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This article was downloaded by: [University of Western Ontario]On: 11 November 2014, At: 02:27Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,UK
Women's WritingPublication details, including instructions for authorsand subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rwow20
Lady Audley's Secret, Genderand the Representation ofEmotionsHeidi Hansson & Cathrine NorbergPublished online: 14 Aug 2013.
To cite this article: Heidi Hansson & Cathrine Norberg (2013) Lady Audley's Secret,Gender and the Representation of Emotions, Women's Writing, 20:4, 441-457, DOI:10.1080/09699082.2013.823307
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09699082.2013.823307
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Heidi Hansson and Cathrine Norberg
LADY AUDLEY’S SECRET, GENDER AND
THE REPRESENTATION OF EMOTIONS
The relationship between gender, emotion and normative ideals is a prominenttheme in British sensation fiction of the 1860s, and a central concern in MaryElizabeth Braddon’s novel Lady Audley’s Secret (1862). But despite critical assentconcerning the importance of emotions in the text, there are no focused studies oftheir meaning and narrative function. This study explores how representations ofanger and shame convey gender specificity, and how the way characters express andperform emotions interplays with constructions of social power in the novel.Braddon’s work contains more examples of women than men exhibiting signs ofanger and more instances of men than women showing shame, which means thatanger might be understood as a female and shame as a male quality in the text.The contexts where these emotions occur indicate the opposite, however. Womendisplaying anger are shown to transgress gendered conduct codes, whereas menmostly experience shame because of women’s misbehaviour and as their guardians.Although the distribution of instances when male and female characters show angeror shame could initially be understood as a manifestation of the disruptive qualitiesof the sensation genre, such an interpretation is undermined by the genderedrelations between emotional expression, power and control in the novel.
Social norms and expectations determine when a certain kind of emotionalbehaviour changes from acceptable to transgressive, and the status of theindividual associated with the behaviour is of great importance for the verdict.In many cases, social status may be glossed as gender. Although both womenand men have access to the entire emotional spectrum, their ability to act outtheir emotions is conditioned by their respective access to social power. Thecorrelation between emotional expression and social position is particularlyobvious in relation to anger and shame, since, in contrast to many otheremotions, they are predominantly social in character. Displaying theseemotions therefore functions as an instrument of control and socialization inmany cultures, and the way they are expected to manifest themselves inrelation to women and men plays an important role in the construction ofgender. The connection between gender and emotion is, however, neitheruniversal nor stable, but culturally determined. The sociocultural dimension of
Women’s Writing, 2013
Vol. 20, No. 4, 441�457, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09699082.2013.823307
# 2013 Taylor & Francis
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anger and shame makes their representation a central component ofcharacterization in literature from ancient myth to the present. This studycharts how expressions of these emotions are used to convey gender specificityin Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s sensation novel Lady Audley’s Secret (1862) and, inparticular, how the construction of Lady Audley’s deviant femininity to a largeextent depends on the way she displays and performs emotion.
Lady Audley’s Secret is one of the most well-known British sensation novelsof the 1860s. It includes elements like murder, bigamy and arson, and itsdramatic plot provides rich material for investigating gendered representationsof anger and shame. The story centres on the young, resourceful HelenTalboys, nee Maldon, who is deserted by her husband. Instead of accepting alife in poverty, she leaves her son with her father to try her fortune outside herhome. Under the name of Lucy Graham, she takes a job as a governess, meetsthe widowed Sir Michael Audley and marries him, fully aware that she is stilllegally bound to her first husband. When her new life as Lady Audley isthreatened by suspicions about her past, she attempts to murder her firsthusband, George Talboys, as well as his friend, Robert Audley, and causes thedeath of Luke Marks, the husband of her former maid. As the narrativedevelops, the male protagonist, Robert Audley, uncovers her crimes, and hisrole as detective expands to include a number of positions underscoring malesupremacy.1 He becomes Lady Audley’s persecutor, the avenger of her firsthusband and eventually her executioner, by means of sending her abroad to diein a madhouse. Policing Lady Audley’s unfeminine expressions of rage, hisactions play a central role in the discursive construction of gender and emotionin the novel.
The title’s signal that the story will revolve around a secret, together withthe four different aliases of Lady Audley, sets up a situation of dissemblance atthe outset. The prevailing mood of the novel is suspicion, and Lady Audley’sdefining approach to life is performance. The manifestation and control offeelings are thus more than plot elements in the novel. The specific aim of thisstudy is to investigate to what extent emotional reference is gendered in thetext and how far it contributes to demarcating boundaries between right andwrong. An important issue is the gendered distribution of examples of angerand shame, and to what extent these emotions can be seen as prototypicallymale or female. The material is analysed with regard to differences betweenhow men’s and women’s emotions are represented, how the emotionsmanifest themselves physiologically, how emotional behaviour is evaluated andwhat emerges as the predominant norm for emotional conduct in the text. Acentral concern is in what way access to emotion is shown to intersect withsocial power.
