THE PROTRACTED GUISE OF DECENCY: VILLAINY IN THE WOMAN IN WHITE AND LADYAUDLEY'SSECRET By Jessica K. Pollard Richards A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree MASTER OF ARTS IN ENGLISH WEBER STATE UNIVERSITY Ogden, Utah August 19,2015 of Richards 2 In Victorian Babylon: People, Streets and Images in Nineteenth Century London, Lynda Nead describes several of Henry Mayhew's accounts of pickpocketing as a way of underlining an anxiety, about the ability of the individual to identify evil, that arose from the process of urbanization. Mayhew describes pickpockets targeting women as those "walking by her side, who insert their hand gently into the pocket of her gown" (Mayhew 304). He goes on to explain that the thieves often achieved the necessary proximity to the woman by asking her for directions. The inability of the woman to perceive the threat of the thieves suggests Victorian anxieties about the identification of those with evil designs. Mayhew also records an incident where he "observed a well dressed, good looking man of about thirty years of age, having the appearance of a smart man of business.... [When o]ur eye accidentally caught sight of his left hand dropping by his side in the direction of her pocket" (Nead 71). The woman is a victim of the pickpocket's disguise; the intersection of so many people of varying classes and backgrounds renders it impossible for her to apprehend the interaction between herself and the well groomed gentleman beside her. Nead interprets Mayhew's account of the incident as "a modern urban experience; a crime made possible because of the heterogeneous population of the city streets and the uncertainties and ambiguities concerning behaviour in a public space" (Nead 71). She continues, saying that "the story reveals other aspects of the city. Identities in the city, based on appearance rather than personal knowledge, could never be certain. They could be accurate indices of social status, or they could be assumed for deception" (Nead 71-72). We can see this complicated, overwhelming, and potentially frightening view of Richards 3 contemporary reflected in the literary representations of villainy and especially in sensation fiction.1 In "The Face of Evil: Phrenology, Physiognomy, and the Gothic Novel," Bridget Marshall argues that post-sensation gothic writers perpetually connected physical deformity with villainy. Marshall acknowledges that occasionally Victorian texts grappled with the difficulties of detecting true character through physiognomy alone. However, she lays the blame for these frustrations at the feet of individual characters who fail to master the science, or as a result of inaccessibility to accurate information, rather than construing it as an institutional failure. Marshall argues that while evil is concealed, eventually truth will out, typically through some physical display. While this rule applies varyingly amongst works of gothic fiction, it is not nuanced enough to explain the Victorians' move to more complicated and concealed versions of villainy. The protracted guise of decency used by many of the villains in sensation fiction created tension in the novel by subverting readers' expectations about the nature of evil. In this paper, I argue that Victorian novelists capitalized on the preconceptions of their culture regarding the detection of villainy to create tension within their texts, revealing an anxiety that, within a complex society, the identification and eradication of evil becomes difficult, if not impossible, and results in the victimization and the corruption of "innocents." I will examine this anxiety using two seminal sensation novels: The Woman in White and Lady Audley '$ Secret. The difficulties surrounding the detection of villainy create tension within these texts in myriad ways, but the tension bears out in the initial paralysis of protagonists and 11n The Secret Theatre of Home: Wilkie Collins, Sensation Narrative, and Nineteenth-Century Psychology, Jenny Bourne Taylor explains, "the form encapsulated at least two of the slippery meanings of 'popular fiction'—the 'light reading of a middle-class and predominantly female public on the one hand, the mass 'entertainment' of a relatively newly formed lower-middle- and upper-working-class readership on the other—and blurred any possible distinction between them" (4). Taylor's analysis is significant because it explains that the sensation genre was responsible for a type of societal blurring and indistinction. Richards 4 culminates in their unsavory methods of restoring order. The classic representations of sensation fiction novels discussed in this paper adhere varyingly to the patterns of paralysis and corruption. Each example reveals an anxiety about the unintelligible and heterogeneous nature of society and exposes a concern about complicity and accountability in criminality and insanity. The first sensation novels appeared in the midst of a cultural crisis. Many Victorians were concerned about the upheaval of social structures surrounding the middle class. The industrial revolution allowed this new class to become empowered in their roles as consumers. As a relatively new medium, the mass production of the novel contributed to the anxiety encompassing a mutable social order. Novels participated in and perpetuated threats to these structures in their commentaries about novel-reading.2 Sensation novels received damning reviews from contemporary critics because of their status as commodified goods, and the novelists faced censure impacting their literary credibility.3 The polemical reactions to sensation fiction are an indication of the pervasive anxiety surrounding the disintegration of social class. In "On the Track of Things: Sensation and Modernity in Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley 's Secret," Eva Badowska analyzes the contemporary criticism surrounding the sensation novel. Badowska argues that the categorization of sensation fiction as moribund by contemporaries is a reflection of an anxiety that the age may fail to achieve a sort of enduring timelessness despite a firm belief in the power and importance of progress. Badowska's argument explains how novel reading Victorians (unconsciously) questioned the value of the age, by exploring their contributions and complicity in its problems. Interestingly, the novels 2 Patrick Brantlinger deals at length with the anxiety surrounding the mass production of the novel in his work The Reading Lesson: The Threat of Mass Literacy in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction. 3 Badowska notes that "[c]ritics of the 1860s imagined that the entire sensation genre constituted a craze whose unhealthy popularity guaranteed its premature obsolescence" (Badowska 158). Margaret Oliphant's exasperation with the genre is clear, and Henry Mansel was also a vocal critic. Richards 5 deal directly with the type of social and moral collapse contained in the reviews that decry them. The novelists capitalized on the same uncertainty that plagued the reviewers about the inherent value of their society. Badowska further explains that, for contemporaries, sensation fiction's depiction of modern realities impeded its ability to become considered enduring literary work. Partially, this criticism emanated from the amalgamation of various genres within the novels. Victorians prided themselves on progress, but an underlying anxiety about the negative impact of the growth of towns and cities on communities, specifically from their perceived fear of criminality and the growth of an underworld, made their works introspective and helped to contribute to a more complex conversation about the duality of man's nature. This introspection is expressed as protagonists encounter villainy without initial recognition because of shared characteristics and expectations. In an article for Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Margaret Oliphant recognizes this tendency towards self-reflection within authors' attempts to grapple with the seedier aspects of industrialization: We who once did, and made, and declared ourselves masters of all things, have relapsed into the natural size of humanity before the great events which have given new character to the age.... It is only natural that art and literature should, in an age which has turned out to be one of events, attempt a kindred depth of effect and shock of incident, (qtd. in Uhlmann xiii) Oliphant suggests here that the arrogance that propelled progress grew beyond the scope of human comprehension. She also recognizes the natural response in art and literature as they began to reflect an anxiety about the inability of individuals to wholly understand their current environment. Richards 6 Victorians linked their incomprehension to modes of concealment. As F. S. Schwarzbach suggests, the notion of concealed evil as a way of suggesting complexity of character and the environment is not new; it is a consistent trope in English literature:4 The continuing Victorian obsession with detection of crime is also connected to deeply rooted anxieties about identity in a modern urban society. The fear that in the new socially heterogeneous milieu of the modern city it becomes nearly impossible to tell the true gentleman from the imposter is a feature of urban culture as early as the Elizabethan and Jacobean period. (Schwarzbach 239) While it may be true that concealed villainy had long been used to express fears about the breakdown of class in urban landscapes, sensation novelists uniquely applied the narrative tension of concealment by capitalizing on the populace's overblown scrutiny of unappealing elements of urbanity. It appears that Victorians gravitated towards placating their anxieties about rapid change and the evolving