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Irony
Definition of Metaphor
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other. The comparison in a metaphor can be stated explicitly, as... read full definition
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other. The comparison in a metaphor... read full definition
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other... read full definition
Key Examples in Lady Audley’s Secret
Volume 1, Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Joy and Brightness:
In Volume 1, Chapter 1, the narrator uses a simile and a metaphor to depict the power of Lucy's radiant personality:
Wherever she went she seemed to take joy and brightness with her. In the cottages of the poor her fair face shone like a sunbeam.
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Explanation and Analysis—Soft and Feathery:
Lucy’s beauty and ability to attract people is regularly referred to in ways that make it seem almost supernatural. Here, as Lucy sits painting and talking to Mrs. Dawson, Braddon uses hyperbolic language and a metaphor referring to an angel’s halo to emphasize its power:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The governess lifted her head from its stooping attitude, and stared wonderingly at her employer, shaking back a shower of curls. They were the most wonderful curls in the world—soft and feathery, always floating away from her face, and making a pale halo round her head when the sunlight shone through them.
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Explanation and Analysis—Terrible Fever:
In this passage from the first Chapter of Volume 1, Braddon portrays Sir Michael Audley's intense love for Lucy in metaphorical language. The narrator presents his adoration of her as a serious, all-consuming fever, foreshadowing the troubles to come with Lucy’s relationships:
Unlock with LitCharts A+What had been his love for his first wife but a poor, pitiful, smoldering spark, too dull to be extinguished, too feeble to burn? But this was love—this fever, this longing, this restless, uncertain, miserable hesitation; these cruel fears that his age was an insurmountable barrier to his happiness [...] wakeful nights and melancholy days, so gloriously brightened if he chanced to catch a glimpse of her sweet face behind the window curtains [...] told only too plainly that, at the sober age of fifty-five, Sir Michael Audley had fallen ill of the terrible fever called love.
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Volume 1, Chapter 4
Explanation and Analysis—Shelterless House:
In this section from Lady Audley's Secret, the author introduces information about the chilly, rigid character Harcourt Talboys. To highlight certain aspects of his personality, the narrative uses a simile referring to architecture and a metaphor comparing intelligence to sunlight:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Nobody ever remembered getting upon what is popularly called the blind side of Harcourt Talboys. He was like his own square-built, northern-fronted, shelterless house. There were no shady nooks in his character into which one could creep for shelter from his hard daylight. He was all daylight. He looked at everything in the same broad glare of intellectual sunlight, and would see no softening shadows that might alter the sharp outlines of cruel facts, subduing them to beauty.
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Volume 2, Chapter 3
Explanation and Analysis—Drunken Fog:
When George and Robert visit his house in Ventnor, Braddon depicts Lieutenant Maldon's state of confusion and intoxication through a metaphor of weak sunlight and uses a simile to illustrate the slow clearing of his alcohol-induced mental fog:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The old man's drunken imbecility was slowly clearing away like the heavy mists of a London fog, through which the feeble sunshine struggles dimly to appear. The very uncertain radiance of Lieutenant Maldon's intellect took a considerable time in piercing the hazy vapors of rum-and-water; but the flickering light at last faintly glimmered athwart the clouds, and the old man screwed his poor wits to the sticking-point.
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Volume 2, Chapter 13
Explanation and Analysis—Poisoned Fountain:
As the narrator reflects on the role of beauty in Lucy’s life, they delve into the profound implications of its influence on her moral compass. In order to do this, they engage personification and use a metaphor presenting her as an enslaved person:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Did she trace every sin of her life back to its true source? and did she discover that poisoned fountain in her own exaggerated estimate of the value of a pretty face? [...] the master-passions of her life had become her rulers, and the three demons of Vanity, Selfishness, and Ambition had joined hands and said 'This woman is our slave; let us see what she will become under our guidance'.
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