Lady Audley’s Secret

Lady Audley’s Secret

by

Mary Elizabeth Braddon

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Volume 1, Chapter 1 Quotes

To the right there were the kitchen gardens, the fish-pond, and an orchard bordered by a dry moat, and a broken ruin of a wall, in some places thicker than it was high, and everywhere overgrown with trailing ivy…to the left there was a broad graveled walk…and shadowed on one side by goodly oaks, which shut out the flat landscape, and circled in the house and gardens with a darkening shelter.

Related Symbols: Audley Court
Page Number: 8
Explanation and Analysis:

“You know that nobody asks you to marry Sir Michael unless you wish. Of course it would be a magnificent match; he has a splendid income, and is one of the most generous of men. Your position would be very high, and you would be enabled to do a great deal of good; but, as I said before, you must be entirely guided by your own feelings.”

Related Characters: Mrs. Dawson (speaker), Lady Audley / Lucy Graham / Helen Maldon Talboys , Sir Michael Audley
Page Number: 13
Explanation and Analysis:
Volume 1, Chapter 4 Quotes

Robert Audley was supposed to be a barrister…He was a handsome, lazy, care-for-nothing fellow, of about seven-and-twenty…Sometimes, when the weather was very hot, and he had exhausted himself with the exertion of smoking his German pipe and reading French novels, he would stroll into the Temple Gardens.

Related Characters: Robert Audley
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 32-33
Explanation and Analysis:
Volume 1, Chapter 7 Quotes

Lucy was better loved and more admired than the baronet’s daughter [Alicia]. That very childness had a charm which few could resist. The innocence and candour of an infant beamed in Lady Audley’s fair face, and shone out of her large and liquid blue eyes. The rosy lips, the delicate nose, the profusion of fair ringlets, all contributed to preserve to her beauty the character of extreme youth and freshness.

Related Characters: Lady Audley / Lucy Graham / Helen Maldon Talboys , Alicia Audley
Related Symbols: Lady Audley’s Golden Curls
Page Number: 50
Explanation and Analysis:

We hear every day of murders committed in the country. Brutal and treacherous murders; slow, protracted agonies from poisons administered by some kindred hand; sudden and violent deaths by cruel blows, inflicted with a stake cut from some spreading oak, whose very shadow promised—peace…No crime has ever been committed in the worst rookeries about Seven Dials that has not been also done in the face of that sweet rustic calm which still, in spite of all, we look on with a tender, half-morning yearning, and associate with—peace.

Page Number: 51
Explanation and Analysis:

“Do you know, Phoebe, I have heard some people say you and I are alike?”

“I have heard them say so too, my lady…but they must be very stupid to say it, for your ladyship is a beauty, and I’m a poor plain creature.”

“Not at all, Phoebe…you are like me…it is only colour that you want. My hair is pale yellow shot with gold, yours is drab…Why, with a bottle of hair dye, such as we see advertised in the papers, and a pot of rouge, you’d be as good-looking as I any day, Phoebe.”

Related Characters: Lady Audley / Lucy Graham / Helen Maldon Talboys , Phoebe Marks
Related Symbols: Lady Audley’s Golden Curls
Page Number: 54-55
Explanation and Analysis:
Volume 1, Chapter 8 Quotes

No one but a pre-Raphaelite would have painted, hair by hair, those feathery masses of ringlets with every glimmer of gold, and every shadow of pale brown. No one but a pre-Raphaelite would have so exaggerated every attribute of that delicate face as to give a lurid lightness to the blonde complexion and a stranger, sinister light to the deep blue eyes. No one but a pre-Raphaelite could have given to that pretty pouting mouth the hard and almost wicked look it had in the portrait.

Related Characters: Lady Audley / Lucy Graham / Helen Maldon Talboys
Related Symbols: Lady Audley’s Golden Curls
Page Number: 65
Explanation and Analysis:
Volume 1, Chapter 15 Quotes

“How charmingly she sits her horse! What a pretty figure, too, and a fine, candid, brown, rosy face; but to fly at a fellow like that, without the least provocation! That’s the consequence of letting a girl follow the hounds…If ever I marry, and have daughters…they shall never go beyond the gates till they are marriageable, when I will take them straight across Fleet Street to St Dunstan’s Church, and deliver them into the hands of their husbands.”

Related Characters: Robert Audley (speaker), Alicia Audley
Page Number: 104
Explanation and Analysis:

“Lady Audley,” answered the young man gravely. “I have never practiced as a barrister…I have shrunk from those responsibilities and duties, as I have from all the fatigues of this troublesome life: but we are sometimes forced in the very position we have most avoided, and I have found myself lately compelled to think of these things. Lady Audley, did you ever study the theory of circumstantial evidence?”

Related Characters: Robert Audley (speaker), Lady Audley / Lucy Graham / Helen Maldon Talboys
Page Number: 106-107
Explanation and Analysis:
Volume 2, Chapter 4 Quotes

[Harcourt Talboys] 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…with him right was right and wrong was wrong…He had cast off his only son because his only son had disobeyed him, and he was ready to cast off his only daughter at five minutes’ notice for the same reason.

Related Characters: George Talboys, Clara Talboys, Mr. Harcourt Talboys
Page Number: 156
Explanation and Analysis:
Volume 2, Chapter 6 Quotes

“What a wonderful solution to life’s enigma there is in the petticoat government! A man might lie in the sunshine and eat lotuses…if his wife would let him! But she won’t, bless her impulsive heart and active mind! She knows better than that…She drags her husband on to the woolsack, or pushes him into Parliament.”

