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Opposition Of Ideals: Lady Audley's Duality

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Opposition of Ideals: Lady Audley’s Duality

Every masterpiece in literature reflects the ideals and concerns of the period of time in which the text was produced. During the Victorian age, the perceptions of purity and scandal were the two ideas that crashed against each other. The sensation novel became popular at the time for it reflected an English society always trying to show the perfection of the noble homeland and its people. Characters in literature usually stick to similar traits that converge in the characters’ archetypal figure, which could be the wise man, the hero, the villain, the damsel in distress, the femme fatale, and the angel in the house, to mention just a few. Interestingly, the two latter archetypes gather in one same character: Lady Audley’s. In Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Audley's character’s versatility allows her to present both sides of herself, making her seem in some instances the angel in the house and the femme fatale, simultaneously reflecting the opposition of morals in the Victorian …show more content…

A person is not always good nor bad. Lady Audley’s versatility as a character for embodying opposite archetypes does not simply relate to a mental disorder. Beyond madness, the fact that a character can be both an angel in the house and a femme fatale only highlight a reality: people do not have only one personality, we are composed of behaviors depending on the context. Of course, Lady Audley’s opposition of good and bad is more exaggerated though this does not mean people always behave good or bad; they behave both. Therefore, Lady Audley becomes an escape for people’s oppression from the expectations of society. They learned of scandals but also they knew those people judged in the scandals were not the only ones committing

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