Lady Audley's Secret

Whilst being a little predictable at certain points and very hard to allow yourself to sink into for the first third, this Gothic novel (first published in serial form from 1861-2) by Mary Elizabeth Braddon nevertheless sets itself aside from other characters-with-secrets books by way of its intertexutality, narrator as character, and each chapter ending on a cliff hanger. You don’t get hooked in right from the off, but once you are, you really fly through the pages, almost causing a gale in the process. 

Before she came to Audley Court, Lucy Graham was a beautiful but impoverished governess. That was until she met Sir Michael Audley who is instantly besotted by her and offers her his hand. Their life together at Audley Court begins blissfully happy, luxurious, and uneventful enough until the day that Sir Michael’s nephew, Robert arrives with his friend George Talboys, a young man recently returned from making his fortune in Australia. One day during their visit, George suddenly disappears leaving behind him a very large mystery that Robert quickly determines to solve. As he delves deeper into his friend’s past, he becomes convinced that Lady Audley might not be as ignorant, or as innocent, of the mysterious events as she seems. 

The story itself has all the right ingredients for a tale of mystery and sinisterness: a beautiful woman harbouring a secret, a mysterious disappearance, the suspicion of fowl play, and the determined hero (or rather almost antihero) looking for clues and piecing the mystery together. The characters are very well rounded and each very different from the others, which makes them all the more fun to read about. Robert Audley is particularly great because he’s the character that really undergoes a change from going through the process of solving the mystery. He begins the novel as lazy and cynical; a layabout with the mere label of barrister, but with George’s disappearance, he suddenly becomes active and, by the end of the book, he really is a changed man in the views of his life. He sort of begins as the antihero, the last person ever who’d we think would take on the seemingly Herculean task of solving the mystery, yet he does and becomes simple hero in the process. It’s quite nice to see really. 

There’s a great bit of the femme fatale about Lady Audley, the young, beautiful, blonde-haired and blue-eyed viper in the rosebush. She goes through a transformation as well, but unlike Robert’s, it’s one of moral decline with dastardly actions fuelled by fear of discovery, adrenaline, and desperation. 

The writing itself can sometimes be a bit dense, with long sentences that seem to stray from the path. I think technically it’s in the first person register, though at times it does seem to shift to third person omniscient before we are reminded that the narrator is a character too, not necessarily one within the story world, but he/she’s definitely an omniscient presence. Then again it could just be the voice of the intended author and really that’s half the appeal: not knowing to whom this voice belongs, it adds more flavour and mystery to the mystery. 

Filled with action, drama, romance, suspense, violence, secrets, and mystery, Lady Audley’s Secret is a book that starts outs a bit slowly, but once the mystery occurs and Robert’s quest is determined, then it becomes akin to a nail-biter with every chapter finishing on a cliff hanger. I began not thinking very much of it, indeed not even liking the writing all that much, but once the hook got me, then I just powered through it.