Lady Audley's Secret (ME Braddon, 1862)

Braddon, Mary Elizabeth. Lady Audley's Secret. Pub. 1862. Ed. Natalie M. Houston. Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 2003.

General Notes

60 Talboys goes to Australia for the gold rush beginning in 1851, same that the characters rob a convoy for in Sherlock Holmes "Boscombe Valley Mystery"
103 "Indeed I believe all ghosts to be the result of damp." (Robert A)
109 Talboys' perceived sensitivity to the weather (by Robert), reminiscent of Lucy Villette
222 time an impt motif: the clock at Audley Court, train timetables, Clara Talboys says she thought she had to "trust to time", then Talboys' death described on 223 as "untimely"
226-7 "Who has not felt, in the first madness of sorrow, an unreasonable rage against the mute propriety of chairs and tables...this hopeless persistency of the orderly outward world, as compared with the storm and the tempest, the riot and confusion within"
- key bringing together of image clusters: time (before quote), objects, the storm
- then tied somewhat cheekily to ideas, "the young philosopher of the modern school...the nothingness of everything"
229 kind of amazing mix of feminism and misogyny
232 storm metaphor for Robert's revelations
261 Robert becoming more detective-like (barrister-like?), he used a notebook to interview old Mrs. Vincent and now again with the hotel owner in Yorkshire
263 RA dreams of a storm over Audley Court
268 the phrase circumstantial evidence keeps being used - was it in currency in the news or something? Or just legalese?

179 describing the locksmith "there was nothing that he need have been ashamed of in his face, except the dirt, and that, as Hamlet'smother says, "is common""
211 Talboys' father reminds RA of John Philip kemble
264 houses on Yorkshire seaside look "as if built for the especial accommodation of some modern Timon"