complexity of their society by encountering and identifying evil and villainy in their fiction. It also seems that the expression of these "shocks of incident" (qtd. in Ulhmann) in fiction were not enough to satisfy the needs of anxious Victorians; instead, they found outlets to further express their concerns. Although it is generally acknowledged that during the nineteenth century there was a notable decrease in crime, a significant increase in the attention given to criminal acts persisted throughout the Victorian period.5 This commonly held belief in the rise of criminality was 4 See, for instance, Lovelace in Clarissa, Wickham in Pride and Prejudice, Matilda, and later, Ambrosio in The Monk. 5 In "Common Misperceptions: The Press and Victorian Views of Crime," Christopher A.Casey suggests Marxism may also have contributed to the rumblings about the increase in crime from educated sectors. Seen as evidence of the eventual uprising of the proletariat, a perceived increase in crime would have been recognized as a necessary evolution on the path to social reform. Richards 7 reinforced by a number of factors. The perceived increase in the number of offenses may have been a result of growing accuracy in documenting occurrences of criminality. Newspapers attempted to gain readership by providing sensational news stories that brought criminality into the social consciousness. In "Common Misperceptions: The Press and Victorian Views of Crime," Christopher A. Casey suggests that the primary cause of the widely held belief that crime was the increasingly wide circulation of cheap periodicals. In addition, the establishment of an official police force in London after the Metropolitan Police Act in 1829—soon emulated by the surrounding provinces in the decades to follow—also directed attention to problems enforcing the law. Parliament endlessly debated capital punishment, prison reformation, and criminal law.6 An increasing cultural concern with criminality can also be found in the emergence of the The Newgate novel, which appeared between the 1820s to the 1840s. The novels acknowledged their association with the Newgate prison and the circulation of the Newgate Calendar, a selection of stories of real criminals published in the late eighteenth century. Newgate novels, while generally simplistic, impacted the development of several literary genres during the Victorian period, including "Condition of England" novels, sensation fiction, and detective fiction. The novels typically took place in the previous century and tell stories of lowly protagonists, usually orphans, forced into a life of crime as the result of their impoverishment. The novels also often resolve through the revelation of the protagonist's relationship to a member of the upper classes. Characters in the Newgate novels are able to transcend their circumstances and restore order in the comedic tradition with marriage, reform, and financial 6 See Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison for documentation of Parliament's discussions on the subject of penal reform and criminality. Additionally the works of John Hostettler, such as A History of Criminal Justice in England and Wales and The Politics of Criminal Law: Reform in the Nineteenth Century discuss the evolution of the justice system in Parliament. Richards 8 success. Despite the unfortunate nature of their environment, protagonists in Newgate fiction retain their highborn attributes. The ability to transcend circumstance implies that character was viewed as inherent and unchangeable. Schwarzbach notes that Oliver Twist retains artifacts of his noble birth (e.g. Twist's incorruptible moral center and Oxbridge accent). He refers to Oliver's analogue in Bleak House, Jo, as an example of concern about the mutability of character. Jo remains ignorant, poor, and, though he successfully escapes criminality, dies of a disease contracted in the slums. His escape from poverty is hardly as transcendent as Oliver's restoration to his wealthy family. This evolution from a transcendent fate to a fate enmeshed in the reality of impoverished environments represents the conflicting schools of thought about the nature of psychology in Victorian England.7 In contrast, later novels that inherited an interest in criminality and poverty, such as the "Condition of England" novels of the 1840s and 50s, reflected the concerns about the negative impact that an unfortunate environment could have on forming character. Newgate novels were wildly popular, although their glamorization of the "uncultured" nature of their content culminated in social controversy. Those who defended the Newgate novel praised the exciting quality of criminal narratives. Others, concerned about corruption, believed the novels aggravated the crime rate by inspiring the virtuous poor to leave their morality behind for the sake of financial gain and corrupted the virtue of the other reading classes (Schwarzbach 228). Many of the authors were criticized for their depiction of the criminal element. The portrayal of sympathetic criminals within the genre of the Newgate novel was ultimately 7 In an attempt to discuss psychological theory during the Victorian period, Anne Vrettos acknowledges Sally Shuttleworth's contribution that "the overlap between Victorian psychology and the ideology of the self-help movement helps explain the presence of conflicting psychological models in the nineteenth century, one emphasizing the individual as 'a powerless material organism, caught within the operations of a wider field of force,' the other emphasizing the individual as 'an autonomous unit with powers of self-control' (1996: 28)." (Vrettos 68). These conflicting psychological schools provide a framework for novel reading Victorians to be shocked by the effective concealment of villainy, while accepting its secretive nature as possible. It would have also put Victorians on guard against possible flexibility in their own character. Richards 9 replaced by stories depicting the demise of the criminal element through the art of detection. Ronald R. Thomas suggests that the literary detective emerges out of this genre: The hero would not be the one who broke the law, but the one who enforced it. In the post-Benthamite world of what Michel Foucault called the "panoptical machine," where the individual is not so much repressed by the social order as fabricated and scrutinized in it, the literary detective provides a new kind of hero, dramatizing the powerful and productive role of the social order in the process of making modern citizens. (Thomas 176). Thomas's detection of this shift from valorizing rebelliousness to valorizing order is significant because it reveals the evolution from firmly-fixed notions of inherent character to a changeable, fluid notion of identity based on interiority and complexity. The concealment of villainy not only allows for the possibility of victimization, but also permits room for Victorians to consider their own transgressive characteristics. Detective fiction emerges out of a desire to police these influences in the self and society. Sensation fiction, detective fiction, and late-Victorian gothic novels all explored cultural anxieties surrounding villainous behavior. Emerging in the 1860s as an indistinct genre,8 the sensation novel inherited an interest in criminality from the Newgate novel, and a gothic interest in provoking its readership to actively participate in the emotional moments of the novel.9 The sensation novel's claim to originality came from the relocation of criminality and concealment from the streets of London and distant 8 In Mixed Feelings: Feminism, Mass Culture, and Victorian Sensationalism, Anne Cvetkovich and Catherine Maxwell argue there is not enough evidence to support sensation fiction as a distinct genre. It is important to recognize the ways that these novelistic categorizations bled into one another and helped each other to evolve and change over time. 9 Bernstein explains that "[m]any Victorian gothic novels operate as revisionary extensions of the eighteenth- century genre ... the gothic setting, ideologically charged in its efforts to link the spheres of the public and private, becomes a central narrative concern" (Bernstein 294). Richards 10 countries of Europe to the domestic hearth at the center of Victorian culture.10 In gothic fiction, traumatic events typically take place in far away lands, while in sensation fiction they are relocated home to England and set within the domestic sphere. In his 1999 introduction to The Woman in White, Matthew Sweet explains, "behind the closed doors of undistinguished British households, the genre suggested, all manner of criminality, misery, and insanity might be concealed" (viii). The relocation of these difficulties from the poor streets of London into the homes of Victorians re-energized the concept of concealed villainy—anyone could be the victim of heinous crime, not just the impoverished. A more subtle result of the drastic shift in locale is the change in the narrative character of the novels. The extension of narrative into the conflicting realms between the known and the unknown resulted in the evolution of a quasi-genre, specifically defined in terms of its penchant for obscuring and defying moral codes. Though at their outset these novels attempt to continue the 18th century tradition of "complicit[y] in social discipline" present in gothic fiction (Bernstein 293),11 ultimately, the works contain no clear moral delineations. Rejecting the literal cleansing collapse of diseased structures in the gothic,12 they simply trail off in slow decay, or reinforce the structures that originally perpetuated the tragedy. Much of the critical work on 10 Henry James wrote, "To Mr. Collins belongs the credit of having introduced into fiction those most mysterious of mysteries, the mysteries which are at our own doors. This innovation gave a new impetus to the literature of horrors. .. . Instead of the terrors of 'Udolpho,' we were treated to the terrors of the cheerful country-house and the busy London lodgings. And there is no doubt that these were infinitely the more terrible" (James 742). The domestication of criminality and villainy was employed by gothic fiction later in the 19th century, perhaps subsuming all of the original characteristics of sensation fiction. 