The investigation mainly focuses on representations of anger and shame incontexts where lexical references occur. The following terms were identified
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and excerpted for analysis: anger, angrily, angry, cross, fiercely, furious,ferocious, ferocity, fury, indignant, indignantly, indignation, rage (both as anoun and a verb), vexation, vex, ashamed, disgrace, dishonour, shame andshameful. ‘‘Indignation’’ is obviously a much weaker expression of anger than‘‘fury’’, but in order to capture the emotional range represented in the novel, abroad selection of references, including metaphorical expressions occurring inclose proximity to the lexical terms, was included in the material.
***
A number of psychological studies show that, today, anger is typicallyconnected to men.2 Literary sources indicate that, in the past, the emotion wasinstead more commonly associated with women. In ancient Greece, forexample, the urge for revenge was perceived as feminine and understood asmore passionate than male anger.3 The stereotype of the unruly and angryfemale present in literary works from ancient times onwards can be tracedback to the mythological Greek Erinyes or their Roman equivalents, theFuries, but there has been a gradual change in the way feminine anger isperceived.4 Since the anger of the Furies is directed at people who disruptsocial rules, it is represented as just, but this connection between women andjustified anger steadily weakened, so that, by the Middle Ages, the justifiedwrath of the avenging Megaera and her sisters had transformed to theunreasonable behaviour of the angry harridan. Female anger was more andmore rarely depicted as warranted or rational.5 Women were believed to lackthe faculty that enabled them to control emotional reactions, which supportedthe idea that men needed to control their feelings, as exemplified in the well-known figure of the angry female who needs to be tamed that was continuallycirculated in culturally celebrated texts like Shakespeare’s The Taming of theShrew.6 By the nineteenth century, emotional moderation had become the idealand, in Victorian culture, uncontrolled emotionality was frequently under-stood as a sign of madness for both women and men. Even so, the connectionbetween emotionality and insanity is more easily established in relation tofemininity, since medical definitions of madness in terms of irrationality,emotionality and hysterics coincide with attributes used to describe women’snature.7 The belief in an intimate relationship between women’s bodies andtheir inability to control their emotions pathologized female expressions ofemotion.8 An increasing number of newspaper reports of female madness andcriminality were published, strengthening the association between women’slack of emotional control and insanity. The fictional equivalents of thesewomen criminals appear in the sensational plots and, even if the characters donot always commit murder, their unbridled emotions make them sociallydisruptive.9 Control and self-discipline, on the other hand, are primarilyconstructed as male characteristics in the works.
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Given the concern with deviation from social norms in sensation fiction, itis perhaps logical that the gender distribution of emotion terms in Lady Audley’sSecret departs from what might be expected if the ideals of the angel in thehouse and the powerful paterfamilias are taken into account. Approximately60% of the anger terms relate to female and 40% to male characters, while theterms for shame display the reverse relationship, with 60% of the termsrelating to male and 40% to female characters. On the basis of the number anddistribution of examples, it would seem as if anger is constructed asprototypically female and shame as prototypically male in the novel. But aqualitative evaluation of the contexts where the terms occur reveals theopposite pattern. With few exceptions, men’s rage is presented as justified,while women’s anger is represented as against the norm. Shame is introducedas an emotion that Lady Audley, as the representative woman, should displaybut does not, whereas men are vicariously ashamed on behalf of the women intheir charge. As a result, men’s shame is separated from their own activitiesand figured as a response based on their protective roles. One explanation forthe greater number of instances where women’s anger is represented may bethat since the expression of the emotion is a deviation from the implicit normin the novel, it is given more attention. Women’s anger is a sign of disruptionand transgression in the text, and its depiction contributes to thecharacterization of Lady Audley as an emblem of deviant femininity, as doesher refusal to exhibit signs of shame. Representations of both shame and angerin relation to men, on the other hand, re-establish male power and control.10
The novel contains more contexts when a specific lexical term is used todescribe women’s anger compared to when men’s anger is mentioned,although it is sometimes difficult to determine the exact meaning of words.Terms such as ‘‘contempt’’ and ‘‘annoyance’’ are borderline cases that mayoccasionally be used to refer to anger, and, conversely, common anger termsmay sometimes denote annoyance or irritation rather than ire. There are alsoepisodes in the novel where someone’s anger is described throughmetaphorical expressions instead of explicit terms. The core term ‘‘anger’’is more common in descriptions of women’s anger, whereas less basic termslike ‘‘vexation’’, ‘‘fury’’, ‘‘rage’’ and ‘‘indignation’’ are relatively evenlydistributed between the characters. But although there are no significantdifferences in terminology, representations of male and female anger are farfrom identical in the text. A noticeable difference is that a woman’s anger isfrequently given a physical dimension. Women’s agitation typically results inflashing eyes or a change in skin colour, as when Lady Audley’s anger makesher cheeks ‘‘waxen white’’ or her stepdaughter Alicia turns crimson with‘‘bright indignant blushes up to the roots of her waving brown hair’’.11 On twooccasions, Lady Audley’s blue eyes are described as flashing with anger, and,on yet another occasion, her wrath is signalled by a ‘‘flame in her eyes’’.12
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Tears, as a fluid produced in the body, are another physical manifestation of awoman’s anger.13
Heightened skin colour, increased pulse and the feeling of internal pressureare among the generally expected physiological signs of anger.14 In LadyAudley’s Secret, such physical effects are normalized in the case of women, asindicated by Robert Audley’s remark that he knew that Alicia was ‘‘in apassion’’ when there was a glow in her skin and her eyes sparkled with angryflashes.15 When a man’s anger is represented, bodily effects are rare.16 Amongthe few examples are when Sir Michael Audley ‘‘trembl[es] with indignation’’at being informed of the accusations directed at his wife, and when RobertAudley fears that his uncle will ‘‘burst in fatal fury, and tempests of tears’’when her guilt is finally revealed.17 As an older, frailer man in comparison toRobert Audley, Sir Michael is feminized to a certain extent, which gives agender dimension to his physical responses to emotion, but an importantdifference is that, in his case, the representation of tears in terms of a furioustempest invests the embodied signs of emotion with an agency and power thatare normally absent from women’s emotional displays.
