SECRETALONG! This readalong is being hosted by Alice (as usual) and will contain any amount of gifs and spoilers.
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I read Lady Audley's Secret in my teens, but we know how I am about plot and remembering it. Which is to say I'm going to spend this whole book like I spent the first half of Bleak House, being all, IS SHE A FALLEN WOMAN? She is, isn't she. (Because, I mean, what other secrets could a Victorian lady have? Hemophilia? That's not a secret, because you keep marrying your first cousins and we know it. A mad husband? Those are hard to keep in the attic.)
So. On the one hand, SOOOOOOOOO much architecture to begin with. Like, pages and pages of architectury and if the layout of these grounds ends up being important I am fucked, because I totally wasn't paying attention (except for the part about the 'stupid, bewildering clock' with no minute hand because that would make me nuts).
Alright, Lady Audley. 'She had come into the neighborhood as a governess' - happened rather a lot, did this? Or is it like with men and their secretaries, where fiction has so overblown it that you can't take it seriously in real life, until it happens to your friend and half the tragedy is that she can't even talk to people about it because it sounds so tawdry? I don't even know what I'm asking anymore.
MOVING ON.
Good thing Lady Audley has a secret because she is otherwiseboring perfect in every way. 'They were the most wonderful curls in the world' - LESS OF THIS, please. But let's hear more about that 'narrow black ribbon' she wears around her neck. WHAT HAPPENS IF SHE REMOVES IT?
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New chapter! New character! Returning from Australia to see his beloved and long-unseen wife! And while most of me is taken up with OMG IT IS A SECRET HUSBAND (I guess they're easier to keep in Australia than in an attic), a very large part of my brain is like, Holy shit, peripheral wan governess character. Fifteen years is a long engagement.
Also, I agree with George Talboys re: Shelley and Bryon, i.e. that their faces should be laughed in.
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I read Lady Audley's Secret in my teens, but we know how I am about plot and remembering it. Which is to say I'm going to spend this whole book like I spent the first half of Bleak House, being all, IS SHE A FALLEN WOMAN? She is, isn't she. (Because, I mean, what other secrets could a Victorian lady have? Hemophilia? That's not a secret, because you keep marrying your first cousins and we know it. A mad husband? Those are hard to keep in the attic.)
So. On the one hand, SOOOOOOOOO much architecture to begin with. Like, pages and pages of architectury and if the layout of these grounds ends up being important I am fucked, because I totally wasn't paying attention (except for the part about the 'stupid, bewildering clock' with no minute hand because that would make me nuts).
Alright, Lady Audley. 'She had come into the neighborhood as a governess' - happened rather a lot, did this? Or is it like with men and their secretaries, where fiction has so overblown it that you can't take it seriously in real life, until it happens to your friend and half the tragedy is that she can't even talk to people about it because it sounds so tawdry? I don't even know what I'm asking anymore.
MOVING ON.
Good thing Lady Audley has a secret because she is otherwise
I knew it.
New chapter! New character! Returning from Australia to see his beloved and long-unseen wife! And while most of me is taken up with OMG IT IS A SECRET HUSBAND (I guess they're easier to keep in Australia than in an attic), a very large part of my brain is like, Holy shit, peripheral wan governess character. Fifteen years is a long engagement.
Also, I agree with George Talboys re: Shelley and Bryon, i.e. that their faces should be laughed in.
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
The thorns of life. SUCH DRAMA. I'm cry-laughing as we speak. But as much as I agree with George re: Romantic poetry, I CANNOT BELIEVE he hasn't written to his wife in three years, and totally expects her to just be hanging out for him. I get that this is a different era and ladies didn't really have much else to do if abandoned by their husbands, but NOT A NOTE to be like, Hey, I'm still alive, don't run off and make alternate arrangements for yourself to ensure your survival and that of our son.
New chapter, new character! I can only handle this for so long. Pheobe is unsettling and Luke is gross and they are first cousins and oh Victorians, you totally should have had more of a problem with this than you did. But these two are seriously shady, and no good can come from the packet (THAT MAY OR MAY NOT BE A WEDDING RING WRAPPED IN A FAREWELL NOTE BUT PROBABLY IS) Phoebe steals from Lady Audley's jewelry box.
I just need to put this here.
New chapter, new character! Robert Audley is Dickchard Jarndyce all over again, and I hate him already. He runs into George Talboys, whom we THANKFULLY already know, and George sees the notice of his wife's death in the previous day's papers. HOW CONVENIENT and also OMG. Howwww am I supposed to stop reading at this point?
Serious cliffhanger.