Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon: Read-a-long Chapters 16-24

So I'm doing it a little bit differently this week. Instead of frantically dashing together a read-a-long post a few hours before it's due, I'm going to update as I read it. Don't get me wrong, I'm still writing this a mere two hours before update-time but I feel like taking my time this week. So there.

Strong language may be present below. I'm that way out.

Am I the only one of us who really doesn't like Alicia? I mean, somebody actually proposes to that whiny, sulky brat and all she can do is cry like she's hard-done-by?

"What is that to you, Mr. Robert Audley?" cried Alicia, passionately. "What do you care what becomes of me, or whom I marry? If I married a chimney-sweep you'd only lift up your eyebrows and say, 'Bless my soul, she always was eccentric.' I have refused Sir Harry Towers; but when I think of his generous and unselfish affection, and compare it with the heartless, lazy, selfish, supercilious indifference of other men, I've a good mind to run after him and tell him-"

 Oh fuck off.

 I've read lots of posts about how she's the only one who can 'see through' Lady Audley, but see through what? I've disliked plenty of people who have blonde ringlets and a girly laugh, but that's because I can be a jealous snotbag, not because I've figured out they faked their own death in order to marry into money!

I feel bad for Harry Towers though - he seems so disappointed. He'd planned all kind of improvements for when she came to live with him and now his dreams are all ruined. Don't get me wrong, I still think he dodged a bullet here but he's hurting, bless him.

Ooh, foreshadowing! By which I mean, 'Ms Braddon jumps up and down and flails dramatically in the direction of what we all know is going to happen.' I'm talking about the part where Sir Michael is kicking Robert out of his house and Robert is all 'God forbid that the slightest shadow of dishonor should ever fall upon your honored head- least of all through agency of mine.' 

AND THEN HE GOES TO STAY WITH PHOEBE!!! SECRET DISCUSSIONS MAY HAPPEN!!

It seems odd that Phoebe and Lady Audley are still on good terms. I mean, I know they were besties or whatever, but when someone's future husband blackmails me into buying me a pub, I tend to discontinue our relationship.

"That," he thought, "is a woman who could keep a secret."

OH MY GOD, WE GET IT. There's a secret. Please stop blinding us with your subtlety and tact.

"This woman would be good in a witness-box," he thought; "it would take a clever lawyer to bother her in a cross-examination."

Well... no. It would actually just take a lawyer who asked her more than three blindingly obvious questions, the answers to which could be found by asking anybody in the village. It doesn't take a 'clever lawyer' to 'trick' a maid into confirming that Lady Audley came from London. If you tried, you might actually get something.

Then Robert suddenly decides he knows everything, Lady Audley comes to visit, somehow realises he knows everything and then miraculously everybody knows everything about everybody else. How!? Why did George suspect Lady A, other than a list of dates he compiled himself. He has no reason to suspect that the handwriting on George's wife's letters will be the same as Lady A's!

Lady Audley has a dramatic outburst about why Robert 'hates her so...' based on nothing. ARGH. Mary Elizabeth Braddon beats you with a sledgehammer about the obvious things but doesn't even mention the things that aren't! He jumps to conclusions and then shouts about evidence and following pathways of clues, but he's just making guesses based on nothing!

I do want to know the relevance of Alicia's letter to Robert from the beginning of the book. If I remember rightly, the narrative hinted how important it would be and it hasn't come up yet. Nor the baby's shoe, which is annoying me a little. Why steal it if they weren't going to dangle it menacingly in front of Lady Audley's face?

Ahhh, omething's happening now! An inscription has been found which confirms exactly what we you all guessed about a fortnight ago. It seems as though Helen Talboys and Lucy Audley might be the same person.
 

Okay, this is getting interesting now. Robert has just gone to visit George's son in Southampton, whose story about what is obviously a pawnbroker is almost heart-breaking.

"This is the watch the pretty lady gave me," he said. "I've got it now - but I haven't had it long, because the jeweler who cleans it is an idle man, gran'pa says, and always keeps it such a long time; and gran'pa says it will have to be cleaned again, because of the taxes. He always takes it to be cleaned when there's taxes - but he says if he were to lose it the pretty lady would give me another."

 I'm glad that at the very least, Robert has twigged that the child definitely shouldn't be with That Man. The servants are clearly in on it too, as the nanny (who reminds me of Mrs Danvers) keeps trying to whisk him off to be washed and therefore stop talking. Aww, this is the only part this week that has made me feel something.

Sigh. And then Robert ruins it with his dramatic mumbling. Take a shot every time Robert mentions that he's 'on a dark road,' people. 

So Mr Maldon clearly doesn't believe George is dead, or at least he fervently hopes he isn't. The logical inference is that he knew Helen/Lucy had remarried and changed identity but not how she planned to get George out of the way. I still don't think she can have killed him, not without help. She's so tiny and he would surely have put up a fight.

I hope Robert and Clara Talboys get together and make little solemn babies. I suspect he'll end up with Alicia but maybe I'll get lucky and she'll fall into that damn well. 

She'd like me to marry her I know; and she'll make me do it, I dare say, before she's done with me. But I'd much rather not...

Heh.

And then Chapter Twenty-four is solely Robert feeling sorry for himself and rambling on. Awesome.

I think the problem with Lady Audley's Secret is that it's alternately boring and annoyingly over-dramatic. There are lots of long descriptions of houses broken up by people clasping their hands to their foreheads and wailing about shadows. I've noticed that it's not very consistent either - for example, somebody will predict an event with certainty but are then genuinely surprised when it actually happens on the next page! It just doesn't flow. 

I do like this book, but I think it could do with being much shorter.

Hey, what if Helen Talboys wasn't Lucy, but she was Phoebe instead? They do look alike after all. Just a thought.