Related Characters: Robert Audley (speaker)
Page Number: 177
Explanation and Analysis:

“I hate women…They’re bold, brazen, abominable creatures, invented for the annoyance and destruction of their superiors. Look at this business of poor George’s! It’s all woman’s work from one end to the other. He marries a woman, and his father casts him off, penniless and professionless. He hears of the woman’s death and he breaks his heart…He goes to a woman’s house and he is never seen alive again.”

Related Characters: Robert Audley (speaker), Lady Audley / Lucy Graham / Helen Maldon Talboys , George Talboys
Related Symbols: Audley Court
Page Number: 178
Explanation and Analysis:
Volume 2, Chapter 7 Quotes

Lucy Audley looked up from her occupation amongst the fragile china cups, and watched Robert rather anxiously, as he walked softly to his uncle’s room, and back again to the boudoir. She looked very pretty and innocent, seated behind the graceful group of delicate opal china and glittering silver. Surely a pretty woman never looks prettier than when making tea. The most feminine and most domestic of all occupations imparts a magic harmony to her every movement, a witchery to her every glance.

Related Characters: Lady Audley / Lucy Graham / Helen Maldon Talboys , Robert Audley
Related Symbols: Audley Court
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 190
Explanation and Analysis:
Volume 2, Chapter 9 Quotes

“I am weary of my life here, and wish, if I can, to find a new one. I go out into the world, dissevered from every link which binds me to the hateful past, to seek another home and another fortune. Forgive me if I have been fretful, capricious, changeable. You should forgive me, for you know why I have been so. You know the secret which is the key to my life.”

Related Characters: Lady Audley / Lucy Graham / Helen Maldon Talboys (speaker), Lieutenant Maldon
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 213
Explanation and Analysis:
Volume 2, Chapter 11 Quotes

“A conspiracy concocted by an artful woman, who had speculated upon the chances of her husband’s death, and had secured a splendid position at the risk of committing a crime…but a foolish woman, who looked at life as a game of chance, in which the best player was likely to hold the winning cards, forgetting that there is a Providence about the pitiful speculators, and that wicked secrets are never permitted to remain long hidden.”

Related Characters: Robert Audley (speaker), Lady Audley / Lucy Graham / Helen Maldon Talboys , George Talboys
Page Number: 228-229
Explanation and Analysis:

“Mr. Audley may be as you say, merely eccentric; but he has talked to me this evening in a manner that has filled me with absolute terror, and I believe that he is going mad. I shall speak very seriously to Sir Michael this very night…I shall only put him on his guard, my dear Alicia.”

“But he’ll never believe you,” said Miss Audley, “He will laugh at such an idea.”

“No, Alicia; he will believe anything that I tell him.”

Related Characters: Lady Audley / Lucy Graham / Helen Maldon Talboys (speaker), Alicia Audley (speaker), Robert Audley, Sir Michael Audley
Page Number: 238
Explanation and Analysis:
Volume 2, Chapter 13 Quotes

Perhaps in that retrospective reverie she recalled the early time in which she had first looked in the glass and discovered that she was beautiful: that fatal early time in which she had first begun to look upon her loveliness as a right divine…Did she remember the day in which that fairy dower of beauty had first taught her to be selfish and cruel?

Related Characters: Lady Audley / Lucy Graham / Helen Maldon Talboys
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 252
Explanation and Analysis:
Volume 3, Chapter 3 Quotes

“I killed him because I AM MAD! because my intellect is a little way upon the wrong side of that narrow boundary-line between sanity and insanity; because when George Talboys goaded me, as you have goaded me; and reproached me, and threatened me; my mind, never properly balanced, utterly lost its balance; and I was mad!

Related Characters: Lady Audley / Lucy Graham / Helen Maldon Talboys (speaker), Robert Audley, George Talboys
Page Number: 294
Explanation and Analysis:

“The place was indeed select. I had not been there a month before I discovered that even the prettiest girl might wait a long time for a rich husband. I wish to hurry over this part of my life: I dare say I was very despicable. You and your nephew, Sir Michael, have been rich all your lives, and can well afford to despise me; but I knew how far poverty can affect a life, and I looked forward with a sick terror to a life so affected.”

Related Characters: Lady Audley / Lucy Graham / Helen Maldon Talboys (speaker), Robert Audley, Sir Michael Audley
Page Number: 299
Explanation and Analysis:
Volume 3, Chapter 5 Quotes

“Because there is no evidence of madness in anything that she has done. She ran away from her home, because her home was not a pleasant one, and she left it in the hope of finding a better. There is no madness in that. She committed the crime of bigamy, because by that crime she obtained fortune and position. There is no madness there. When she found herself in a desperate position, she did not grow desperate. She employed intelligent means, and she carried out a conspiracy which required coolness and deliberation in its execution. There is no madness in that.”

Related Characters: Dr. Mosgrave (speaker), Lady Audley / Lucy Graham / Helen Maldon Talboys
Page Number: 321
Explanation and Analysis:
Volume 3, Chapter 10 Quotes

Two years have passed since the May twilight in which Robert found his old friend; and Mr Audley’s dream of a fairy cottage had been realized…Here amongst the lilies and the rushes on the sloping bank, a brave boy of eight years old plays with a toddling baby…

Mr Audley is a rising man upon the home circuit by this time, and has distinguished himself in the great breach of promise case of Hobbs v. Nobbs.

Related Characters: Robert Audley, George Talboys, Georgey
Page Number: 378
Explanation and Analysis:

I hope no one will take objection to my story because the end of it leaves the good people all happy and at peace. If my experience of life has not been very long, it has at least been manifold; and I can safely subscribe to that which a mighty king and a great philosopher declared, when he said that neither the experience of his youth nor of his age had ever shown him ‘righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging their bread.’

Related Characters: Robert Audley, George Talboys, Sir Michael Audley, Alicia Audley, Clara Talboys
Page Number: 380
Explanation and Analysis:
No matches.