11 Bernstein summarizes the Foucauldian view of the purposes of gothic fiction: "What the dark spaces of the gothic accomplish, in other words, is to fabulize the importance of the desire for visibility and accountability which the post-feudal culture of the eighteenth century was moving toward concurrent with the publication of the original gothics. This parallels the growth of Foucault's panoptical model of society, that modern system whereby all can be known, transcribed, and regulated by central modes of control. The gothic novel would thus be complicit in a growing system of social "discipline," as Foucault calls it, which helped to concentrate power in the hands of a burgeoning new urban middle class." (Bernstein 293). 12 See Matthew Lewis's The Monk, Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, Edgar Allen Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher." Richards 11 sensation fiction suggests that the novels perpetuate the very anxiety they aim to resolve—which in turn reinforces the structures that surround villainy, making it especially difficult to eradicate. The novels suggest their relative themes by recycling literary patterns in inventive ways. Jenny Bourne Taylor defines the relativistic tone of the novels as a blurring between public and private spaces, between the known and the unknown, and between the strange and familiar. As she explains, "sensation fiction certainly shared a common pool of narrative tropes, but these were not stable; they drew on and broke down distinct methods of generating strangeness within familiarity, of creating the sense of a weird and different world within the ordinary, everyday one" (Taylor 7). By focusing on the instability and breakdown of narrative patterns within sensation fiction, Taylor highlights the complications of relocating troubling narratives to the domestic sphere. By obscuring these boundaries within texts, novel-reading Victorians encountered the destabilization of moral codes. Sensation narratives' use of the domestic sphere, potentially victimizing the average British citizen, along with the treatment of the boundary between the familiar and the strange as impermanent and flexible, underscored a vulnerability that evolved into an introspective paranoia about the individual's proximity to villainy. In "Sensation and the Fantastic in the Victorian novel," Lyn Pykett suggests that the theoretical framework that best describes Victorian tendencies towards reflection and paranoia in sensation fiction is Freud's discussion of the the Uncanny.13 Pykett quotes Freud's description of the Uncanny as '"that class of frightening which leads back to what is known to us and long'" (qtd. in Pykett 219). Here, Pykett makes a connection between sensation fiction and the exploration of the Uncanny, describing the goals of sensation fiction as fitting the aims of the the Uncanny, "which uncovers or discovers what is normally concealed" (Pykett 219). Sensation 13 Frequently, critics use the Uncanny to explain the unique contributions of sensation fiction. See Jenny Bourne Taylor's In the Secret Theater of Home: Wilkie Collins sensation narrative, and nineteenth-centwy psychology, and Patrick Brantlinger's The Reading Lesson: The Threat of Mass Literacy in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction, Richards 12 fiction engaged with discovery and revelation explicitly through the mysteries that propelled the narrative forward, but also dealt with uncovering uncertainties because they often blurred the boundaries of clearly defined (moral) spaces. In this way, sensation fiction addressed Victorian anxieties about society's possibly inherent incoherence and injustice. Further, sensation fiction engages another aspect of the Uncanny, which is the effect of projection—of "projecting unconscious fears or desires onto one's environment or other people" (Pykett 235), which implies a paranoia about one's environment, directly implicating the individual, or the society, as the originator of that environment. Sensation fiction relies heavily on the Uncanny, in that it both directly addresses anxieties surrounding the potentially untenable nature of moral conventions in modern society, but then relocates the compromise of those conventions away from foreign lands and actors and towards the homes and hearths of Victorians themselves, implicating their conventions and social mores as somehow rotten, or as merely window dressing to an unknowable interior. Despite the usefulness of the theoretical framework of the Uncanny to explain how sensation fiction reveals existing tensions within Victorian society, it is important to note that the knowledge of these anxieties did not contribute directly to their resolution. Unlike its Gothic precursor, whose authors went to great lengths to explore and resolve angst within their texts,14 the sensation novel was prevented from accessing resolutions as a result of its being a modern and domestic text.15 In contrast to Anne Radcliffe's novels, there are no instances of the supernatural to explain away, only the mounting evidence of societal and individual corruption. 14 Anne Radcliffe's works are particularly good examples of the gothic tendency towards satisfying resolutions. In "Latitudinarianism and the Novels of Ann Radcliffe" Robert Mayhew reminds us that Radcliffe carefully explained away all the instances of the supernatural within her works (273). 15 In addition to the change in location from the foreign lands of the gothic, sensation fiction also had a contemporary temporal setting, in contrast to the medieval settings of Gothic fiction. The Woman in White is set during the late 1840s to early ' 50s, and in Lady Audley's Secret the events of novel suggest it concludes around 1862 when the book was published. Richards 13 Though often the villainous agents in the novels are eliminated or otherwise neutralized, the systemic and moral corruption in sensation fiction remains unresolved. The uncovering of anxiety only furthered, as opposed to resolved, the ingrained complexity and duality of Victorian society, forcing Victorians to deal with pervasive anxiety as a fixture of their experience. If gothic narratives embrace clarity and panoptical solutions to society's problems, as Foucauldian revisionism suggests, then sensation fiction, working between the spaces of the public and private, is an inversion of that clarity. The metaphors of slow decay and problematic resolution in sensation novels are evidence of the paralysis that precedes or complies with outright corruption in the works. Taylor's discussion of the deviant as a relative term explains how sensation novels succeeded at obscuring moral codes: [Sensation fiction] deployed intricate narrative structures to turn deviance itself into a relative and complex term, scrutinizing how it was perceived and defined. It displayed villainy as the mimicking inversion of respectability, feminine anomaly as the masquerading of the codes of femininity. It did not so much exploit difference as explore the structures and relations which produced it, and the pivot or the culmination of the process was often the explicit portrayal of insanity. (Taylor 9). Here, Taylor identifies that a complex narrative structure and depictions of transgressive behavior contributed to a sense of relativity within these novels.16 While I agree that the depiction of deviant behavior contributed to relativism and complexity within the novels, the examination of these interstitial spaces within the texts suggests an anxiety about complicity in aberrant behavior. 16 It is important that this exploration between structures often culminated in madness, because madness became an umbrella term for a state that resisted definition. The frequent use of madness in sensation fiction can be recognized as a commentary on how the Victorian experience defied understanding. Richards 14 The presence of clear moral codes makes separation from villainous or deviant acts possible and simple, but when moral codes are obscured by inverting expectations of behavior, evaluating and understanding becomes difficult and complex. The inability of Victorians to cleanly extricate themselves from these interstitial spaces seems to represent a tension about complicity, as a result of paralysis, in the face of attempting to codify behavior. Sensation novelists were comfortable with crossing accepted social boundaries as a way of engaging their audience's anxieties through the use of transgressive characters, fragmented perspective, and the introduction of moral relativism into the domestic sphere. In what follows, I will examine the narrative tactics novelists used to explore how crossing these boundaries reinforced anxieties about complicity in social problems. Sensation novelists deployed villainy through transgressive characters that crossed the established boundaries of conduct, appearance, and expectation. These villainous characters often thwarted regimented lines of class and domestic responsibility by cloaking themselves in the expectation that their physical exterior matched their interior intent. The correlation between physicality and the contents of the soul emanated from the popular theory of