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Definition of Simile
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often use the connecting words "like" or "as," but can also... read full definition
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often use the connecting words "like... read full definition
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often... 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—Corpse of his Hope:
In this passage from Lady Audley's Secret, the author digs into Sir Michael's emotional turmoil upon recognizing that Lucy cannot and does not truly love him. In order to do so, Braddon deploys a simile comparing his heart to a corpse, appealing to the reader’s sense of pathos:
Unlock with LitCharts A+He walked straight out of the house, this foolish old man, because there was some strong emotion at work in his breast—neither joy nor triumph, but something almost akin to disappointment—some stifled and unsatisfied longing which lay heavy and dull at his heart, as if he had carried a corpse in his bosom. He carried the corpse of that hope which had died at the sound of Lucy's words.
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Explanation and Analysis—Like a Marquis:
In this passage, the narrative uses a simile to explore Lucy's ability to charm and deceive people. Lucy is able to make everyone feel like the most important person in the world, no matter who they are:
Unlock with LitCharts A+She would sit for a quarter of an hour talking to some old woman, and apparently as pleased with the admiration of a toothless crone as if she had been listening to the compliments of a marquis; and when she tripped away, leaving nothing behind her (for her poor salary gave no scope to her benevolence), the old woman would burst out into senile raptures with her grace, beauty, and her kindliness, such as she never bestowed upon the vicar's wife, who half fed and clothed her.
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Volume 1, Chapter 3
Explanation and Analysis—Eerie Calm:
At the beginning of Chapter 3, the narrator uses a simile that compares the unsettling stillness of Audley Court to the stillness of death:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The very repose of the place grew painful from its intensity, and you felt as if a corpse must be lying somewhere within that gray and ivy-covered pile of building—so deathlike was the tranquillity of all around.
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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 1, Chapter 5
Explanation and Analysis—Superior to Himself:
In this section from Lady Audley's Secret, the author uses a simile and situational irony to describe Robert's unexpected display of capability when faced with the crisis of the “recent death of Helen Talboys”:
Unlock with LitCharts A+[George] looked at him with a pitiful, bewildered expression. The big dragoon was as helpless as a baby; and Robert Audley, the most vacillating and unenergetic of men, found himself called upon to act for another. He rose superior to himself, and equal to the occasion.
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Volume 1, Chapter 7
Explanation and Analysis—Rustling Silks:
In a description of Lady Audley's mannerisms and showy taste in clothes, Braddon uses a simile and some auditory and tactile imagery:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Her fragile figure, which she loved to dress in heavy velvets, and stiff, rustling silks, till she looked like a child tricked out for a masquerade, was as girlish as if she had just left the nursery. [...]
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Volume 1, Chapter 8
Explanation and Analysis—A Signal Light:
In this passage, the narrator uses visual imagery and a simile referring to a signal light to describe Alicia Audley’s features and their contrast with Lucy’s. Even though Alicia is undeniably beautiful, it does her no good when Lucy’s next to her. Writing as if they are directly warning Alicia about this misfortune, the narrator notes:
Unlock with LitCharts A+So it was not in the least use, my poor Alicia [...]The black curls (nothing like Lady Audley's feathery ringlets, but heavy clustering locks, that clung about your slender brown throat), the red and pouting lips, the nose inclined to be retrousse, the dark complexion, with its bright crimson flush, always ready to glance up like a signal light in a dusky sky [...]
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Explanation and Analysis—Beautiful Fiend:
In this section of Lady Audley's Secret, the narrator describes a portrait of Lady Audley when Alicia, Robert, and George sneak into her private rooms. Braddon uses visual imagery and a simile comparing Lucy to a demon to suggest the underlying, unpleasant facets of her character:
Unlock with LitCharts A+[Lucy] had something of the aspect of a beautiful fiend. Her crimson dress, exaggerated like all the rest in this strange picture, hung about her in folds that looked like flames, her fair head peeping out of the lurid mass of color as if out of a raging furnace. Indeed the crimson dress, the sunshine on the face, the red gold gleaming in the yellow hair, the ripe scarlet of the pouting lips, the glowing colors of each accessory of the minutely painted background [...]
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Volume 2, Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—Pinched Look:
This passage offers a description of Mrs. Plowson, illustrating her imperfect and faded beauty through a simile. It also highlights the novel’s complex associations between a person’s looks and their character:
Unlock with LitCharts A+She had been a rustic beauty, perhaps, in her time, but her features, although tolerably regular in their shape, had a mean, pinched look, as if they had been made too small for her face.
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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 4
Explanation and Analysis—Wilson Retires:
In this passage, the narrator employs a simile to spotlight the pronounced power disparity between Harcourt Talboys and his butler, Wilson. When he is dismissed from Talboys’s presence, Wilson leaves the room very deferentially:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The man bowed and retired, opening and shutting the door as cautiously as if he were taking a liberty in doing it at all, or as if the respect due to Mr. Talboys demanded his walking straight through the oaken panel like a ghost in a German story.
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