In this way, the gender difference regarding the physical manifestation ofanger has its equivalent in the physical performance of the emotion. In ameditation on the nature of emotional distress, Braddon’s narrator describesacting out as a common response to anger. Relief can be achieved only whenthe emotion leaves the body and is turned outwards*for instance, towardsinanimate objects:
Who has not felt, in the first madness of sorrow, an unreasoning rageagainst the mute propriety of chairs and tables, the stiff squareness ofTurkey carpets, the unbending obstinacy of the outward apparatus ofexistence? We want to root up gigantic trees in a primeval forest, and totear their huge branches asunder in our convulsive grasp; and the utmostthat we can do for the relief of our passion is to knock over an easy-chair,or smash a few shillings’-worth of Mr. Copeland’s manufacture.18
Although the narrator’s reflection is unspecific with regard to gender, it ismainly male anger that is turned outwards in the novel. Women’s anger iscontained within their bodies. Lady Audley, who is the female characterdisplaying her anger most frequently, seldom engages in open conflict, whilepractically all the male characters articulate their anger openly on one orseveral occasions.19 George Talboys, for example, explains that before hedecided to leave his wife and child, he ‘‘flew into a rage with her, [himself],her father, the world, and everybody in it, and then ran out of the house’’.20
On another occasion, he expresses his anger by striding ‘‘out of the room,banging the door after him with a violence that shook the house’’.21 In
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conjunction with the discovery of Lady Audley’s identity, he ‘‘pushe[s][Robert] fiercely aside’’ and, when the latter follows him, George ‘‘bang[s] thedoor in his face’’.22 Other male characters convey their anger in similarlydirect ways, either vocally or physically: Robert engages in habitual ‘‘outburstsof splenetic rage against the female sex’’; Luke Marks is ‘‘ferocious in hisdrunkenness’’; and Sir Michael is described as ‘‘ready to do immediate battlewith the person who had caused his wife’s grief’’.23 But despite their outbursts,the male characters do not emerge as unpleasant or unmanly. Robert Audleymay be constitutionally angry with women, but he is also depicted as a pillar ofsociety, who marries at the end of the novel and builds a family, and eventhough George Talboys has abandoned his young wife and baby boy in a rage,he is pitied rather than punished for his actions. The male characters in LadyAudley’s Secret can indulge in a greater range of emotional behaviour withoutloss of position. There is an implicit relation between emotional expressionand social power, so that male characters, and in particular those of the upperclass, retain the reader’s sympathies, regardless of their aggressive or hostilebehaviour.
Masculine anger is consequently constructed as healthy and normative inthe text and, since it is directed outward, the connection between self andemotionality remains weak. In the case of women characters, the fact thatemotion is located in their bodies makes it a matter of their essence. Awoman’s anger is a defining characteristic of her self that makes her dangerousand deviant. A connection with evil is frequently present, in a continuation ofthe ancient and medieval tradition of personifying anger as a female devil.24
The link between Lady Audley and evil is particularly apparent in thedescription of her portrait, where she appears as a monstrous inhabitant of hell:
The perfection of feature, the brilliancy of colouring, were there; but Isuppose the painter had copied quaint mediaeval monstrosities until hisbrain had grown bewildered, for my lady, in his portrait of her, hadsomething of the aspect of a beautiful fiend. Her crimson dress,exaggerated like all the rest in this strange picture, hung about her infolds that looked like flames, her fair head peeping out of the lurid mass ofcolour, as if out of a raging furnace.25
On another occasion, the flame in her eyes is compared to the ‘‘greenish light[that] might flash from the changing hued orbs of an angry mermaid’’,conveying the idea that she belongs to the non-human world.26 She isassociated with the devil through metaphors like ‘‘arch trickster’’ and ‘‘archconspirator’’, which draw on the tradition of the devil as the arch enemy ofhumankind.27 The expression ‘‘amber-haired siren’’ makes her the successor ofthe malevolent feminine character of ancient myth, and more general
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connections with evil are established in descriptions like ‘‘the demoniacincarnation of some evil principle’’ and ‘‘beautiful devil’’.28 Elizabeth LeeSteere argues that it is instead Lady Audley’s maid Phoebe who is associatedwith the occult in the novel.29 As a lower-class character, she does not haveaccess to a particularly wide emotional register, but Steere suggests that herrare expressions of wrath reveal her ‘‘true demonic nature’’.30 Whether LadyAudley or her maid is selected as the key example of personified evil in thetext, anger is constructed as an unnatural and unacceptable emotion forwomen in the novel, regardless of their social class. There is no correspondingconnection between male aggression and evil or unnatural beings, with theresult that male anger does not emerge as against nature.