physiognomy, which was first proposed by Johann Caspar Lavater towards the end of the 18th century as scientific theory. In "Victorian Psychology," Athena Vrettos explains the tenets of physiognomy: An individual's inner moral qualities were directly embodied in the features of the face, and that God had inscribed this relationship between body and spirit on the face of nature, available for the trained eye to read. Physiognomy proposed that knowledge of humankind could be gained through the senses and particularly through careful visual observation of physical details. (Vrettos 80) Richards 15 Physiognomy rose to popularity during the early Victorian period, but the theory was ultimately debunked in the later half of the 19th century and re-categorized as pseudoscience. The discrediting of this supposition did not prevent physiognomy from being used as a reliable form of characterization in fictional texts.17 As Lynn Voskuil argues, As the concept of physiognomy evolved in Victorian consciousness, it became more recognizable as "somatic fidelity," (A term coined by Lynn M. Voskuil in "Acts of Madness: Lady Audley and the Meanings of Victorian Femininity.") The expectation of somatic fidelity is "the idea that the body necessarily and indisputably displays its inner truths" (Voskuil 63). However, the inversion of this expectation of fidelity provides the drama of many of the sensation fiction novels during the Victorian period. Because protagonists are unable to recognize evil until it is too late, they often fall victim to the schemes and plots of their opponents. Often, those plots and schemes relied on Victorian anxieties about the legal system. The legal system often failed to keep up with the demands of the evolving nature of society, resulting in redundancy and incoherence.18 The result of this inconsistency was a general distrust of the law on the part of some Victorians. The awareness that injustice could be enacted against any member of the populace as a result of a poorly conceived law drew attention to the 17 Vrettos suggests that Charlotte Bronte consistently used physiognomy as a way to add depth to her characterizations. Lucy Snowe, from Bronte's Villette, is a notable example of a character that relates to others through a careful analysis of their features. Charles Dickens often used physiognomy, such as in the characterization of Fagin in Oliver Twist. Physiognomy also fueled racism and xenophobia. For example, Punch and Judy cartoons often depicted the Irish as ape-like. Bram Stoker's gothic characterization of Dracula also gives indication of evil embedded in his features. 18 See "Laws, the Legal World, and Politics" by John R. Reed for a discussion the distrust of legal system depicted in novels and of jurisprudential incoherence. Also useful to this discussion is Judith Flanders' The Invention of Murder, as it documents the evolution of policy and conduct surrounding the crime of murder. Additionally, the work records the distribution of this information to the public through the newspapers. Richards 16 arbitrary nature of such a system and questioned the essential morality of society.19 We can see this anxiety about the English legal system reflected in such novels as The Woman in White. In other sensation novels, this is reflected by the change in the nature of the crimes committed by villains. While many of the novels often culminate in extreme acts, such as arson, committal to asylums, and murder, the inciting tragedies of such novels are often of a legal or technical nature. We can see other anxieties about the law in the emergence of bigamy as a fashionable crime, which indicates Victorian readers' understanding of weaknesses in the structure and consistency of the law. An estimated 884 cases of bigamy appeared in English courts between 1853 and 1863, according to information brought before the Royal Commission in 1865 (Ward 71). As Geraldine Jewsbury recognized, "This tendency to bigamy in works of fiction points to a joint in our social armour. Our marriage laws are confessedly imperfect, and open to hairbreadth escapes, which offer a fascinating complication, not devoid of probability" (qtd. in Ward 72). Jewsbury explains novelists' use of bigamy as a sensational tool; first, because it preyed upon existing insecurities regarding the legal system, and, second, because bigamy could be categorized as a legitimately possible turn of events. In Sex, Crime and Literature in Victorian England, Ian Ward argues that some women readers recognized this attention to bigamy as a commentary on "jurisprudential incoherence" (71), while significantly more saw it as a sign of "moral collapse" (72). Ward's observation that the popular view of bigamy defined it as a crime with heavy moral implications is evidence of some Victorians' subconscious tendency to explore the criminal as symptomatic, additionally recognizing their complicity in complex social problems. 19 In fiction, the prevalence of these anxieties from legal complications can be seen in the case of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce that drives the main action of Dickens's Bleak House. Richards 17 In addition to Victorians using notions of deformity and ugliness to characterize their villains, expectations of villainy were also often connected to class. In her introduction to Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret, Esther Saxey suggests that "the Newgate novel focused on the poor, who were, in the Victorian view, the natural agents of violent acts" (Saxey viii). The Victorian perception of a natural predisposition towards "violent acts" implies that poverty engendered villainous characteristics. The assumption of poverty as the underlying cause of criminality created expectations that sensation novelists often used to inspire horror on the part of the reading public. Poverty, and therefore villainy, was also believed to be an identifiable physical characteristic. Sensation fiction played with this expectation of identifiable class with transgressive characters, much like Mayhew's pickpockets, that infiltrated the middle and upper classes and whose concealment threatened established order. Sensation novels inverted the expectation of felicity and the moral incorruptibility of the Victorian home by revealing secrecy and moral relativism in domestic relationships. At the center of this upheaval was the role of women. Ward suggests that the Woman Question was intrinsically tied to the questions about the "Condition of England." This connection inflated the importance of the stringent sphere within which women were allowed to operate, making it appear that any deviation from this expectation presented a particularly devious threat to the perceived tenuous stability of Victorian England. Sensation novelists capitalized on this threat, by suggesting alternative roles for women and providing an expression of anxiety that resonated with readers. It did not take long for novelists to present a corrupted "Angel of the House," a character enabled to act directly contrary to her domestic role at the center of home. The significance of such a figure is her ability to compound the threat by concealing her true nature Richards 18 behind her perceived role and apparent beauty. With the possibility of corruption introduced to the domestic sphere, what becomes of particular interest are the methods used to root it out. The psychological conditions of monomania and moral insanity were also tied to deception and detection. In "The Strange Case of Monomania: Patriarchy in Literature, Murder in Middlemarch, Drowning in Daniel Deronda," Simon During explains how, in the late 19th Century, the condition of monomania encapsulated both a propensity for deception and a "resistance to understanding" (87). During suggests that when the explanation of madness fell under the jurisdiction of science rather than religion, monomania offered a solution to complicated diagnoses, particularly in cases when shades of rationality remained intact and where the patient appeared normal. Scientists lumped the unexplainable actions of "rational" madness into the category of monomania. This understanding of monomania is significant to the portrayal of madness within sensation fiction. Monomania became a broad category for unexplainable behavior and, resultingly, its use in sensational texts reinforces the problems with the unknowable and unexplainable. Instances of madness within Victorian fiction provided a space for Victorians to examine the elements of their society that defied categorization. Historically, there was a great deal of overlap in the diagnoses of monomania and moral insanity. Vrettos explains that "moral insanity redefined madness not as a loss of reason, but as deviance from socially accepted behaviour" (Vrettos). Deviance was also often associated with villainy and so madness that retained elements of rationality brought about questions of culpability. As Vrettos explains, monomania "blurred the distinction between sanity and insanity, making it possible for one to appear sane to all observers and yet harbor the capacity for irrational behavior" (76). Monomaniacs were known to "think, reason, and act like other men" (qtd. in During 86). Madness becomes a threat to the stability of character within sensation Richards 19 fiction. Protagonists worry about their own potential madness as they fixate on societal injustices. In what follows, I will examine the use of transgressive qualities and characteristics, and the breakdown of structures and expectations within The Woman in White and Lady Audley 's Secret to evidence ways in which novelists used these narrative structure to perpetuate anxieties about concealed and unidentifiable villainy. The Woman in White Serialized from 1859 to 