Yesterday FictionFan was hosting a Review-Along of Lady Audley’s Secret, a book I thought I read long ago but did not really remember. I wasn’t able to participate yesterday because of Literary Wives, but today I can.
As I said, I thought I had read Lady Audley’s Secret long ago, but apparently I was wrong. Nothing in this book was familiar.
Lady Audley is newly married. She is a young, beautiful, child-like woman who was working as the governess for a doctor’s children when she met the much older Lord Audley. He is enchanted by her, but his daughter Alicia thinks she is superficial.
After we meet Lady Audley in her beautiful old home, the narrative skips to a young man, George Talboys, returning to England after three years in Australia. He left his young wife and child in the care of her father, because his father disowned him when he married, and the couple has run through his money. So, he departed to seek his fortune and is returning a wealthy man, eager to see his wife. However, he is stunned after he finds a newspaper announcement that she has died.
His friend Robert Audley, Lord Audley’s nephew, takes pity on him, and the grieving Talboys moves in with him. Sometime later, Robert thinks it will enliven George to visit his family at Audley Court. The young men repair to an inn nearby. First, Lady Audley makes excuses to delay a family dinner, and then she has to travel out of town because an old friend is on her deathbed.
We think we already understand Lady Audley’s secret when George catches a glimpse of her in her carriage and becomes preoccupied. The next day the two young men are fishing when Robert falls asleep by the stream. When he awakens, George is gone, yet he is not in their room at the local inn. He was last seen walking toward the dark lime avenue where Lady Audley was supposed to be. Robert assumes George returned to London, but he is not there, and his things have not been disturbed.
When George doesn’t resurface or respond to advertisements and Robert can find no evidence that he took a boat to Australia, as Lady Audley claims, Robert begins to have dreadful thoughts. He begins trying to trace Lady Audley’s past.
I can imagine that this Sensation novel made quite an impact on Victorian society. I thought it moved along pretty well and only was frustrated by the number of times conscientious Robert tells Lady Audley what he’s found out and what his next move will be, hoping she will go away and not wanting to give his uncle a shock. But Lady Audley thinks her husband will believe anything she tells him.
There are a few little perplexing complaints against women in general in the book, but otherwise, I thought the story was quite entertaining, gaining most of its impetus from a contest of wits. It also has an interesting secondary character in Robert’s cousin, Alicia.
What? Me Read? 