Female anger is consequently represented as not only different from maleanger, but also more negative. The contrast is highlighted in a passage whereLady Audley’s animosity towards her stepdaughter Alicia is compared withmen’s way of handling their anger: ‘‘There was no open warfare between thetwo women; there was only an armed neutrality, broken every now and thenby brief feminine skirmishes and transient wordy tempests’’.31 Instead of givingvent to her emotion, Lady Audley ‘‘carried forward the sum of her dislike, andput it out at a steady rate of interest, until the breach between her step-daughter and herself [. . .] became a great gulf utterly impassable’’.32 Thepassage adds to the idea of secrecy as Lady Audley’s defining characteristic.This suppression of feeling is in line with social expectations, yet it is presentedas the main reason why the hostility between her and Alicia grows. Theepisode shows Lady Audley performing not emotion, but its containmentbehind a facade of politeness. The description of male anger in the samepassage instead conveys honesty and is compared to the brave combat betweentwo enemies, who ‘‘[have] it out’’ and afterwards ‘‘fall into each other’s armsand vow eternal friendship and everlasting brotherhood’’.33 As in thenarrator’s reflection about the nature of anger quoted above, anger that isacted out, and in a sense leaves the body, is constructed as a healthier and morepositive variety than the embodied feminine emotion.34
Women are therefore caught in a double bind, since they are sociallyprohibited from expressing their anger in terms of combat, at the same time astheir failure to give open expression to their feelings is what makes their angersecretive and threatening.35 Paradoxically, Lady Audley’s socially sanctionedability to control her anger contributes to characterizing her as dishonest, andits containment reinforces the idea that it is part of her essence. Alicia’semotional repertoire differs from that of her stepmother and, in manyrespects, her anger is similar to the masculine versions in the text. Shepossesses a ‘‘frank, passionate, generous [and] daring nature’’ that is envied byLady Audley, and the narrator comments that had her stepmother been ‘‘lessamiable’’ and ‘‘more like Alicia in disposition, the two ladies might have
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expended their enmity in one tremendous quarrel, and might ever afterwardshave been affectionate and friendly’’.36 An alternative phrasing is that if LadyAudley had been less dishonest and more in touch with her emotions, thewomen might have been able to work out their differences. In the passage, thelady’s amiability is, however, represented as a performance and her truefeelings as being hidden. This discrepancy between surface and depth, orhonest and dishonest emotional behaviour, is made plain when Alicia criticizesRobert Audley for being attracted to ‘‘wax-dolls’’*an image that emphasizesthe unchanging, but artificial, poise of her stepmother.37 Alicia herself isunable to contain her emotions, as exemplified when she expresses her angerwith Robert by slashing a riding whip against her skirt.38 She is direct in hercommunication with Lady Audley and does not hesitate to rebuke her whenshe is wrong, as when her stepmother insinuates that Robert is mad.39 Yetwhile Alicia’s anger resembles its more positively constructed male equivalent,it is not represented as a healthy battle, but as thoughtless and childishoutbursts that need to be controlled. Hence, Robert admonishes her for herquick temper and hasty judgments:
‘‘My dear, hasty, impetuous Alicia, don’t be violent,’’ said the young manimploringly. ‘‘A conclusion isn’t a five-barred gate; and you needn’t giveyour judgment its head, as you give your mare, Atlanta, hers, when you’reflying across country at the heels of an unfortunate fox.’’40
Suppressing one’s anger is thus represented as both desirable, since a womanshould control her emotions, and undesirable, since conflicts are leftunresolved. But this contradictory construction only refers to women’s anger,and there are no examples of men repressing their wrath in the novel.
There is, however, a class aspect to how anger may be expressed, which ismost clearly discernible in the description of women’s anger in the novel.Thus, Lady Audley openly displays her ire towards people of inferior socialstanding, with her former maid Phoebe being a common target of her rage. Onone occasion, she turns to Phoebe in a ‘‘transport of anger’’ and calls her a‘‘fool’’, and, on another, she cries out fiercely against her.41 Her superiority interms of class makes it possible for her to direct her anger also against lower-class men, as when she berates Luke Marks for his insolence.42 Although thegeneral hierarchical structure in the novel places men above women, class-based dimensions of social power are shown to determine a woman’spossibilities of expressing her anger and enable her to deviate from the gendercodes that otherwise govern emotional expressions. A complicating factor inthe case of Lady Audley is, of course, that her bigamous marriage means thather class status is dubious. By venting her anger against her inferiors, she uses
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the emotion to perform class and claims access to a social power that is notrightfully hers.
Where men are concerned, the power issues involved are more oftendescribed as being the result of gender relations than class differences. SirMichael, for example, demonstrates his authority over his daughter by angrilytelling her that her ‘‘dog shall be shot’’ if it ever threatens his wife.43 That hispower over female family members relies on inspiring fear is further shownwhen Lady Audley explains that she is ‘‘so afraid of vexing’’ him.44 Theconnection between anger and power is also manifested in the relationshipbetween Luke Marks and his wife. From the first time they meet in their earlyteens, Luke exerts power through aggression by threatening Phoebe withmurder if she does not agree to become his wife, and, even on his deathbed, hecontinues to control her with threats and fierce demands.45 Luke’s brutal waysprimarily function as indicators of his low social standing, however, and cannotbe regarded as representing normative male behaviour. But despite the classdifferences, his expressions of anger towards his wife and her submissiveresponses parallel Sir Michael’s methods of controlling the women of hishousehold, with both cases demonstrating how the emotional outlet is a sign ofthe uneven power distribution between the genders in the text.
