement.
And I’ve really got to admire a woman who can bring up eleven children, six of them her own, run two literary magazines and write more novels than anyone can count. The fact that she wrote most of them after making enough money from this one to live comfortably for the rest of her life makes her literary achievement even more astonishing. No wonder Henry James, who relied on his family's money and earned only a modest income from his books, followed her career with interest.