An extensive and detailed analysis of all key events, characters and themes of the book.
It includes quotations, how these quotations can be used to support a point.
All the quotations and notes are organised by theme/tropes and characters which makes revision or essay planning easy.
Key words:
Sensation fiction
Social anxieties
Authorial intent
Transgressive
Gothic
Setting-
“Groups of rhododendrons”
“A broken ruin of a wall”
“Shady corners of the old-fashioned rooms”
“The lime-walk; an avenue so shaded from the sun and sky… a chosen place for secret
meetings or for stolen interviews; a place in which conspiracy might have been planned”
“It was almost oppressive, this twilight stillness… you felt as if a corpse must be lying
somewhere”
“so deathlike was the tranquillity of all around”
“We hear every day of murders committed in the country.Brutal and treacherous murders”1
“Harcourt Talboys was like his own square-built, northern-fronted, shelterless house. There
were no shady nooks in his character into which one could creep for shelter from his hard
daylight”2
Foreshadowing/Tension-
“Groups of rhododendrons”
“The lime-walk; an avenue so shaded from the sun and sky… a chosen place for secret
meetings or for stolen interviews; a place in which conspiracy might have been planned”
1
Narrator reminds the reader of the deceptive danger of the countryside. The insertion of the first
person narration by Braddon also adds to the gothic undertones of the novel.
2
Braddon utilises the characters' homes to reflect their personalities and social standings such as
Audley court starting to crumble due to Lucy’s lower-class ‘invasion’.
, “I scarcely think there is a greater sin than that of a woman who marries a man that she does
not love”
“Nothing but misery can result from a marriage dictated by any motive but truth and love”
“I cannot be blind to the advantages of such an alliance”
“Every trace of the old life melted away- every clue to identity buried and forgotten”
“I am going straight home to the woman I love; to a girl whose heart is as true as the light of
heaven”
“What can have happened in such a short time as that?”
“I’ve heard tell of a murder that was done here in old times”
“Neither gold nor gems; only a baby’s little worseted shoe rolled up in a piece of paper and a
tiny lock of shiny yellow hair”
“I’d rather have this than the diamond bracelet you would have liked to take…you shall have
the public-house, Luke”
“wicked secrets are never permitted to remain long hidden.”
“Because there is no evidence of madness in anything that she has done.”3
Deception-
“Miss Lucy Graham was blessed with that magic power of fascination by which a woman can
charm with a word or intoxicate with a smile”
“Everybody high and low, united in declaring that Lucy Graham was the sweetest girl that
ever lived”
“He could no more resist the tender fascination of those soft melting blue eyes; the graceful
beauty of that slender throat… with its wealth of showering flaxen curls”
“I scarcely think there is a greater sin than that of a woman who marries a man that she does
not love”
“Sir Michael Audley had fallen ill of the terrible fever called love”
“Every trace of the old life melted away- every clue to identity buried and forgotten”
3
Discredits lucy but also highlights the misconceptions surrounding madness and mental illness and
how people were of the view that they could not both be mad and intelligent.
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