Even if anger is frequently represented as male control of women, there aresome examples where men are angry with other men. These occasions arealmost never linked to questions of power, however, but usually occur as anatural part of an argument or a hasty reaction to disappointment or bad news.When Robert reveals Lady Audley’s criminal duplicity, Sir Michael turns onhim with ‘‘fury in his voice’’.46 In a similar way, George Talboys threatens toknock Robert down when he realizes the truth about his wife’s scheme.47
Robert also elicits the anger of Lady Audley’s former employer when hedemands information about her antecedents.48 The interchange is representedneither as a quarrel nor as a particularly heated argument, but as a matter ofplain speaking. Men answering each other angrily are, thus, not depicted asenemies: Sir Michael Audley is fond of his nephew, and Robert and George aredescribed as close friends. Their expressions of anger are presented as normalfeatures of their communication, and there are no hierarchical differencesbetween men who are angry with each other. In consequence, the powerdimension is largely absent in the novel’s construction of anger between men,as opposed to the construction of men’s anger with women, which is almostinvariably infused with power.
The more positive construction of male compared to female anger may beinterpreted in relation to the new ideas of the emotion that began to take format the beginning of the nineteenth century. Anger was still viewed assomething to be avoided, but gradually more and more people embraced theopinion that the energy generated by the feeling could be positive, especially in
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the workplace and in situations requiring decisive action.49 This idea wasstrengthened in the middle of the century, at the same time as greater emphasiswas placed on keeping the home free from anger. As a result, a man’s angercould be perceived as correct and even necessary, if it was used as a means ofspurring him into action, whereas a woman’s anger should be avoided in orderto allow her to fulfil her domestic role.50 In this way, the understanding ofanger as a positive masculine attribute was reinforced, while it remained anegative attribute in relation to women. The gendered constructions of angerin Lady Audley’s Secret correspond to such views.
***
Like the representations of anger, what is described as shameful in Braddon’snovel is connected to hierarchical structures and patriarchal control. Inpsychological terms, shame is generally understood as a negative emotion andtypically associated with blame, physical shrinking, hiding and sadness, butthere are situations where it emerges as a positive sensation. To express shamemay, for instance, be applauded as an appropriate reaction to socially incorrectbehaviour.51 In his study of the history of emotions, Peter Stearns notes thatguilt, which is closely related to shame, was revalued and even encouraged inthe middle of the nineteenth century, at least in relation to women. It wasregarded as necessary for a woman of ‘‘good character’’ to be capable of‘‘feeling guilty when other emotional norms like serenity of temper escapedher’’.52 Martha Nussbaum draws special attention to the socializing effects ofthe emotion, commenting that shame penalties, such as exposing the offendersof certain crimes, have been defended by political theorists as ‘‘valuableexpressions of social norms’’ that help promote morality.53 As an importantingredient in the process of personal development and introspection, shamemay be perceived as a positive emotion and a proper sign of an individual’srecognition of transgressive behaviour. Conversely, the absence of shame insituations where it is socially expected may be interpreted as evidence ofopposition.
From an early stage, women’s and men’s shame has been representeddifferently in Western culture. In the case of women, it has beenpredominantly related to the body, commonly with sexual overtones, but,where men are concerned, the emotion has frequently been linked to loss ofsocial position or an inability to meet expectations in terms of money or work.The connection between shame and the female body is documented in theOxford English Dictionary, and examples from the thirteenth century show thatshame could be used as a term for a woman’s ‘‘loss of chastity’’ or in the senseof ‘‘violation of a woman’s honour’’. The dictionary includes no examples ofshame specifically related to the male body. The association between shameand the female body is transparently obvious in the Latin term pudenda (formed
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from pudor*that is, ‘‘shame’’), which has been used to designate the femalesex organs from the early modern period onwards. In comparison, the term‘‘genitals’’, designating a man’s organs, has remained free from associationswith shame.54 A literary illustration of the gendered reasons for shame iswhere women in medieval romances blush at moments of sexual immodesty.Men blush instead because they have been unable to live up to chivalric codesof honour. The forms of response are also gendered, so that women react withpassivity and silence, whereas men often take physical action*for example, byengaging in battle with the creature or person who has caused their shame.55
Women’s shame is thus embodied, while men’s shame is acted out, in aparallel to the gendered expressions of anger.
Terms denoting shame occur less frequently than expressions of anger inLady Audley’s Secret, but this may be related to the circumstance that anger is abasic emotion term. Shame is normally regarded as a subgroup of sadness inthe Western world.56 As in the representation of anger, instances of shamemust be regarded as larger than the actual occurrences of terms in the novel.There are, for example, passages where someone’s shame is discussed,although no specific term is used. Since there are more instances of lexicalterms referring to male than female shame in the text, it could be inferred thatshame is constructed as prototypically masculine. The contexts whereexpressions like ‘‘ashamed’’, ‘‘disgrace’’ and ‘‘dishonour’’ occur, however,show that men’s shame is almost exclusively a response to women’smisbehaviour, not their own dishonourable conduct.