1860 in All the Year Round, The Woman in White is widely regarded as the first sensation novel. The novel embraced an innovative narrative style imitating testimony given by witnesses at a trial. In introducing the object of the novel, the character Walter Hartright asserts, "As the judge might have once heard it, so the Reader shall hear it now" (Collins 9). The responsibility to judge the content of the story places the reader in a position of authority, asking them to define villainy and justice within the context of the narrative. The reader's position as interpreter draws attention to the construction of these definitions, and requires the examination of the social institutions that regulate justice and criminality, thereby requiring them to identify and police villainy within the text. As a result of this empowerment the reader may recognize the potential for more than one interpretation of the novel. There is some indication that some Victorian novel readers took this position seriously.20 In the 1860 preface to the novel, Collins describes the format as an "experiment" that allowed him "to keep the story constantly moving forward" (Collins 3), drawing attention to the artifice at the center of the mystery. Despite this acknowledged manipulation, Collins's organizational tactics held the audience in suspense, to the point that during the serialization bets 20 In "The Sensationalism of The Woman in White," Walter Kendrick describes the discovery of a series of errors that undermined the reliability of the text. The detection of these errors seems to suggest that the Victorians took their role seriously Richards 20 were made over the outcomes of the novel, suggesting that Collins successfully engaged his audience (Collins 4). In addition to capturing the attention of his audience, Collins's other goal is "to present the truth always in its most direct and most intelligible aspect" (Collins 9). It is the explicit articulation of this goal that contributes to The Woman in White's more relative themes. This articulation requires Collins to be consistent in his definition of truth, a test he already failed in submitting a fictional text as truth. Collins's failure to comply with this binary is not to say that these delineations are absolute, but that despite his desire to make truth understandable through its directness, he may have inadvertently painted a more subjective picture of truth. In "Multiple Narratives and Relative Truths: A Study of The Ring and the Book, The Woman in White, and The Moonstone," Sue Lonoff argues that "by dramatizing the paradoxes inherent in the processes of literature, multiple narration may reflect truth in ways that. ... Collins did not envision.... pointing the way toward a literature in which truth is perceived as conjectural and relative" (199). Because each of the characters relates their own experience of events, the reader is required to view the situation from multiple perspectives. The variances in observation and evidence require a more lenient understanding of objective truth. As the novel begins, Hartright proclaims, "If the machinery of the Law could be depended on to fathom every case of suspicion ... the events which fill these pages might have claimed their share of the public attention in a Court of Justice" (Collins 9). Here, Walter Hartright explains that the novel's premise, its necessity for being, is predicated on the the failures of the legal system. Hartright's doubt emphasized by use of the word "fathom" is significant here, because it indicates a failure in the legal system to understand or comprehend justice. Hartright also uses machinery to characterize the legal system. Despite Hartright's Richards 21 implication that numerous machines are in place to bring efficacy to the system, collectively they continue to fail to understand criminal cases. Hartright's suggestion that criminality is difficult to understand even by the system that originates it indicates how complex the definitions of criminality had become within Victorian society. Additionally, the condemnation of the legal system is an example of how complicated narrative strategies contributed to the perpetuation of anxieties and tensions within these texts. Collins' desire to ground the novel in reality, adhering to previously established tropes, calls for the recognition of the contemporary limitations of the law. Collins fails to resolve this tension throughout the text, because it would compromise its potential mimetic quality. Collins reinforces his position through Hartright, concluding that "[t]he Law would never have obtained me my interview with Mrs. Catherick. The Law would never have made Pesca the means of forcing a confession from the Count" (Collins 629). Hartright's unending frustration with the law leads the reader to believe in the powerlessness of such structures to determine truth, perpetuating anxieties about the ability to define and defeat villainy. There are other instances of jurisprudential incoherence within the novel that support Walter's belief that the law is inconsistent in its protection and defense of English citizens. Although the blame for Laura Fairlie's unfortunate marital situation could be thrown at the feet of Frederick Fairlie, Laura's mistreatment in the novel results from meeting contractual obligations and reinforces anxieties about the perpetuation of misdeeds through the law. Victorians were conflicted about their ability to understand and preserve order, thereby becoming complicit in villainy through incompetence. Perhaps this anxiety about complicity is most clear in the family lawyer Vincent Gilmore's persistent claim, "No daughter of mine should have been married to any man under such a settlement as I was compelled to make for Laura Richards 22 Fairlie" (Collins 161). While this statement could also be construed as evidence of the neglect of Laura Fairlie's uncle, it also reveals a conflict between the law and a man, and a moral consciousness that shudders at the power and possible immorality of the law.21 While discussing whether "crimes cause their own detection" (Collins 233), Count Fosco instructs Marian, "English Society, Miss Halcombe, is as often the accomplice as it is the enemy of crime" (Collins 235). Throughout the novel, the law is just as much an obstacle as Glyde and Fosco. There are numerous occasions when the protagonists are forced to subvert or circumvent the structures that should be protecting them. In his essay "Reading Detection in The Woman in White" Mark Hennelly points out, "Fosco works within the law, indeed with Glyde, even uses the law to steal Laura's inheritance and achieve Glyde's illegal ends; while Hartright works outside the law, even to the point of being arrested and ultimately becoming an unwilling accomplice to Fosco's assassination, in order to secure Laura's legal rights" (Hennelly 461). Fosco's ability to occupy a criminal space is made possible by his knowledge and use of legal technicalities. The actions in which Hartright is forced to participate demonstrate how the ingrained nature of villainy forces corruption upon the protagonists. While, especially in this novel, the law is not inherently good, Walter's willingness to bend the law suggests a strong sense of moral ambiguity within the society. While failing to convince the audience of his goodness, Sir Percival has success in duping the protagonists with a facade he maintains long enough to accomplish many of his goals. The motive for Glyde's actions throughout the novel is twofold: "the gain of thirty thousand pounds and the eternal preservation of Sir Percival's secret" (Collins 600). When visiting the estate, Vincent Gilmore claims, "I found him to be a most prepossessing man, so far as manners and appearance were concerned. . . . His tact and taste were never at fault on this or on any other 21 Additionally this passage authorizes the reader and Hartright to be the arbiters of justice within the novel. Richards 23 occasion while I was in his company at Limmeridge" (Collins 130). When Sir Percival's chance of securing Laura as his bride is challenged by the concerning letter Anne Catherick intends to give to Laura Fairlie, he smoothes over the problem; in Vincent Gilmore's recounting, "I never saw anything more gracefully and more becomingly done, in my life" (Collins 133). This grace is enough to assuage any doubts that Gilmore retains about Sir. Percival's intentions. This ability to appear gentlemanly for as long as it suits him figures into Victorian concerns about the consistency of somatic fidelity. By Victorian standards, Glyde should be unable to convince anyone of his decency if he has villainous intentions. This inversion of expectation surrounding Glyde's character reaffirms the unknowableness of human identity. Anne Caterick's first interaction with Walter Hartright expresses the anxiety surrounding class and concealment succinctly. Though Anne Catherick is hardly the villain of the story, and more an omen of impending doom, Walter is surprised to discover that the woman he assisted into town escaped an asylum. He reveals his bewilderment: "But the idea of absolute insanity which we all associate with the very name of an Asylum, had, I can honestly declare, never occurred to me, in connexion with her" (Collins). It is significant that Walter meets Anne at a crossroads, not only because of the implication of an altered destiny, but also an intersection where multiple classes are bound to interact with one another. These types of meetings lead back to anxieties about the inability to identify and classify danger and villainy. Although Anne Catherick is harmless, the stigma that is associated with her type of imprisonment evokes feelings of horror and terror.. The committal of Laura