Lady Audley is the character who appears most frequently in relation toshame, although on most occasions shame is presented as something she isexpected to feel, rather than something she really experiences. Her shame is,consequently, not presented from her point of view in the novel, but from theperspective of those who suffer in her place, as when Robert Audley talksabout ‘‘spar[ing] others who must suffer by [her] shame’’.57 The only timeLady Audley accepts shame with reference to herself is when she realizes thatthere will be no human mercy, and hopes to be ‘‘brought before an unearthlytribunal, and so escape the intervening shame and misery of an earthlyjudgement’’.58 In this episode, her shame corresponds to prototypical shameexperiences as described in psychological literature, where the individual feelsexposed and wants to hide from the world.59 On the other occasions when hershame is mentioned, the focus is on her inability to experience the emotion. Incontrast to anger, which is represented as embodied and a matter of LadyAudley’s essence, shame is an emotion she is not even capable of performing.
In order to generate personal feelings of shame, an action must be acceptedas wrongful, but Lady Audley is never shown to admit her culpability.60 Herfailure to accept the error of her ways is another factor that characterizes her asdeviant and villainous. In her view, her marriage to Sir Michael accorded with
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what society expected of her and, since the long absence of her first husbandhad made her believe that he was dead, she should be exonerated from guilt.61
She regards lying as a necessity, not a dishonourable action, as when she sendsa notice about her death to The Times to prevent George Talboys fromsearching for her. Robert Audley, on the other hand, condemns her lie asutterly ‘‘shameful’’.62 He is the character who represents righteousness in thenovel and, from his perspective, Lady Audley’s lies threaten both social codesin general and the prevailing gender hierarchies. Nicole P. Fisk arrives at theconclusion that Lady Audley’s guilt consists in ‘‘overstepping a woman’sboundaries’’, which makes her ‘‘dangerous to patriarchal society’’.63 To someextent, her refusal ‘‘to run away and repent [her] wickedness in some foreignplace’’, as Robert urges her to do, may be interpreted as a rejection ofpatriarchal norms and an indication of a feminist agenda in the novel.64 Thereis no sustained feminist perspective, however, and the clash between socialexpectations and Lady Audley’s transgressions is constructed as the reason forher downfall and final death. Rather than critiquing rigid gender norms, theemotional subnarrative leads to the conclusion that Lady Audley’s defiance iswrong, and her refusal to repent makes her a criminal comparable to, or evenworse than, Judas: ‘‘If she had been Judas she would have held to her thirtypieces of silver to the last moment of her shameful life’’.65
Lady Audley’s rejection of shame means that typical signs of a woman’sshame are more or less absent in the novel. It is nevertheless inferred thatexpressions of shame might have saved her. In general, then, shame isconstructed as a female emotion in Lady Audley’s Secret, and the refusal toexpress the emotion is presented as transgressive and potentially radical.Logically, male shame should therefore function as an example of feminizationin the text. However, since the main reason for a man’s shame is femalemisconduct, this is not the case. Only two examples indicate a different, orpartly different, source of male shame. The first example refers to a man whois described as having ‘‘nothing that he need have been ashamed of in his face’’,and concerns physical appearance.66 The other is the only example where aman is shown to be ashamed of his own actions, when Lady Audley’s drunkenfather hides his face in shame as Robert confronts him with his complicity in hisdaughter’s machinations.67 Although Robert is upset with Mr Maldon, andexpresses it, he is also shown to feel great sympathy for the old man. MrMaldon’s ‘‘wrestling with his anguish’’ reminds him of his uncle’s feelings of‘‘agony and shame’’, and Robert feels that he ‘‘might have spared him’’ thepain of his visit.68 Robert pities Mr Maldon and even accuses himself ofcontributing to the old man’s discomfort, but he does not show the sameconsideration for Lady Audley’s feelings*not even in the final scenes whereshe openly confesses her trespasses and begs for forgiveness. Given the
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construction throughout the novel of Lady Audley’s emotional dissembling,the reader, too, is undisposed to see her contrition as honest.
Apart from these exceptions, men are only described as experiencing shamein their roles as women’s guardians, since their responsibility for these womenmeans that their own or another man’s honour is directly or indirectly at stake.One of the worst effects of Lady Audley’s actions is that they may dishonour SirMichael Audley.69 Robert Audley therefore sends her away in order ‘‘to save[their] stainless name from degradation and shame’’, and his greatest concern isto avoid ‘‘the necessity of any exposure*any disgrace’’.70 The desire to sparehimself and Sir Michael shame lies behind his decision to conceal Lady Audley’scrimes from public knowledge and, when her secret has finally been revealed,Robert informs her that his mercy is only an effect of his concern for his uncle:
If there were any secret tribunal before which you might be made toanswer for your crimes, I would have little scruple in being your accuser:but I would spare that generous and high-born gentleman upon whosenoble name your infamy would be reflected.71
Nevertheless, Robert concludes that her crimes are so vile that it is worthbringing shame upon himself and those he loves to ensure that she ispunished.72 Lady Audley, in contrast, is not presented as an individual in herown right in connection to her crimes, and Robert is never shown to considerher possible feelings of shame or dishonour. He primarily views her as hisuncle’s wife, which makes her feelings less important than her husband’s.Thus, Lady Audley’s shame is not commented on, only the shame others aremade to experience because of her actions.