Fairlie to an insane asylum under the false name of Anne Catherick results in the transformation of the protagonist. In the instance of the committal, a wealthy, well-established woman is forced downwards on the social ladder in a case of mistaken Richards 24 identity. When Victorian sensation novelists undermined the notion that villainy is written on the face, they also suggested that goodness or truthfulness could not be outwardly seen either. Laura Fairlie's claims of mistaken identity are assumed as the claims of a madwoman, and sanity becomes indistinguishable from madness. Superficially, The Woman in White appears to be about the triumph of the bourgeoisie over a menacing aristocratic class.22 Walter Hartright, an impoverished painter, combats deception through investigative prowess to restore his lady love, Laura Fairlie, to her rightful inheritance. At the conclusion of the novel, he settles with her at the family estate and is elevated from an itinerant painter to a member of upper class. The stability achieved by Hartright is a commentary about the emergence of a fully mature and capable middle class. However, some critics argue that Collins (inadvertently) injects relativism into his text through the narrative structure of his novel,23 because the organizer of the narrative, Walter Hartright, and by extension Collins, participates in many of the acts that are categorized as villainous within the text. What critics have read as relative themes within The Woman in White, I perceive as Collins' struggle with the pervasive nature of villainy within his society. In "The Madwoman Outside the Attic: Eavesdropping and Narrative Agency in The Woman in White," Ann Gaylin notes that despite Hartright's initial commitment to the truth, he reveals that he is using pseudonyms to protect Laura Fairlie's true identity. This usurpation of Laura's selfhood is a near repetition of Glyde's treacherous act of falsifying Laura's identity to gain access to her fortune. One of the more sensational scenes in the novel is Count Fosco's 22 In "Reading Blackwater Park: Gothicism, Narrative, and Ideology in The Woman in White," Stephen Bernstein argues that all conflict in the novel is perpetuated by a problematic and impotent aristocracy. Count Fosco is a known supporter of the "Old Order" and Glyde's villainy concerns the concealment of illegitimacy and his poor pecuniary financial position, both established problems of a decaying ruling class. 23 See Walter Kendrick's "The Sensationalism of the Woman in White", Jenny Bourne Taylor's The Secret Theatre of Home: Wilkie Collins, Sensation Narrative, and Nineteenth-century Psychology, and Sue LonofPs, "Multiple Narratives and Relative Truths: A Study of The Ring and the Book, The Woman in White, and The Moonstone." Richards 25 inscribed appearance in Marian Halcombe's diary, Fosco's imposition is perceived as seizure of narrative and as an act of psychological violence from which Marian never fully recovers. Ultimately, Walter enacts that same narrative violence as he controls the progress through the mystery and as the original organizer of the texts, especially through the second half of the novel. Although Hartright vows that in his "own character [he] was resolved to continue to the end," he makes several significant concessions. For example, he takes on false identity to protect the sisters in London, he concedes that "There was no choice but to oppose cunning by cunning," eschewing some of the nobler aspects of his character (Collins 411), and when facing Count Fosco he adopts Fosco's personality to extract himself from a dangerous situation admitting "[a]t that final moment I thought with his mind, I felt with his fingers" (Collins 546). These instances provide evidence of the ways in which Walter Hartright participates in behavior that, at another point in the text, is categorized as villainous. In addition to the corrupting influence that righting Laura's social status has on Walter, he also suffers from a problematic passivity. Hartright unknowingly identifies Fosco to an assassin, and so does not directly participate in Fosco's demise. Hartright's avoidance can be seen as a narrative attempt to prevent the hero of the novel from having to deal with sullying himself as a murderer, but it also speaks to the limited control that Hartright has over enacting justice. Despite all of the narrative power he has amassed, he must allow others to act for him. Pesca describes this reluctance at allowing justice to fully take its course as a symptom of Hartright's progressive society: It is not for you to say—you Englishmen, who have conquered your freedom so long ago, that you have conveniently forgotten what blood you shed, and what extremities you proceeded to in the conquering ... In the time of your first Richards 26 Charles you might have done us justice—the long luxury of your own freedom has made you incapable of doing us justice now. Here, Pesca explains that Walter's society has lost the clarifying gaze borne of extremity that allows men to act out justice for themselves. This section of the novel is primarily an example of Collins's racist tendencies, particularly because this passage suggests that Italian nature is primitive. But this interaction also implies that English citizens, like Walter, are prevented from enacting justice because they are unwilling to engage with extremes, and additionally because their society has become too complex and alienating. Walter's inherent passivity and commitment to the relative "truth" in the novel prevents him from acting to eradicate evil. When contemplating Fosco's possible escape Hartright concedes, "I forced myself to make the sacrifice. In plainer words, I determined to be guided by the one higher motive of which I was certain, the motive of serving the cause of Laura and the cause of truth." Several other characters are victimized through paralysis in the novel. After discovering some of Glyde's motives for marrying Laura, Marian Halcombe is taken with a fever that confines her to bed and allows Fosco and Glyde the opportunity to switch Laura Fairlie's identity with Anne Catherick's, resulting in the heiress's imprisonment in an asylum. When Laura is unable to assert her identity, she, Marian, and Walter are forced into relative poverty in London. All of these bouts with paralysis are the result of concealed villainy, a force which seems to counteract any protective measure against it. This is particularly interesting to consider when examining the various ways in which protagonists find themselves incarcerated. Laura as a passive object of virtue ensures that she is always incarcerated, but Marian, who frequently acts to prevent such limitations, is also effectively thwarted. It is through her transgressive act of eavesdropping, an act that she means to empower her, that she contracts a deadly fever. Later, Richards 27 Marian's heroic rescue of Laura from the asylum through bribery is cited by Mr. Kryle, a family lawyer, as proof positive of Laura's false claim, resulting in their prolonged stay in London. It seems that neither course, active or passive, is able to overcome the carefully laid plans of guised villains.24 This ineffectiveness suggests a concern about how deeply ingrained villainy is, especially because in this narrative it cannot be frustrated. By portraying the protagonists of his novels as powerless to overcome concealed villainy, and by implicating them in villainous behavior, Collins avoided clearly delineating markers of villainy. He complicates Victorians' relationship to villainy by suggesting that it paralyzes or ultimately corrupts the individuals attempting to thwart it. Thus, Collins perpetuated anxieties by obscuring the definitions of villainous behavior. The failure to resolve these tensions also occurs in Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret. Lady A udley 's Secret Lady Audley's Secret was initially printed in 1861 as a weekly installment in Robin Goodfellow,25 but the magazine ceased publication after only thirteen episodes and the story was later serialized in its entirety in Sixpenny Magazine. The novel begins with a description of the familial situation of the Audley's, where we learn that Lucy Graham, a governess, recently made an advantageous marriage to Sir Michael Audley, a Lord. We quickly learn that the new Lady is not what she appears to be, that she acts contrarily to the virtue that her beauty dictates, as she 24 Anne Catherick is also relevant here. She escapes from the asylum on her own, but is unable to convince Laura not to marry Glyde, and is permanently paralyzed when her heart gives out and she is buried under a false name. 25 The serialization of The Woman in White as Lady Audley's Secret may have been significant to the formation of some of the important aspects of the quasi-genre. The separate installments may have contributed to the sense of persistent and unresolved anxiety common of the novels, because the authors were required to maintain a certain level of excitement within each section in order to maintain their reader's interest from week to week. Richards 28 possesses a secret. At the outset, the titular secret seems to concern the concealment of the Lady's bigamous marriage, but, as with most sensation novels, the suspense of the narrative relies on peeling back further layers of intrigue and several shocking revelations that redefine the nature of the secret over the course of the novel.26 In addition to the tension of knowing that Lady Audley has a secret, there is another mystery which propels Robert Audley, Sir Michael's nephew, closer discovering the nature of her concealment. The disappearance of Robert's roommate, George, prompts an investigation and the circumstantial evidence Robert discovers points to Lady Audley as the cause of his friend's disappearance. Through Robert's investigation, we learn that not only is Lady Audley a bigamist, but that Lucy Graham is also an alias. It is this secret, more than a fear of being discovered as the wife of two marriages, that Lady Audley goes to great lengths to protect, as she is willing to murder and commit arson to prevent its discovery. By concealing her identity, she hopes to disentangle herself from the evidence of her inherited puerperal madness. Although the escalation that precedes the revelation of Lady Audley's madness indicates that it is a significant element of the novel, critics have interpreted it as a possible deus ex machina. In this collective reading of the text, suggested by Taylor in her introduction to the novel, Lucy's madness prevents her from becoming an object of public scrutiny, thereby protecting the Audley name (Taylor xxv). Robert Audley is able to put Lady Audley away under an assumed name. While Lady Audley's confinement is presented as a resolution, it perpetuates the central conflict of novel, by creating yet another false identity for the character. If the moral of the novel demonstrates the disastrous consequences of false, or concealed, identity, then Robert Audley's usurpation ultimately extends the anxiety of the narrative. As Badowska argues, "The ending's 26 The novel's reliance on secrecy makes it particularly difficult to summarize—as do the main character's name changes; Helen Maldon becomes Helen Talboys when she marries George Talboys, she then fakes her death and becomes Lucy Graham, she then marries Sir. Michael Audley becoming Lady Lucy Audley. Richards 29 self-consciousness suggests, rather, that the passage of (narrative) time may yield no significant advancement over the original situation of disequilibrium between semblance and truth, an imbalance which propelled the detective plot because it seemed to necessitate the dismantling of such appearances" (Badowska 165). Here, Badowska clarifies how no strides have been made to define clearly the successes and the failures of the protagonists. They continue to deal with the same tensions around the understanding of truth that the novel set out to resolve. This is important because it demonstrates the ways in which sensation novels failed in carrying out the tradition of becoming clarifying structures for their reading public. The theory that Lady Audley's diagnosis of madness prevents her stepfamily from enduring public humiliation also serves another purpose, specifically to protect feminine identity from a direct attack (Taylor xxv). Lady Audley is an extremely capable character, and she acts pragmatically. When Robert relates the events of Lady Audley's deeds to the Doctor that eventually determines her madness, the doctor fears that Robert will find his initial evaluation disappointing: ... there is no evidence of madness in anything she has done. She ran away from her home, because her home was not a pleasant one, and she left 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. (Braddon 299) Richards 30 As Voslcuil points out, the Doctor has difficulty explaining what it is about Lady Audley that expresses madness. Later, when the physician meets privately with Lady Audley, the reader is only provided his perspective rather than being able to observe the interview. This omission from the text suggests some difficulty in diagnosing, or even recognizing either madness or villainy. Doctor Mosgrave calls her insanity "latent," saying that she is not mad because she retains her faculties, but declaring that she is nonetheless a danger (Braddon 301). The ineffable quality to Lady Audley's madness as well as her pragmatism and intelligence categorizes her madness as moral insanity. This pragmatism suggests her possession of masculine traits and is evidence of the Lady's transgressive nature, able to blend the masculine and feminine. Elaine Showalter suggests that Lady Audley is an anti-hero combating the strictures surrounding feminine identity. Rather than passively accepting poverty and motherhood as her role, she acts to better her situation using her own definition of improvement rather than her society's, leaving her child with her father and reclaiming her sexuality to make it profitable through marriage. In "Disclosure as 'Cover-up': The Discourse of Madness m Lady Audley's Secret," Jill Matus states that Lady Audley's "madness" stems from her unfeminine behavior, rather than as an expression of true insanity (qtd. in Saxey XVI). This argument is bolstered somewhat by Robert's admission that he "would rather, if possible, think her mad" (Braddon 299). Robert admits that he is trying to excuse her behavior, primarily, because he hopes to preserve his family name; but we can also read this as evidence of his desire to reclassify her transgressive behavior and remove it as a possible threat to the stringent expectations of gender performance. The mere recognition of a possible breakdown in gender roles perpetuates anxieties about the stability of moral and behavioral codes. Richards 31 If we read Lady Audley's madness as an attempt to avoid public humiliation and Braddon's attempt to redirect an attack on the strictures of feminine behavior, rather than a true diagnosis, then the she becomes culpable for her crimes. She can then be characterized as villainous because of her willingness to destroy those who would prevent her financial happiness. What also comes under examination are the actions taken to develop villainy within her character. Helen Talboys (Lady Audley) crosses class boundaries to marry George Talboys and then again when she marries Sir Michael Audley. Lady Audley becomes villainous for pretending to be what she is not: single, masculine, an aristocrat, and sane. However, the ethical lines of the novel are grossly inconsistent. While Robert Audley mimics certain aspects of Lady Audley's performance, by pretending to be what he is not, he is valorized for crossing various social boundaries rather than punished.27 Much like the protagonist of The Woman in White, Robert participates in the markers of villainous behavior without consequence. Categorizing some acts as villainous, and other similar acts as valorous prevents conclusions from being drawn about the nature of villainy. These poorly defined characteristics make it very difficult to divorce villainy from the individual and society. Robert more decidedly marks himself with villainous characteristics when he threatens to "have such a search made as shall level that house to the earth and root up every tree in these gardens, rather than I will fail in finding the grave of my murdered friend" (Braddon 219). Despite Robert Audley's persistent anxiety about how the scandal of Lady Audley's secrets will affect his uncle and the estate, his personal pursuit of justices take primacy over all other considerations. As Saxey notes, Lady Audley's deceptions can be seen as a way to enact her 27 Taylor highlights the similarities between the characters in her introduction to the text. Robert is effeminate, crossing a gender boundary that was difficult for Victorians. He eschews many of the markers of his class, by acting as the professional detective. They are both portrayed as consumers of current Victorian culture, Robert because of his French novels and Lady Audley with her copious collection of objects. Both characters are depicted as approaching the boundaries of madness. Richards 32 own sense of justice on an unjust society. In this relativistic sense of justice, Robert and Lady Audley share common ground. He is a willing participant in destruction to enact justice, just as she is willing to burn down the structures that threaten her happiness. Both mimic each other's behavior to achieve a desired outcome. No delineations are made about what constitutes warranted acts and unwarranted ones. In addition to Robert's participation in villainous behavior, Braddon perpetuates anxieties through her narrative structure and denouement. The narrative of Lady Audley's secret uses a standard third person perspective to describe the events of the novel. Rather than using a protagonist as a mouthpiece, or using the characters to inject variable viewpoints, as The Woman in White, Braddon's narrator contributes a dramatic irony to the text, by interjecting commentary throughout the novel, while maintaining suspense by limiting the perspective of the characters described. Often, these injections halt the narrative abruptly with a significant change in tone. For example, in the midst of a quiet evening in the village of Audley, the narrator interrupts the seeming peace with a short horrific tale with which the protagonists seem to be completely unaware: 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 every shadow promised—peace. In the county of which I write, I have been shown a meadow in which, on a quiet summer Sunday evening, a young farmer murdered the girl who had loved and trusted him; and yet, even now, with the stain of that foul deed upon it, the aspect of the spot is— peace. No species of crime has ever been committed in the worst rookeries about Seven Dials that has not been also done in the face of that rustic calm which still, Richards 33 in spite of all, we look on with a tender, half-mournful yearning, and associate with—peace. (Braddon 44) This small departure from the continuity of the narrative demonstrates how the layering of narrative and dramatic irony contribute to the sensational features of the novel. Braddon's framing of this narrative, especially the way the characters are withheld from the nature of the story of which they are a part explains how the novelists were complicit in creating a pervasive feeling of anxiety. Readers