Although anger expressions occur more frequently in connection withwomen in Lady Audley’s Secret and shame more often with reference to men,anger does not emerge as a typically female emotion nor shame as a malecharacteristic in the novel. The contexts where anger and shame are founddemonstrate the opposite: women who display anger transgress codes ofacceptable behaviour, and the shame experienced by the male characters isalmost exclusively in response to women’s wrongdoings, so that shameparadoxically emphasizes their superior status and power in relation towomen. The representations of women’s emotions as embodied, in contrast tomen’s capacity to act out their feelings, contribute to the construction ofwomen as bodies and men as intellect. Despite the novel’s reputation forsensationalism, and in contrast to interpretations that attempt to identifyfeminist undertones in the text, an analysis of the gendering of anger andshame in the text demonstrates that Lady Audley’s Secret in fact deploysrepresentations of emotion to construct gender in a highly conventionalmanner.
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Notes
1 Vicki A. Pallo, ‘‘From Do-Nothing to Detective: The Transformation ofRobert Audley in Lady Audley’s Secret,’’ Journal of Popular Culture 39.3 (2006):466�78 (475).
2 Mary K. Biaggio, ‘‘Sex Differences in Behavioural Reactions to Provocationof Anger,’’ Psychological Reports 64.1 (1989): 23�26; Deborah L. Cox, SallyD. Stabb, and Joseph F. Hulgus, ‘‘Anger and Depression in Girls and Boys:A Study of Gender Differences,’’ Psychology of Women Quarterly 24.1 (2000):110�12; William V. Harris, Restraining Rage: The Ideology of Anger Control inClassical Antiquity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2001) 264; Jana S. Nunnand Susan L. Thomas, ‘‘The Angry Male and the Passive Female: The Role ofGender and Self-Esteem in Anger Expression,’’ Social Behavior and Personality27.2 (1999): 145�54; E. Ashby Plant, Janet Shibley Hyde, Dacher Keltner,and Patricia G. Devine, ‘‘The Gender Stereotyping of Emotions,’’ Psychologyof Women Quarterly 24.1 (2000): 81�92.
3 Harris 264.4 Gwynne Kennedy, Just Anger: Representing Anger in Early Modern England
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2000) 6.; Harris 264ff.5 Harris 264.6 J.H. David Scourfield, ‘‘Anger and Gender in Chariton’s Chaereas and
Callirhoe,’’ Ancient Anger: Perspectives from Homer to Galen, ed. Susanna MortonBraund and Glenn W. Most (New York: Cambridge UP, 2003) 163�84(181).
7 Lyn Pykett, The Sensation Novel: From The Woman in White to TheMoonstone (Plymouth: Northcote House in association with the BritishCouncil, 1994) 20.
8 Lisa Perfetti, introduction, The Representation of Women’s Emotions in Medievaland Early Modern Culture, ed. Lisa Perfetti (Gainesville: UP of Florida, 2005)1�22 (5).
9 See, for instance, June Sturrock, ‘‘Murder, Gender, and Popular Fiction byWomen in the 1860s: Braddon, Oliphant, Yonge,’’ Victorian Crime, Madnessand Sensation, ed. Andrew Maunder and Grace Moore (Aldershot: Ashgate,2004) 73�88 (73); Andrew Mangham, Violent Women and Sensation Fiction:Crime, Medicine and Victorian Popular Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007).
10 A study based on large collections of written and spoken material such as theBritish National Corpus or the Collins Birmingham University InternationalLanguage Database might yield similar quantitative results, but the originalcontexts of the examples retrieved from such corpora sometimes remainunclear. Although considerably fewer results can be collected when thestudy is based on a single novel, the context of the examples is clear, whichmeans that questions of characterization, plot and genre can be taken intoconsideration. The circumstance that anger is more frequently connected to
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female characters and shame to male characters in Lady Audley’s Secret showsthe limitations of a purely quantitative study.
11 Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Audley’s Secret (1862; London: Penguin, 1998)142, 129.
12 Braddon 113, 142, 316.13 Braddon 67. For a discussion about the link between female emotions and
embodiment in East Lynne (1861), see Heidi Hansson and Cathrine Norberg,‘‘Storms of Tears: Emotion Metaphors and the Construction of Gender inEast Lynne,’’ Orbis Litterarum 67.2 (2012): 154�70.
14 George Lakoff, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal aboutthe Mind (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987) 380�415; Zoltan Kovecses,Metaphor and Emotion: Language, Culture, and Body in Human Feeling (Cambridge:Cambridge UP, 2000) 159.
15 Braddon 118�19.16 A search for anger terms in Ellen Wood’s East Lynne and The Woman in White
(1860) by Wilkie Collins yields a similar result.17 Braddon 281, 353.18 Braddon 206.19 Braddon 289.20 Braddon 24.21 Braddon 76.22 Braddon 76.23 Braddon 328, 300, 281.24 Lester Little, ‘‘Anger in Monastic Curses,’’ Anger’s Past: The Social Uses of an
Emotion in the Middle Ages, ed. Barbara Rosenwein (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP,1998) 9�35.
25 Braddon 72.26 Braddon 316.27 Braddon 254, 251.28 Braddon 280, 340, 383.29 Elizabeth Lee Steere, ‘‘‘I Thought You Was an Evil Spirit’: The Hidden
Villain of Lady Audley’s Secret,’’ Women’s Writing 15.3 (2008): 300�19 (303).30 Steere 313.31 Braddon 289.32 Braddon 289.33 Braddon 289�90; original emphasis.34 Braddon 206.35 For a discussion of women’s cold anger in sensation fiction, see Cathrine
Norberg, ‘‘Cold and Dangerous Women: Anger and Gender in SensationFiction,’’ Cold Matters: Cultural Perceptions of Snow, Ice and Cold, ed. HeidiHansson and Cathrine Norberg (Umea: Umea U and Royal Skyttean Soc.,2009) 157�73.
36 Braddon 296, 289.37 Braddon 58.
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38 Braddon 118.39 Braddon 276.40 Braddon 118.41 Braddon 298, 321.42 Bradon 316.43 Braddon 107.44 Braddon 282.45 Braddon 404.46 Braddon 342.47 Braddon 76.48 Braddon 219.49 Peter Stearns, American Cool: Constructing a Twentieth-Century Emotional Style
(New York: New York UP, 1994) 20, 29.50 Stearns 28�29.51 Leonard Boonin, ‘‘Guilt, Shame and Morality,’’ Journal of Value Inquiry 17.4
(1983): 295�304; Jennifer C. Manion, ‘‘The Moral Relevance of Shame,’’American Philosophical Quarterly 39.1 (2000): 73�90; Heli Tissari, ‘‘Con-ceptualizing Shame: Investigating Uses of the English Word Shame, 1418�1991,’’ Selected Proceedings of the 2005 Symposium on New Approaches in EnglishHistorical Lexis, ed. Roderick W. McConchie, Olga Timofeeva, Heli Tissari,and Tanja Saily (Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceeding Project, 2006)143�54 (143).
52 Stearns 52.53 Martha Nussbaum, Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame and the Law
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2004) 3.54 Valerie Allen, ‘‘Waxing Red: Shame and the Body, Shame and the Soul,’’
The Representation of Women’s Emotions in Medieval and Early Modern Culture, ed.Lisa Perfetti (Gainesville: UP of Florida, 2005) 190�209 (191).
55 Allen 192.56 Kurt W. Fischer and June Price Tangney, ‘‘Self-Conscious Emotions and the
Affect Revolution: Framework and Overview,’’ Self-Conscious Emotions: ThePsychology of Shame, Guilt, Embarrassment, and Pride, ed. June Price Tangneyand Kurt W. Fischer (New York: Guilford, 1995) 3�19.
57 Braddon 339.58 Braddon 333.59 June Price Tangney, ‘‘Shame and Guilt in Interpersonal Relationships,’’
Tangney and Fischer 114�39 (117); Greshen Kaufman, The Psychology ofShame: Theory and Treatment of Shame-Based Syndromes (New York: Springer,1989) 18.
60 Fischer and Tangney 4.61 Braddon 345, 348.62 Braddon 376.63 Nicole P. Fisk, ‘‘Lady Audley as Sacrifice: Curing Female Disadvantage in
Lady Audley’s Secret,’’ Victorian Newsletter 105 (2004): 24�27 (25).
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64 Braddon 272.65 Braddon 367.66 Braddon 153.67 Braddon 173.68 Braddon 174, 173.69 Braddon 132, 142.70 Braddon 371, 372.71 Braddon 339.72 Braddon 340.
Heidi Hansson is Professor of English at Umea University, Sweden. She has
published books and articles on postmodern romance, Irish women’s writing and
Northern studies, generally with a focus on gender issues. She is the author of
Romance Revived: Postmodern Romances and the Tradition (1998) and Emily
Lawless 1845�1913: Writing the Interspace (2007), and has edited collections on
Irish nineteenth-century literature and cultural representations of the North. She
is currently completing a study of gender and northern travel writing, together
with Professor Anka Ryall and an edited collection about Irish Land War
literature, together with Professor James Murphy, and developing a project about
modernity and the North in Anglophone literature from the early twentieth
century. Address: Dept of Language Studies, Umea University, SE-901 87 Umea,
Sweden. [email: [email protected]]
Cathrine Norberg is Associate Professor of English at Lulea University of
Technology, Sweden. She is the author of Whores and Cuckolds: On Male and
Female Terms in Shakespeare’s Comedies (2002). Her research interest is
linguistics with a focus on gender. She has been involved in a research project
called Challenging Emotions where emotion concepts have been studied from a
gender perspective. Her main focus has been on gender and emotion in sensation
novels of the 1860s. Together with Professor Heidi Hansson she is the editor of the
publication Cold Matters (2009) which focuses on cultural aspects of snow, ice
and cold. Address: Dept of Languages and Culture, Lulea University of
Technology, SE-971 87 Lulea, Sweden. [email: [email protected]]
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