know that this crime narrative that may culminate in murder, while the characters are utterly unsuspecting. This sensational moment reveals one of the themes of Lady Audley 's Secret: even beauty can be full of malice, despite what we might initially perceive. This also is not the only time in the novel time Braddon explicitly associates peace with concealment. Braddon's use of peace as an agent of concealment contributes to the ambiguity at the conclusion of the novel. While within gothic works readers are successfully able to use the pathetic fallacy to read setting as an indication of the range of events that may occur, Braddon consistently warns her readers against interpreting seeming peace and beauty as harmless and safe. The novel begins by describing Audley Court as tranquil: A spot in which Peace seemed to have taken up her abode, setting her soothing hand on every tree and flower, on the still ponds and quiet alleys, the shady corners of the old-fashioned rooms, the deep window-seats behind the painted glass, the low meadows and the stately avenues—ay, even upon the stagnant well. (Braddon 4) In this passage, Braddon emphasizes the well as an object of peace, which is particularly significant as it will become the scene of a crime. When Lady Audley's first husband, George Richards 34 Talboys, confronts her about her bigamous marriage, she protects her secret by pushing him down the innocent-looking and peaceful well. The revelation of the true character of the well undercuts the appearance of peace as stable and forces the reader to question every instance of beauty and tranquility throughout the novel. But even before the well is unveiled as a criminal artifact, Braddon encourages readers to question the mask of peace by insisting that the nature of Audley Court is one of concealment. The narrator explains that "in such a house, ["Of course"]. ... there were secrets" setting a precedent for the narrative she is about to tell (Braddon 4).28 The character of the house, despite its charms, contains a concealed identity. The explicit articulation of an expected and inherent dual nature parallels the description of Lady Audley within the same chapter. The narrator describes her countenance: "[f]or you see Mrs. Lucy Graham was blessed with that magic power of fascination by which a woman can charm with a word or intoxicate with a smile. Everyone, loved, admired and praised her" (Braddon 7). While continuing to express beauty as a mask, Braddon concludes the chapter with the implication of a concealed identity, when Lady Audley looks at the object that reveals a "clue to [her] identity buried and forgotten" (Braddon 12). Throughout the novel, Lady Audley's attractive physical qualities act as a mask to conceal her "evil" deeds. The nearly impenetrable defense of her beauty almost prevents the recognition of her crimes. Robert Audley admits, "I have wondered sometimes, as it was only natural I should, whether I was not the victim of some horrible hallucination; whether such an alternative was not more probable that a young and lovely woman should be capable of so foul and treacherous a murder" (Braddon 174). Here 28 This obviousness does not just stem from the house's tranquil appearance, but also from its construction over the previous centuries. Badowska argues that these sensational constructions, such as Audley Court, echo concerns about the value of modern permanence which also highlights a general anxiety over the quality of the age. She argues, " Audley Court is mundanely dilapidated and in this way it succeeds in portraying, a simpler if not less poignant, anxiety; here modernity inevitably crumbles to dust, with no aesthetic or moral justification whatsoever" (Badowska 162). This anxiety is also reflected in Sir Percival's estate, Blackwater Park, with it's dark and oppressive hodgepodge of architecture. Richards 35 Robert Audley demonstrates the difficulty in setting aside his preconceived notions of innocence being inherently connected to beauty. Robert Audley's incredulity at Lady Audley's guilt, and the possibility that his own hallucination is a more likely scenario than that of a beautiful woman committing a crime, indicates the ingrained nature of the expectation that villainy can be communicated through physical characteristics. By challenging Victorian readers' expectations through the lack of somatic fidelity and the instances of the failure of the pathetic fallacy throughout the novel, Braddon provides instruction to question and distrust beauty as a signal of internal righteousness. The consequence of this lesson is that the conclusion of the novel becomes deeply problematic and disconcerting for a Victorian audience. In the final chapter of the novel, "At Peace," the narrator concludes by wishing, "I hope no one will take objection to my story because the end of it leaves the good people all happy and at peace" (Braddon 355). If much of the suspense of the novel is created by aligning beauty with concealment, then the conclusion fails to significantly resolve that tension. Peace, as it was defined by Braddon throughout the novel, is inherently suspect, and therefore provides an unsettling description of the characters' final state. In the conclusion of her essay on "Insanity and Its Treatment" published in Belgravia, Mary Elizabeth Braddon explains the need for the nation to indulge in paranoia over their evolving notions of identity: It is good sometimes to see the 'night-side' of things to have laid bare our social scourges both of the moral and material kind, in order that we may with one heart and mind unite in striving to rectify those evils which madden peoples and hurry nations to premature decay (Braddon 478). Richards 36 In this passage, Braddon discusses the unsavory content of novels as a tool for edification, insisting that art is a way of understanding and uprooting evil. But she also implies an identification with darkness. Braddon considers that which is villainous to be a "side" or aspect of a common identity, suggesting the eradication of evil is a collective struggle. In this passage, Braddon maps the trajectory of many of the characters within sensation fiction. Their encounters with villainy require them to wrestle with the pervasive nature of evil. For Victorians, villainy becomes unrecognizable because it is an internalized and a shared experience. As a result of the inability to claim an inherent separation from evil, protagonists are taken advantage of and finally destroyed, or they are forced to embrace the negative aspects of their nature and become transgressive characters. Braddon embraces the dichotomy of human nature as a shared responsibility, but she comes short of suggesting the flexibility of moral codes and boundaries that are expressed within Lady Audley's Secret. Braddon's novel, like other sensation novels, offers a multiplicity of solutions, but no morally simplistic delineations. Villainy is created, encountered, dealt with, then perpetuated through social structures and the actions of individual characters. The protagonists of these novels are so perplexed by the complexity and unintelligibility of their society that their role as moral arbiters within their fictional stories is unendingly compromised. Concealed instances of villainy do drastic damage to concepts of heroism, because they require numerous concessions from the protagonists. These characters do not appear to (consciously) understand their actions to eradicate evil as a form of compromise, nor do they seem to recognize the ways in which they participate in villainous acts in order to restore their prefered order. Instead, they believe they have done their duty and effectively dealt with the villainy within their texts. Their actions and attitudes reveal that villainy pervaded social Richards 37 institutions and corrupted individuals. Sir Percival is burned alive, Count Fosco is murdered by an Italian secret order, Lady Audley is sent abroad to an asylum. These sensation novels hardly contain any sympathetic elements for their villains, but they do complicate and question the ability to identify and eradicate evil in a complex society. Critics such as Jenny Bourne Taylor, Sue Lonoff, and Ann Gaylin have promoted the acknowledgement of relativistic themes within sensation fiction. While they are correct in suggesting that these texts contributed to an understanding of the individual's reliance on subjective experience rather than on objective truths, this postmodern lens is not necessary to uncover the conflicting and contradictory nature of truth within these novels. Instead, relativism emanates from the attempt to enforce restrictive codes about the definition of villainous behavior rather than the attempt to transgress them. It is Collin's insistence on truth that makes Hartright complicit in villainous behaviour, just as it is Braddon's attempts to protect Lady Audley from the threat of public scandal that cause the illumination of her transgressive qualities which highlights her, as well as Robert's, complicity in villainy. By attempting to adhere to strict codes of conduct within these novels, the authors reveai the complexity and anxiety surrounding villainy in their own society. For Victorian novel readers, the sensation novel perpetuated anxieties about eradicating and resolving evil in society and revealed Victorians' complicity in villainous structures. Richards 38 Works Cited Austen, Jane. Pride And Prejudice. New York: Modern Library, 1995. Print. Badowska, Eva. "On The Track Of Things: Sensation And Modernity In Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret." Victorian Lit. Culture Victorian Literature and Culture 37 (2009): 157. Web. Bernstein, Stephen. 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